The People Who Create the Wealth
Dan Nickerson, International Liberation Reference Person for Working-Class People
I was twenty-nine years old when I met Harvey Jackins. It was the first time in my life I had heard that it was good to be working class. After that I decided to make working-class liberation my life’s work.
I went to work in a factory, and for thirty-one years that factory was my laboratory in which to test what we think we know in RC about class oppression. The first person I taught RC to in the factory is now the first woman elected head of the AFL-CIO in Maine (USA). [The AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) is the largest federation of unions in the United States, representing more than twelve million workers.] And this morning my friend Paul, an electrician from the factory, called me to tell me that he loved me. Everybody counts.
I’ve been the main leader of the leaders of “class” in RC. A key part of the new goal on ending classism is reaching out to the people I call “direct production workers.” They are the people who create the wealth that all of us live on. There are fewer of them in RC than there are owning-class people, and it’s our job to do something about that. I don’t think we can achieve our other goals without them.
Freeport, Maine, USA