Today I had to do some gardening, and I could not help but think of all the illegal "aliens" toiling in the hot sun for hours on end, working at sub-standard wages.
My empathy with there plight is more than intellectual though, since I have worked some of those backbreaking jobs that only immigrants and ex-convicts take...I did a couple of years in NYC's garment district.
One of the more sagacious workers on the job once said, "Man, ain't nothing changed...instead of picking cotton we pushin' it."
For those of you familiar with the streets of New York, you've probably seen the faceless men pushing racks of clothing on the west side of Manhattan, usually between 34th Street and the Port Authority station. Or you've seen them pulling rolls of cloth stacked on flatbed trucks, the sweat trickling down them like an overworked beast of burden, and the smell to match, as you can see every straining muscle in their arms if you haven't averted your eyes already--to most people these men are a step above the homeless in the unspoken caste sytem of the city--and every bit as untouchable.
What you don't see is some of the loading docks they have to push these burdens up, nor do you smell the diesel filled air of those loading docks--and sometimes these sub-humans have to breathe in that fetid air for an hour as they await the lone freight elevator--so can you honestly fault them if they drink a beer or two while they wait?
Yeah, some of these sub-untermensch are alcholoics, but those never last long, the work is too grueling. Most are "lazy Mexicans", although they hail from a bigger variety of countries south of the border, and many ARE illegal.
Hearing the Fox "news" talkingheads deride tomorrows boycott, and seeing stuff like this http://www.debbieschlussel.com/... on the internet makes me wonder, do people think that someone is giving money away???
Part of the globalization scheme is coming up with a blueprint that is more cost-effective than slavery, and putting a factory in Costa Rica where you can get "wetbacks" to work for $1.07 an hour is far more cost-effective than an even non-unionized factory in Duluth...where employers have to kick into SSI, disability, and god forbid...unemployment! (Paying a worker NOT to work is anathema in this country, unless of course you're "working" for the government).
I also worked as a stacker in a printing plant--a well paying albeit non-union job--and that job basically entailed stacking 40 pound "bricks" of booklets for all these toney Fortune 500 companies. You have about 45 seconds to make a brick and put it on the pallet, and THE PRESS MUST NEVER STOP until the printing run is done.
If you have seen the "I Love Lucy" episode where she's working in a cake factory and the cakes keep rolling down the conveyor belt, you have an idea of exactly how frantic this job can be. And of course you're dealing with 40 pounds instead of one at the most, and then there's the top row...
The top row consists of eight bricks, which you basically have to clean and jerk from the conveyor belt in order to get it up top.
We'd get college kids from the temp agency who were always forewarned that it WAS hard work, but good pay, and I had to show some dude who was a Division 1-AA football player how to stack a skid...he was with me up until the top row...at which point he discovered he had an allergy--and went down in history as the shortest employee on record (all of five minutes, the slackers usually last a couple of hours so that they can get that half-day pay).
BEFORE you judge someone you should walk a mile in their shoes...something that seems to be lost on the limbaughnista generation.