These are the reasons we have united to build our own table. No longer content with asking for a seat at theirs.

Despair is palpable in the most prosperous country on earth. We see it with our own eyes: more and more Americans living on the streets and in their cars. Rents that outpace wages. Food prices that have risen so much our grocery bills are staggering. Hard-working people left without a real voice.

I saw it firsthand running the Team Kennedy campaign in Nevada in 2024—two dedicated volunteers living in their cars. Nearly one in three Americans now live in or near poverty. Gas prices still strand workers before payday, costing them shifts and pushing families closer to the edge.

It all boils down to one central fact: The U.S. Government does not protect workers when we ask for better wages together. The reasons run through every broken promise this book has examined.

They are corporate constitutional personhood that equips legal fictions with rights that overpower living citizens. Decades of the Powell Memo strategy executed by the donor class and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Money-as-speech that lets concentrated wealth buy policy while working voices are silenced. Gutted labor protections—Section 7 of the NLRA exists in theory but fails in practice when retaliation carries no real penalty, and the NLRB lacks teeth and resources. Deliberate wage suppression via H-1B, OPT, and immigration policies that favor cheap foreign labor over American families. A two-party system captured by the same corporate interests that fund it. And judicial and regulatory institutions that reliably side with power over people.

These broken promises run deep. To America’s veterans, they are especially personal. I served in the U.S. Army. I trained for battle but never deployed. Like so many others, I came home expecting the country we defended would at least protect our opportunities and dignity in civilian life. Instead, too many veterans face the same housing crisis, healthcare delays, and job displacement that hit the broader working class. The institutions that sent us overseas broke their word when we returned. That betrayal is real, and it stings—but it is only one chapter in a larger pattern of institutional failure toward all working Americans.

The same system that underfunds veteran services also underfunds labor enforcement. The same corporate capture that ships jobs overseas leaves families—veteran and civilian alike—living in cars. The same donor-driven policies that expand H-1B programs after I was laid off at 63 and forced to train my own replacements are the ones that tell every American worker to accept less while executives and shareholders take more.

We tried asking for a seat at their table. We followed the rules, served our country, paid our taxes, and played fair. We got outsourcing, age discrimination, stagnant wages, and polite indifference from both political parties.

That era is finished.

We—the US Majority of 170 million non-union workers and our families—have stood up and built our own table. The U.S. Workers Academy. People Primaries. District-based organizing that turns every registered member into a real constituent with real power. The 99 Cent Revolution to fund it all without begging corporate donors. Viausworkers.com is the foundation of this new table, built by us, for us.

This is the practical answer to every broken promise detailed in these pages. We don’t beg the captured institutions for reform. We organize outside their control, primary the enablers in both parties, and then enshrine the US Majority Amendment in the Constitution to end corporate personhood dominance once and for all—the same way we once disestablished state religions that corrupted self-government.

Americans First. Workers First. US Majority First.

No more asking. No more waiting. We built our table. Now we set it for the majority.