A Essential Workers Bill of Rights Is Past Due And Is the Only Thing to Save America from Fascism

With consumer prices rising substantially and inflation at a 40-year high, an Essential Workers Bill of Rights patterned after the GI Bill of Rights (Serviceman’s Readjustment Act) is long overdue. It also may be the only thing to save the United States from a fascist takeover, like the one that occurred on January 6, 2001, when thousands of followers motivated by white backlash and then President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol Building, resulting in 5 deaths and over 140 Capitol Police injured-according to the Police Union.

The origins of the GI Bill lay in World War II and the last legislative act of the New Deal which created a veterans-only welfare state. In addition to granting a series of benefits to sixteen million veterans, such as free college education and job training, zero-down payment low-interest loans for homes and businesses, and twenty dollars a week for up to fifty-two weeks, the GI Bill provided hospitals and clinics to cover healthcare costs. It was, to say the least, a bold plan to finally compensate those who had risked their lives to defeat the Axis Powers.

Seventy-years later America finds itself in another war, a major and deadly pandemic where the frontline soldiers are essential workers. Indeed, according to the journal “Occupational and Environmental Health,” workers like nurses and doctors, teachers and daycare providers, cashiers and food servers, and other service sector employees, are seven times more likely to die of COVID-19 and multiple variants. Those who maintain the nation’s supply-chain systems are just as important, ensuring that millions of Americans can meet their basic needs.

Like the GI Bill of Rights, a EW Bill of Rights would lead to a new direction of prosperity and liberalism-away from an argument for fascism along with a ruling oligarchy and toward an insistence on individual and “social” and “economic” rights. To be sure, those Americans who took advantage of the GI Bill’s benefits enjoyed average earnings of $10,000-$15,000 more than those who did not. They also paid more in taxes. Consequently, the GI Bill paid for itself almost ten times over. Moreover, it helped eliminate some aspects of poverty by creating a new middle class.

Without a EW Bill of Rights, the prospects for economic and social equality, and for each generation’s achieving a standard of living higher than the generation before, will continue to suffer-and suffer with unimaginable consequences alongside racial injustices. Indeed, social inequality and economic hardship have always been just as important as racial injustices in causing fascist takeovers. Whereas the Jan. 6 white supremacists were manipulated into “perceiving” a loss in status, racial minorities and essential workers actually “live” a loss in status.

This is the most important lesson regarding World War II and the GI Bill of Rights. Today, in this moment of white backlash and war against COVID-19, the more progressive parties should not abandon their public commitments to racial and social and economic justice, specifically in passing a EW Bill of Rights that is all-inclusive. Otherwise, fanatically determined political parties will continue to produce demagogues who not only take advantage of social and economic inequalities but overpower reason and common sense.

Dallas Darling (darling@wn.com)