UW organizers assemble in Cumberland, joining together across lines of division to gain new members and leaders

In the Jewish scriptures, there is a story about a great king whose armies had conquered the world. His heart was full of pride. So he had a great statue formed of himself made entirely of gold. Then he gathered his subjects on a great plain in Babylon before his golden statue and commanded them to bow down. He commanded them to bow down and worship their new God. The king's power was total, his word was absolute. Everyone obeyed. Everyone except three Hebrew young men named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

The great king was in a generous mood so he said, "Hey dummies, perhaps you didn't hear? It's time to bow down to your God." 

From far across the plain, three tiny voices came back, "No, no, our king. We already have a God."

The king, whose mood had taken a turn, said "In case you haven't noticed those giant furnaces over there, that's where you're going if you don't obey." 

They said, "We know. But we're still not going to do it." 

The king asked, "Who will rescue you from my hand? You'll die."

From far across the plane, the tiny voices came back again, "Our God might save us. But even if he doesn't, we're still not going to do it." 

The king lost it. "Seven times hotter, make the furnaces seven times hotter! Then bind them and throw them in." 

The soldiers obeyed. The soldiers died. The insane heat killed them instantly when they threw the young men into the furnace. But the young men were unharmed, their ropes consumed by the flames. 

"Weren't there three men that we threw into the furnace?" the king exclaimed. "But I see a fourth walking among them, one like a God." 

The story has a happy ending. The young men come out of the furnace and their clothes don't even smell of smoke. The king learns his lesson and proclaims his allegiance to the God of Israel (until he doesn't but that's another story). 

What I find interesting today is that these three young men said no. They said no to state corporate power, even if it cost them everything. Who would do that? 

Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about the poor coming together as one, a nonviolent army with nothing to lose. United across lines of division -- across race, across religion, across gender and orientation, across everything that has separated us to become "a new and unsettling force," rising as one to say no to state corporate power. 

Do you feel the heat? Is it getting hotter? Do you find it harder and harder to imagine a future where we don't just want to curl up and die? A future where a $400 car repair won't sink us or where we don't have to worry about having enough food to feed our kids, if we even have enough money to have kids? A future where we all have a safe place to live that doesn't eat up a month's worth of paychecks? A future where we can get sick and not go bankrupt from medical debt? 

Yesterday, a group of us came together in a hot room in the back of a church in LaVale Maryland as part of United Workers' outreach to new members. Led by Ammie Ballheim, the local western regional outreach lead, who's been gaining traction with folks in the area who are fed up with the way things are and want to do something about it. A group of people who are ready to get organized because they know that's the only way for anything to really change. 

My name is Mike Hughes. I am autistic and I struggle with depression and anxiety. My wife has heart failure and several autoimmune diseases. It's been hard to pay our bills and I'm scared. I mostly try not to think about it. Sometimes that works.

Cari Neal-Harden, another organizer from Western Maryland at the event said, "I like to study history and all over the world the poor have been put down more and more until something happens and they say enough. Then things get better." 

It's getting hotter all over. Extreme heat. Record temperatures, with each summer hotter than the last -- with the poor and the unhoused having nowhere to escape. We all work real hard to block it out. To pretend that all of this is normal. But it's not normal. We've become numb to the violence and economic savagery of life in the United States of America. 

Like those three young men on the plains of Babylon who didn't ask to be thrown into that furnace, that seven-times-hotter furnace. They weren't looking for trouble. But they wouldn't back down either. They weren't going to surrender their identity, their dignity to anybody and they were together in that furnace. They were united. They were free. Then something wonderful happened and nothing was ever the same. 

As we live through late-stage capitalism together, it seems as if even the ruling class is growing more and more desperate, more erratic. Taking more risks, acting more brazenly, with their coercive power seeping into every area of our existence. Commanding us to bow to their absolute authority and commanding us to do so with smiles on our faces.

But the ruling class messed up. Extreme heat can melt things that are different into one thing. By turning up their furnace seven times hotter, they're melting all of us together into a new and unsettling force. A force not dependent on one man who can be assassinated, but built on the masses of the poor. We're ready to say, "Enough!"