Once this new bribe is through Congress and on the books, attention will then turn to those who are not a part of America’s corporatist consensus: working people.

But what Washington and Wall Street have in store for most of us (except for the most privileged layers of our class) is not our own “bailout,” “stimulus” or other bribe.

No. Carrots and bribes are for friends. Washington does not count the 180 million poor and working people in this country among its friends. We are its enemies.

Certainly, many of our brothers and sisters have tried to be friends with the agents of the exploiting and oppressing classes. They’ve cheered them on, voted for them, appealed to them, bargained with them, etc. — all for nothing, in the end.

But if Obama’s support for breaking the UAW, or his plan to dismantle public education, or his backing of the corporate welfare state wasn’t enough to convince our fellow workers of what is to come, then perhaps only experience can teach them.

Before us now is the gathering storm — the combined forces of the exploiters and oppressors, their politicians, their armed enforcers of “law and order,” their media mouthpieces, their “cultural icons” — arrayed against all of us, the working class.

At the same time, we are without organizations able to move millions, without a political guide and direction we are all able to agree on to take us past this trainwreck of a society, without the ability to even defend ourselves against these attacks.

And yet, we sound the alarm now — in spite of our own understood limitations.

We, the Workers Party in America, make the call for our brothers and sisters to come together under a single banner to fight this gathering corporatist nightmare, to defeat capitalism and its state in political struggle, for revolutionary industrial unionism to unite us in One Great Union of our class, to bring about a workers’ republic.

We have no choice in the matter. Just as Obama and the corporatists must do what is “necessary” for their maintenance and survival, so we too must do all that is necessary for all working people to organize and fight on their own terms.

We sound the alarm now. The storm is coming, and we as workers can either get ready or get washed away and drown in it. The choice is yours, brothers and sisters.