First Things First

I’m isolated in my rural paradise, but it’s not like I don’t read the news.  Ten days of protest in major cities, property destruction (a certain percentage at the hands of police provocateurs), police in one place sitting down with protestors for a productive dialogue, police in another charging peaceful protestors for no conceivable reason.  Foreign countries issuing statements of support for the protestors.  The infant in the White House being denounced by his own ex-Secretary of Defense, threatening to use military force on dissenters, gassing and bludgeoning his way to a photo opportunity in front of a church, then hiding in a bunker.  Wow.  Way to lead.

All this on top of a pandemic that has killed more Americans than all our wars since 1945.

People who have isolated themselves in their basements are issuing ringing calls for the economy to be opened up— presumably by other people.  They never mention how many casualties they’re willing to inflict on those other people, while they themselves stay safe in their basements.  It’s only the working class under threat, after all, the ones who have no choice but to work or starve, because the government has cut off unemployment benefits for anyone who declines a job offer.  (And of course a very large percentage of those being herded back to work are people of color, just in case you thought this couldn’t get more racist.)

The powerful are desperate to get other people back to work, because that way the powerful can keep their stock prices and profit margins up.  But that gives the workers an awful lot of power that they didn’t have six months ago.

So here’s my plan: Social justice first.  Open the economy later.

When people are so desperate for you to work, they hand you a bargaining counter.  You can ask for, say, a decent living wage.  You can ask for improved health care.  You can ask for your racist supervisor to be canned.  You can ask for appropriate social distancing at workstations.

Oh, did I say “ask?”  I didn’t mean ask, of course.  I meant demand.

Of course this would require a degree of solidarity among the workers unprecedented since the Great Depression, but guess what?  We’re living in the Great Depression, the Remake.  Our unemployment rate hit Great Depression levels in a single month.

You really don’t want the same shitheads to be in charge after this is all over, do you?

I’m hiding in my rural redoubt (because I can afford it), and I realize how my clarion call to action might sound to those on the front lines, who are faced with the choice of not being able to feed their families or risking their lives down at the factory or at the meat packer.  I am perhaps not the best messenger for this.  Still, while my person is in shelter, I’d like to think my heart is in the right place.  For whatever that’s worth.