In Solidarity with the Workers of Turkey

Today, we stand in solidarity with the workers of Turkey. Lessons learn from the tragic Soma Mining Disaster should lead us to conclude: that above and paramount to all economic gains and growth; the general welfare, the health and the working conditions of workers must be protected, safeguarded and maintained to the highest standards. 

Turkish workers have provided the beaded-sweat girth and muscle of Turkey's strong economic gains in the past decade. Today, as they did yesterday, and they will tomorrow; the families of the so far recovered dead 288 coal miners, will bury they loved ones. That some 100 miners are still unaccounted for, suggests more burials will take place again and again. But the living, especially, the youthful artists and technology specialists from Istanbul to Ankara, must join their brothers and their sisters in Soma to reinsure that the hundreds of miners killed did not die in vain. You, the modern day children of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk must mandate of your authorities, greater worker safety throughout your land. A cohesive and solidarity relationship across the spectra of society is a requisite to a sound nation state. Turkey is strong. It has always been strong. It has to remain strong. Artists, workers, brokers and innovators must stand as one people, with a unified voice of one united nation.

Now is the hour to stand in solidarity with representatives of the miners. Now is the time to take stock and weigh economic gains in relation to its human toll. Now is the time to demand reinvestment of economic profits into erecting the safeguards needed for workers to ply successfully with minimum fear of a breech of safety to their lives on the job. Protect those who gainfully toil for Turkey.