Name’s Philip Randolph Wright.
Mister Wright if we are doing business.
I spent a good part of my life teaching young men how to march, how to shoot, and how to stay alive when somebody else was trying to make sure they didn’t.
So when I speak on war, I don’t speak as a protester, and I don’t speak as a politician.
I speak as a man who has had to look working people in the eye and send them where the shouting turns into gunfire.
And that is why I say this plain.
War should be the last tool a nation reaches for, not the first one it keeps polished.
Every time governments decide they need to “send a message,”
it is not the people making the decision who carry the rifles.
It is welders.
It is truck drivers.
It is warehouse hands.
It is farm kids.
It is mechanics.
It is the sons and daughters of people who punch a clock.
Working men and women end up killing other working men and women
who never had a vote in the matter on either side.
Now don’t misunderstand me.
A country has the right to defend itself.
A people have the duty to stand when their home is threatened.
I wore the uniform proud, and I would again if the cause was right and the need was real.
But there is a difference between defense
and destruction.
There is a difference between protecting your people
and proving a point.
And there is a difference between serving the nation
and serving somebody’s agenda that never had to worry about missing a paycheck.
War tears up more than land.
It tears up trades.
It tears up families.
It tears up towns that took fifty years to build and five minutes to burn.
You want to know what labor believes about war?
Labor believes that every bridge blown up
is a bridge some crew had to build.
Every factory flattened
was a place somebody earned their living.
Every life lost
was somebody’s partner on the line.
Working people don’t hate other working people.
We don’t have time for that.
We’re too busy trying to keep the lights on and the roof from leaking.
Most of the time, if you sat the folks from both sides down at the same table,
they’d find out they had more in common
than the men arguing on the television.
That’s why I say this as a soldier and as a union man both.
Strength is necessary.
Discipline is necessary.
Defense is necessary.
But war should never be easy to start,
and it should never be comfortable to watch.
Because the ones who pay for it
are almost never the ones who asked for it.
My old man used to tell me,
“Son, working people built this world.
Don’t ever forget who bleeds when it breaks.”
Keep your head clear.
Keep your conscience straight.
And remember who carries the weight when the shouting starts.
Do it the Wright way.
Well… now you know, Jack.
