Like other small farmers, dairy farmers are being driven into debt slavery at an increasing rate. For the labor movement it is a life-and-death question to champion the demands of these farmers, join the fight to stop farm closures, and insure every farmer who wants to farm can do so.

A striking feature of the dairy farmers' actions, and of the appeal by farm organizations to the AFL-CIO to support the March 21 Rally for Rural America in Washington, D.C., is the decision to search out allies among union members and their organizations, progressive groups, and other fighting sections of the population. Labor needs to respond to this initiative and invite farm activists to union meetings, picket lines, and solidarity rallies to deepen the alliance.

Many farmers are acting on the belief that not only is the problem they face a deep one, but that others who work and toil for a living are in the same condition. While the forms of capitalist exploitation of farmers and wage workers differ, we share a common existence as people who own nothing but the ability to sell our labor or the fruits of our labor to the owners of factories, mills, mines, and agribusiness.

This up-tick in meetings, rallies, and protest actions by farmers will be welcomed by workers who are also waging determined struggles, from steelworkers at AK Steel and Ormet Aluminum, to dockworkers in Charleston and elsewhere. The struggles of workers and farmers have the potential to reinforce each other, and help stamp the character of the newly emerging proletarian movement.

In his State of the Union address, President William Clinton, in pointing to the crisis facing family farmers, said that "we must work together to strengthen the farm safety net." The growing actions by farmers and workers, and the tendency to search each other out as allies, helps put the lie to the idea promoted by Clinton and other Democrats and Republicans that "we" is everyone in the United States.

It is becoming more clear that for working people "we" is all those who work and toil for a living—the vast majority—and our allies among all those oppressed by class society and imperialist domination. "They" are the multibillionaire ruling families and the parties that serve them, the Democrats and Republicans.

By joining together in revolutionary struggle "we" can bring to bear the tremendous potential power of working people, and fight for a government of workers and farmers.  
 
 
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