Every major gain for the working class in America has come from the people. We didn’t get the eight-hour workday or the 40-hour workweek because CEOs handed them over. We fought for them. Just as Americans fought in the 1910s for women’s rights, in the 1950s and ’60s for civil rights and in the 1970s for environmental protections. Time and again, ordinary people, beaten down by a system stacked against them, found the courage to stand together, raise their voices and demand something better. 

Graham Platner is part of that tradition. An oyster farmer, from Sullivan, Maine, he’s tired of working three jobs to make rent in a system rigged for the wealthy. He’s not a career politician, and he’s not running like one. Platner refuses money from corporate PACs, relying instead on people-powered fundraising. In 2025, he raised $7.8 million, with 98% of donations under $100, according to the Maine Morning Star. 

Meanwhile, we wake each day to new abuses of power: ICE murders of civilians, Pete Hegseth’s reported millions on steak and lobster … and now the bombing of more than 150 schoolgirls in Minab in an illegal war funded with my tax dollars. 

Our system is broken. Our democracy is in chaos. Americans are hurting. More of the same will not fix it. Real change has never come from the top down — it has always come when ordinary people decided they’d had enough and organize for something better.

Patricia Murray
New Sharon