The Fight for Money. Power. Respect.

As we settle into this year, the fight in front of us is coming into clearer view.

The noise hasn’t gone away. The pressure hasn’t eased up. The stakes feel just as high—if not higher. But even in the fog of nonstop headlines and manufactured chaos, something is sharpening. The contours of what we’re actually up against. And the kind of future we have to be bold enough to build.

I’ve been doing a lot of listening.

Listening to workers who are tired but still showing up.

To organizers holding communities together with grit and care.

To parents trying to make sense of a system that keeps demanding more while giving less back.

And the more I listen, the clearer it becomes.

When you strip away the spin, the talking points, the distractions—what people are asking for isn’t complicated. It’s consistent. It’s human. It’s urgent.

I keep hearing the same three things, over and over again:

Money.

Power.

Respect.

That’s what it boils down to.

So when folks ask me what we’re focused on in this moment—what we’re actually fighting for—I don’t offer a long list of abstractions. I say it plainly:

Money. Power. Respect.

Money

Let’s start with what’s real.

People are tired of working full time and still struggling to survive. Rent is high. Groceries are high. Healthcare is high. Childcare is high. And wages have not kept up. We’re being told to brace for what’s ahead while corporations raise prices, hoard profits, and consolidate power at the top. The wealth at the very top is growing at a speed that feels surreal, while working families are asked to absorb the shock of every “adjustment” to the economy.

Nobody should have to choose between insulin and groceries.

Nobody should have to take on three jobs just to keep the lights on.

Nobody should be told that economic stability is asking for too much.

Money is not greed. It is survival. It is security. It is dignity. And until working people have real money in their pockets—paychecks that allow them to live, not just scrape by—everything else is unstable. Money is how we measure whether the economy is actually working for the people who make it run.

Right now, it isn’t.

So we are going to change that.

Power

Money gets you through the week.

Power changes the conditions of your life.

People are tired of decisions being made about them, without them. Tired of being managed, surveilled, disciplined, and discarded by systems that treat human beings as expendable inputs. Power is the difference between hoping someone else does the right thing and knowing you have the ability to shape what happens next.

Power is having a real say over your schedule, your safety, your future.

Power is not begging for crumbs—it’s setting the terms of the table.

Power is the ability to organize without fear, to speak without retaliation, to demand better without risking everything.

And here’s the truth: nobody hands you power.

You build it.

Together.

We’ve spent too much time playing defense—reacting to harm after it happens, scrambling to protect what little ground we’ve been allowed to stand on. The moment we’re in demands more than survival tactics. It demands that we build enough collective power to move on offense—to shape policy, to change standards, to make decisions that reflect the lives people actually live.

That’s the work ahead.

And it’s work we know how to do.

Respect

Disrespect is always how it starts.

Before wages are cut, people are told they’re replaceable.

Before benefits are stripped, people are told they should be grateful for what they have.

Before communities are targeted, they’re labeled a problem to be managed.

We’ve seen this pattern over and over again.

We watched people be called “essential” when it was convenient—and disposable the moment the crisis passed. We’ve watched praise become performance while conditions stayed the same. That’s not respect. That’s branding.

Real respect isn’t symbolic.

It’s structural.

It’s enforceable.

Respect means your labor is valued in dollars, not just words.

Respect means your safety is non-negotiable.

Respect means your time, your family, your future are treated as worthy of protection.

And let me be clear: we are not asking for respect.

Asking is what you do when you’re prepared to accept no.

We’re demanding respect—and we’re building the power to back that demand up.

The Power of Unions

But let’s not confuse ourselves about how change happens. Nothing shifts in our movement, just because it is the right thing to be done.

You don’t fix a power imbalance with positive thinking. You fix it with leverage.

Corporations are coordinated. Billionaires are aligned. Entire industries lobby Congress as one bloc.

Working people deserve unions.

Real unions. Strong unions. Growing unions.

Because the moment workers begin to organize at scale, the people at the top feel it.

And that’s why corporations and some politicians spend so much time and money trying to make it harder for workers to join together in unions.

Not because unions don’t work, but because they do.

Unions are the keys that unlock the door to the future we need and deserve.

The Future We’re Building

A future where working people don’t just endure history—they shape it.

A future where dignity is not something you have to fight for every generation, but something you inherit.

A future where the economy works because the people who make it run have real money in their pockets, real power over their lives, and real respect baked into the systems that govern them.

The fight in front of us is becoming clearer.

So is the horizon we’re walking toward.

Money.

Power.

Respect.

That’s the standard.

That’s the direction.

And that’s the future we’re building—together.