This article was originally published in Molepost.com
There is a lot of talk lately about bullying and about how we must prevent bullying in our schools. Sometimes kids who kill in school are responding to being bullied and they get very mad about it and decide that they will kill people to settle the score. Always there is an outcry against bullying and about how we must protect kids from bullying.
What people seldom, if ever, seem to mention, is that our society rewards bullying and that bullying between adults happens every day all the time. Kids see it and they copy adult behavior.
What do you call it when some people, usually rich, get to make a living from the work of other people, usually poor, on such unequal terms that the poor are unable to even pay their bills, eat, and buy proper medical care for their family?
It makes the kind of bullying we hear about at schools seem like, well, child's play, which it is. It's bullying of adults, by adults, for the very requirements of life. It has no place in a fair and civilized society and we must rid our society of it if we expect children to stop bullying and even killing each other.
If you call yourself a Christian, like so many Americans do, this is something that you should not tolerate. Of course you don't need to be a Christian to recognize that it's wrong to treat people like beasts of burden who can be exploited to unfairly enrich others.
Recently it has come to the nation's attention that some big companies like Walmart and McDonald's pay such low wages to some employees that those people are actually eligible for food stamps and other forms of government aid. Even then, they don't have enough money for basics like medical treatment. The very fact that they are eligible for government aid is an indication of how low their wages are.
Sometimes the very people responsible, like the Walmart family, call themselves "Christians" but it does not stop them from paying very low wages to their workers even though it is possible for them to pay better wages and still make a fair profit. There are other companies, like Costco, that are able to pay a substantially higher wage and still make a healthy profit. How is it that these "Christians" are so unable to do that? It doesn't sound very Christian of them.
If we want kids to stop bullying we need to stop adults from bullying each other first. Kids see what we do. They know that the adult bullies have better jobs, make more money, buy better clothes and toys for their kids, live in better houses, and get to take nice vacations. If we want kids to stop showing up at schools with guns, we need to get them to see that we, as adults, can stop bullying each other and treat each other more fairly.
Not everyone who makes a good wage is a bully. You do not have to be a bully to succeed in America. There are many rich people who make a lot of money without being bullies. But some companies are set up so that the bullies are the winners and the workers end up being the losers. It's time we started identifying companies that are bullies and ask tell them to improve their treatment of workers. We need to start boycotting companies that bully. We need to band together into groups and tell them to pay a living wage.
That's where unions come in. Unions allow people to band together to bargain for better conditions and wages for their workers. Maybe you've seen the bumper sticker that reminds us that weekends were brought to us by the unions. That's a definite fact. Unions brought us other things too, like safer work environments, better health care for workers, the ability to fight unfair charges, and of course, higher wages.
If you are a poor person you need to do one thing right now. You need to turn off FOX News and you need to start organizing with your fellow workers for the life that you deserve. Band together to stand up to the bullies that are depriving you of a fair living so that they can live like kings of old on your labor. And please, stop voting Republican. The whole Republican program is based on killing unions and legitimizing the victimization of the poor by the rich. The Democrats are far from perfect but they are currently the only group that has enough power to help the poor. Vote Democrat.
