I first started reading the WSWS in earnest in 2010. I came to the website as a very frustrated teacher, desperately searching for media coverage of Obama’s reactionary agenda regarding public education, most especially the unrelenting attack on teachers. Whereas “liberal” media outlets had covered the negative aspects of Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act during his administration, such coverage of Obama’s educational agenda was entirely absent. The WSWS was the only media outlet that provided spot-on analysis of the Obama administration’s punitive education policies, especially the Race To The Top program ,which forces schools to compete for desperately needed funding.

At that point, I began to look to the site every day, wanting to see what other issues were being covered, and I discovered that I agreed with the analysis on these issues as well. It was an incredible relief to find honest coverage! Without this, as a worker I felt extremely isolated, as though I was alone in feeling that the system had failed. Again, no other media outlet provides a clear and honest analysis of the crisis and decay of the capitalist system.

The hardest aspect of my political growth, as far as interacting with the articles on the website, was realizing that hoping for reforms through the Democratic Party was a political dead end. I was a lifelong Democrat before coming to the WSWS, and so it was like a light being turned on. The analyses on the site revealed truths I had sensed before but didn’t want to believe; once confronted with the facts, I could no longer go back to my old wishful thinking. The website has provided me with the best political and historical education I could hope to find.

I am thankful for the enormous array of topics covered by the WSWS writers. It allows me to understand the political situation on a global level and in terms of a deep historical perspective. Now when I converse with people about current events, I have a grasp of issues that I otherwise wouldn’t, thanks to the analysis and coverage of the website. No other news source provides this!

Often, people that I speak with are amazed to learn what’s really going on (an example that comes to mind is a recent article on 100 people being worth more than the GDP of all but 8 countries on the planet. I mentioned this to several people, who were stunned and took positions on capitalism that they might not have if they had not heard that). The website is extremely powerful in this regard. Its unrelenting exposure of the true face of capitalism is the greatest means to educate the working class on the necessity of a socialist revolution.