Inequality in America doesn't just "happen" — the self-serving actions of corporate powers and political autocrats deliberately create it.

You might have noticed, for example, that your health care costs keep rocketing into the stratosphere. This has left millions of our families with no medical coverage at all, and most of the rest of us are struggling to pay ever-higher prices to insurance giants for ever-worsening coverage.

Lately, even those whose employers provide health insurance are being socked by their companies' top executives — who, by the way, get platinum-level medical coverage paid by the company. Steadily and stealthily, though, bosses have been making rank-and-file workers pay for health benefits, which are considered part of their pay. This pickpocketing was modest at first, but it's now major thievery, taking an average of $7,500 a year from each employee's paycheck.

Well, bark corporate apologists, that's just the natural working of the free market system. Excuse me, but my family's health is not a market, and there's nothing "natural" about inequality being foisted on working families by corporate elites.

Speaking of unnatural, take a look at Mark Zuckerberg, the wonky-zonky gabillionaire chief of Meta, Inc. An infamous profiteer at the expense of communities and workers, Mark has become so royally rich that he would owe billions in a proposed California wealth tax. No problem, though — elites at the top take care of themselves, so Zuck just had Meta rig its entire stock structure so his new tax obligation would cost him zero!

So billionaire bosses keep pampering themselves by rigging their own corporate rules while robbing their employees' paychecks. And that, boys and girls, is how the widening inequality gap between the rich and the rest of us happens.

DOLORES HUERTA

Over my years as a political agitator, a special joy has been getting to know and learning from so many other practitioners of the agitating arts who dare to stand up to moneyed elites.

Yes, if you push for a little more fairness and democracy in our "Land of the Free," you will certainly be labeled an agitator. But so what? Wear that proudly, for mavericks and agitators are the ones who've advanced America's democratic possibilities. As Jesse Jackson put it, "the agitator is the center-post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out."

Indeed, it's those everyday people who do the hard traveling and heavy lifting to produce grassroots change. For an exemplary model, consider the life of Dolores Huerta. This jewel of a human being died last week after 96 years in the field, inspiring, organizing, and mobilizing supposedly powerless, mostly impoverished people.

I got to know and occasionally work in her shadow as she crisscrossed the country again and again, organizing farmworkers, immigrants, women, outcasts, and others who've been knocked down, held back, and routinely abused by a morally corrupt power structure. Astonishingly, despite political disappointments, repeated arrests, brutal beatings by corporate thugs, and devastating personal abuse — she never lost her deep belief that an organized, focused people's movement will prevail. Si se puede was her inspiring mantra: "Yes we can do it!"

She was a momentous labor leader and progressive icon, but for me she remains a touchstone for those seeking a life of grassroots agitation. You don't need to become Dolores Huerta, but see if you can find her spirit inside you.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Julia Taubitz at Unsplash