2008 Woodie Awards
Pride in Privilege
By Shaemus Gleason
9/3/07 - Opinion
Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy, forget in time that men have died to win them.-Franklin D. Roosevelt
We have holidays to honor a human-sized rabbit and a fat man who sneaks into your house late at night, and yet we do not the honor the sacrifices of life, limb, and property by the working men and women of this country with so much as a day off from class. You got into a good school, congrats; you can do wildly involved calculations on the fly, sweet; you are going to get out of here and make money hand-over-fist due to your top-tier preparation to enter a technical field; well, gosh darn it you worked hard and you deserve it.
Well, your future looks just peachy; before you know it you will have your very own trophy wife/husband and be living in the house on the hill pumping out babies like hotcakes. All the while, you never experience what it feels like to have to choose between feeding your children or paying the medical bills. You will probably miss the overwhelming sense of pride when you send your lovely little blue eyed angel off to the first day of school with a gaping hole in her shoe, a hand-me-down shirt and an empty lunch box. This is a reality faced by a significant number of your fellow countrymen and women, namely the 36.5 million who live below the poverty line. As you read this you are possibly thinking to yourself that these lazy individuals should just go get a job. This thought is countered by the fact that approximately 85% of households living below the poverty line have at least one person working.
I am not going to start throwing around statistics or place blame on certain individuals or political parties. I have worked in the American labor movement and different social justice movements from the time I was a kid and can tell you that they have been used and ignored by most every political figure of the last half century, so placing blame is arbitrary.
Poverty and despair is not a sexy issue, and trust me, seeing it is no more appealing, but at the same time it is enlightening. We go to a rosy little white-bread school which provides a very prestigious education, but how much do you really know if you do not understand the plight of your fellow man? You might learn a little more next labor day if, instead of showing up to class, you do a little independent study and head down to a labor rally and talk to your average working stiff about what it is like to be the guy who will clean the office you will work in.
For those who made it this far in the article and are assuming that I am a card carrying member of the ACLU (which I am) and am some sort of sissy boy liberal (I'd like to see you say that to some of the pipe-fitters I have met), I leave you a with a quote from the man who put the Republican party on the map.
"All that serves labor serves the nation. All that harms is treason. If a man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other."
-Abraham Lincoln
We have holidays to honor a human-sized rabbit and a fat man who sneaks into your house late at night, and yet we do not the honor the sacrifices of life, limb, and property by the working men and women of this country with so much as a day off from class. You got into a good school, congrats; you can do wildly involved calculations on the fly, sweet; you are going to get out of here and make money hand-over-fist due to your top-tier preparation to enter a technical field; well, gosh darn it you worked hard and you deserve it.
Well, your future looks just peachy; before you know it you will have your very own trophy wife/husband and be living in the house on the hill pumping out babies like hotcakes. All the while, you never experience what it feels like to have to choose between feeding your children or paying the medical bills. You will probably miss the overwhelming sense of pride when you send your lovely little blue eyed angel off to the first day of school with a gaping hole in her shoe, a hand-me-down shirt and an empty lunch box. This is a reality faced by a significant number of your fellow countrymen and women, namely the 36.5 million who live below the poverty line. As you read this you are possibly thinking to yourself that these lazy individuals should just go get a job. This thought is countered by the fact that approximately 85% of households living below the poverty line have at least one person working.
I am not going to start throwing around statistics or place blame on certain individuals or political parties. I have worked in the American labor movement and different social justice movements from the time I was a kid and can tell you that they have been used and ignored by most every political figure of the last half century, so placing blame is arbitrary.
Poverty and despair is not a sexy issue, and trust me, seeing it is no more appealing, but at the same time it is enlightening. We go to a rosy little white-bread school which provides a very prestigious education, but how much do you really know if you do not understand the plight of your fellow man? You might learn a little more next labor day if, instead of showing up to class, you do a little independent study and head down to a labor rally and talk to your average working stiff about what it is like to be the guy who will clean the office you will work in.
For those who made it this far in the article and are assuming that I am a card carrying member of the ACLU (which I am) and am some sort of sissy boy liberal (I'd like to see you say that to some of the pipe-fitters I have met), I leave you a with a quote from the man who put the Republican party on the map.
"All that serves labor serves the nation. All that harms is treason. If a man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other."
-Abraham Lincoln
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
AlmostNormal
Preston Phillips
posted 9/05/07 @ 11:33 AM MST
Alright, I'm just going to get to the point. First, Christmas and Easter are not about a Bunny and Santa... even if you aren't a "crazy right-wing Christian," there is value in each holiday. (Continued…)
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