Sleep, Woke, Wake Up Everybody
For too long, the poor, the working class, and the middle class have been trapped in a restless sleep—a haze of empty promises and calculated distractions. The American Dream, dangled just out of reach, has kept us focused on individual struggles, while the real battle has raged above us. Beneath the rhetoric of opportunity lies a system built to exploit, divide, and conquer. And those who profit most? They work hard to ensure we never fully wake up.
But the time for sleeping is over. The alarm has been ringing for generations, and now, more than ever, we must answer it. Waking up isn’t just about recognizing injustice; it’s about understanding how deeply our struggles are connected. The system that exploits African Americans is the same one that impoverishes the working class and undermines the middle class. The fight for economic and racial justice is not separate—it’s one and the same. And until we see the full picture, we remain pawns in a game designed to keep us losing.
The Sleep: How We Got Here
The roots of this sleep run deep into the soil of America’s foundation. From the very beginning, division was the strategy. The plantation system didn’t just thrive on enslaved African labor—it depended on a hierarchy that told poor whites they were superior, even as they toiled in poverty. This illusion of superiority was the first sedative, keeping the exploited from uniting against the real oppressors: the wealthy elite.
Even after slavery’s abolition, the system evolved. Sharecropping, convict leasing, and Jim Crow laws ensured that Black Americans stayed at the bottom, while poor whites were given just enough to feel they were ahead. Meanwhile, Northern banks, insurance companies, and industrialists reaped the rewards of Southern plantations. This wasn’t just a Southern story—it was a national system of profit built on Black suffering and white distraction.
And this system endures. Its design remains simple but effective: keep the working masses divided by race, and they’ll never realize they share the same chains. For generations, it worked. The wealthy grew wealthier, while the poor—Black, white, and otherwise—remained locked in an unending cycle of struggle, blaming each other instead of the system.
The Woke: Seeing the Game
In recent years, some of us have started to stir. Movements like Black Lives Matter have exposed the ongoing brutality of systemic racism, while workers across industries are demanding fair wages and dignity. The conversation has shifted—terms like “racial wealth gap” and “structural inequality” are no longer confined to academia. People are beginning to connect the dots.
But being “woke” isn’t enough. Awareness without action is like waking up but refusing to leave the bed. Too often, wokeness becomes a performance—a badge to wear on social media rather than a rallying cry for change. True awakening requires seeing the entire system for what it is: a machine that exploits everyone, though in different ways.
Take the racial wealth gap as an example. Centuries of exclusion—from slavery to redlining to predatory lending—have locked African Americans out of generational wealth-building. At the same time, poor and working-class whites are fed the myth of meritocracy, told their struggles are personal failings rather than systemic realities. The truth is, the same forces that kept Black Americans landless and underpaid are the ones suppressing wages, busting unions, and rigging the economy for the wealthy. The tactics may differ, but the result is the same: wealth and power flow upward, leaving the rest of us to fight over crumbs.
This awareness is crucial, but it’s not enough. While some dismiss “wokeness” as mere virtue-signaling, others see it as a foundation for change. If we can transform awareness into action, it has the potential to unify us rather than divide us. The challenge is to expand wokeness from a personal realization to a collective movement with real-world impact.
Wake Up Everybody: The Call to Action
It’s time to wake up—not just individually, but collectively. The fight isn’t Black against white, poor against middle class, or urban against rural. The real fight is between the many who are exploited and the few who profit from that exploitation. And the only way to win is by recognizing our shared struggle.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. understood this in his final years. His Poor People’s Campaign wasn’t just about civil rights—it was about economic justice. King sought to unite Black, white, and brown workers in a common struggle against poverty, exploitation, and inequality. He saw clearly that the forces keeping Black Americans in poverty were the same ones oppressing poor whites and immigrants. His assassination silenced his campaign, but the vision lives on, reignited today by leaders like Reverend William Barber, who remind us that solidarity across lines of race and class is the greatest threat to the system.
Breaking the Chains
To wake up fully is to reject the lies we’ve been told—the narratives that pit us against one another and distract us from the real enemy. It’s about demanding a system that values people over profits. That means fighting for policies like living wages, universal healthcare, affordable housing, and reparations for African Americans whose labor built this nation.
But waking up isn’t easy. It requires action. Here’s how we start:
Join unions and worker organizations: These groups have historically been the strongest tools for fighting corporate exploitation. Support labor strikes and demands for fair wages.
Advocate for systemic reforms: Push for legislation like the PRO Act to protect workers’ rights, or support universal healthcare initiatives like Medicare for All.
Demand reparations: Reparations for Black Americans address centuries of stolen wealth and inequality, which benefits all of society by closing systemic gaps.
Build bridges across communities: Attend grassroots meetings, town halls, or cross-racial coalitions. Solidarity is built through relationships, not just rhetoric.
Stay informed: Read works like The New Jim Crow or Winners Take All to deepen your understanding of structural inequality and how to fight it.
Recognize that your struggles and your neighbor’s struggles are connected, no matter how different they might seem. Together, we can reject the game the system has designed.
A Future Worth Fighting For
If we wake up—truly wake up—we can build a future where the economy works for everyone, not just the privileged few. We can dismantle the caste system that has kept so many in poverty while enriching so few. We can create a society where race and class no longer determine your destiny, and opportunity is a right, not a privilege.
Some may say this is a pipe dream, but history shows us that when people organize and stand together, they can force change. The eight-hour workday, women’s suffrage, civil rights—these victories were once dismissed as impossible. Now, they are part of our reality.
This isn’t just a dream. It’s a possibility—one that can only be realized if we stand together. The time for sleep is over. The time for division has passed. It’s time to wake up, everybody, and demand the justice and dignity we all deserve. Together, we can tear down the walls of oppression and build a world where everyone has the chance to thrive.