Labor Day

An email to a friend with an abusive boss:

Dear Heidi,

The economy of the USA and, I dare say, most of the planet by now, has been based on the exploitation of the underpriviledged to provide weath to the priviledged. That's not Communism; that's a fact. Our workplaces are still peppered with the idioms and mentalities of slavery!

I posted information on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, all around MSNTV newsgroups, this morning. http://newdeal.feri.org/library/d_4m.htm Most of my fellow MSNTV users are unaware that their overtime (soon to be stripped by the current administration), child labor laws, beneifits, workers' compensation, disability insurance, work week restrictions, etc. can be credited directly to this event.

These were desperately poor, uneducated, illiterate immigrant women, mostly Jewish.

For years, these brave, young women, and their rural, Christian, American-born compatriots in "mill towns" and sweat shops had been speaking up to explain their working conditions were lethal. They were, of course, fired in droves, harrassed, beaten.

The Triangle fire was the 9/11 WTC of its day. The falling bodies broke holes in the sidewalks!

You are a good and loving person. You deserve to earn a meal, a roof and a coat without constant torture.

One step at a time, you can extricate yourself from this hateful, evil, toxic situation.

Just do a little, every day. Answer one classified ad. Mail out one resume. Make one phone call.

These are hard times: our jobs are being shipped offshore to places like India, where they're being taught American English, to work as Customer Service representatives for huge corporations, like phone, Internet Service Provider and other companies.

Our unions are being "busted." The recession here is creating huge lines at food pantries (two MILLION people, in Ohio alone, are waiting on lines for food donations now!).

The fault is not with you. The whole environment for working people is creating a climate of panic, fear, paranoia and abdication.

I realize how soul draining all this is. I realize you probably come home exhausted by it.

But you MUST put a tiny bit of energy into escaping! "Shawshank Redemtion:" he digs his way out of prison one scratch at a time.
You know that song, "Inch by inch, row by row, I'm gonna make my garden grow?"

That's what I'm doing with my writing and my arts and crafts, the loves of my life. And it's beginning to work! I just got offered a small job. I work independently, from my home, with a cat on my lap and a cup of coffee at my side! In my UNDERWEAR, on hot days! :)

My neighbor is a cocaine addict and an alcoholic. He literally SCREAMS obscenities, racial eptithets and other, toxic, hateful, disgusting stuff. He's five feet from my sofa! It's horrible!

Every day, when he puts on his loud stereo, gets high and drunk and puts on his "show," I start working on my crafts. I close the windows and door (even though my air conditoner is broken) and work on my writing.
Every day, I tell myself, I'm one inch closer to being weathy enough I could BUY this property and throw him in the streets, if I wanted to! I don't want to, but you get the picture.

He's cruel and dangerous. The property manager will do nothing, as no other neighbors besides me have complained. He either buys them: beer, drugs and groceries, or he intimidates them into silence.

So, I am working my way out of it.

I will help you any way I can: moral support, researching employment opportunities for which you can apply, whatever.

You are not crazy. You are not a coward. You are not being hypersensitive.

You are right to want to leave. And you are right not to endulge the impulse to just run out of there and torch the place.

Inch by inch. Row by row.

We'll help you.

Best wishes,

Rogi

end snip

Here's a hero of mine: Mother Jones