Saturday, January 08, 2005

Shameful Harvest: An American Tradition

By Rosemarie Jackowski

Read full article...

Posted 01/08 | Add a Comment

    Comments:

    You must register to comment.

    Login | Register

  1. Thanks Rosemarie.

    I agree it’s really about racism and class interest. (It’s also about justifying domestic paramiltary expenditures.) I want to add that the ridiculous part is that Americans who harbor that sort of ideo-baggage tend not to notice that the class status they want to maintain for themselves is still the right to collect a few crumbs.

    I remember a good bit on these matters:

    When a wall’s built to keep ‘the barbarians’ at the gate, something happens to those contained within those walls. They become infused with not just a fear of ‘the other’ and all that, but by losing their ability to commiserate with ‘the other’, they sacrifice some humanity and potential for cultural growth. Locked up together, they impede civilization itself. They become the barbarians inside the gate.

    All the walls gotta fall.

    Posted by Theo from Greece  on  01/09  at  07:26 AM

  2. “Every act of civilization is an act of barbarity” Walter Benjamin.  Perhaps one can grasp the real meaning of this phrase here.

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  01/09  at  12:55 PM

  3. Eloquent article.

    Posted by kim from  on  01/09  at  04:03 PM

  4. The Mexico-US border was an open border until 1961.  Migrant workers from Mexico came to work bean and sugarbeet fields because they liked the work and travel.  They got paid a decent wage and returned year after year.  Kansas, North Dakota, Ohio, to name a few states, all welcomed them with open arms.  Mechanization has changed all of it. 

    I have worked with migrant workers from Mexico.  I was treated with respect by them because I was willing to work with them.  They fed me Mexican food that tasted more like mom’s home cooking than Taco Bell.  Mexicans work in the oil fields and are satisfied with their wages and work.  They love to kill and eat raccoons.  Something that isn’t on my menu, though.

    A harvest of shame not only affected migrant workers from Mexico, but the US, too.  I knew an old Russian woman who grieved for a brother that was allegedly killed in Washington state by greedy apple growers back in the earlier days of the twentieth century.  Nothing new under the sun, especially these days.  There is a tent city on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado that is home to 10,000 unemployed and homeless people.  The economy is slipping these days; there were better days 20 years ago.  As long as the war in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, the economy will continue to be dragged down.  It will get worse.

    Posted by MDPB from  on  01/09  at  04:40 PM

  5. Fact of the matter, I have worked for 1.00 per hour as a waiter in Washington, DC.  The year was 1973.  I depended upon gratuities by providing quality service to the well-heeled clientele to earn more than the hourly wage.  I was seeking, no, striving to seek to find and not to yield, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  So were migrant workers.  Some experienced shameless exploitation.  Joseph’s brothers did not recognize him.  It’s an age old problem.  It is you, and only you, who can change it.  Native Americans define the universe by drawing a circle in the dirt and standing inside of it.  Have a nice day. 

    It is no shame to be poor, to be ashamed of it is.- Benjamin Franklin

    Posted by MDPB from  on  01/09  at  05:09 PM

  6. “All the walls gotta fall.” (Theo)

    “Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided nto little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, herefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.” (Emma Goldman)

    Posted by Nader Rider from  on  01/09  at  10:17 PM

  7. We ought to remember that we stole California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico, and/or at least large parts of them from the very people who are now trying to get back to those places.  It must be the height of hypocrisy, not to speak of indicative of this country’s historical amnesia, that these facts are completed ignored.

    Been thinking about you lately Rosemarie, worrying you must have had to go to jail for your protest.  Glad to hear your voice again!

    Posted by Tracy McLellan from Chicago  on  01/10  at  12:00 AM

  8. From coast to coast, it is all stolen land.

    Posted by MDPB from  on  01/10  at  08:33 AM

  9. Thanks...great comments, they are a pleasant change from a couple that I have received in my e-mail using the word “idiot”. I guess you have to always expect a few of that kind if you have my global view.  Tracy, thanks for worrying. I am not in prison yet. My conviction is still under Appeal in the State Supreme Court. I would not change anything about my Act of Conscience or my act of resistance. I cannot imagine ever living an unexamined life or not having a bottom line when it comes to the evils that our government does.....About this article, if it is not OK to take the land of Native Americans etc. how can it be justified to pay a worker less than a livable wage? Maybe the important question is, “If all men are created equal, then maybe all men should be paid exactly the same amount per unit of time worked.” In that system the garbage collector would be paid the same as the congressman.  Education would have to be free and available to all.

    Posted by rosemarie jackowski from  on  01/10  at  06:50 PM
    10. Commenting is not available in this weblog entry. {/if}

    Next entry: Exposing the Lies of Our Times: An Interview with Mickey Z.

    Previous entry: I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out

    [ads]

    Support Press Action