Unlike the mythical Hercules – typically portrayed as powerful, strong, courageous, cloaked in a lion’s skin, and carrying a club – the contemporary worker is a rather disempowered sort. How can this be, you ask, when we have unparalleled prosperity here in America?
Do we?
Forget that. Peel away the illusion of generalized plenty, you see rising joblessness, plus real pockets of widespread poverty. Besides, what we now have in this country is an increasingly corporatized society where individual rights are eroding nearly as fast as the beaches in my old Jersey stamping grounds.
If you doubt that, consider how many major corporations hire hordes of consultants and temps and “part-timers,” to avoid paying health insurance for employees. And writers are again-yet-still stripped of their legally-mandated copyrights by greedy publications forcing them to sign away ownership of their work in restrictive contracts depriving them of all future financial fruits of their labor.
Welcome to plantation life for the new millennium.
I’m talking about workers. The little people. Regular folks who make their living honorably but unglamorously, decent folks. Folks whose pay gets cut when the economy slumps, if they don’t get laid off. Folks doing hard work with dignity, work no one else really wants to do anymore, the kind of work more people used to do before the trendier among us had to take out gym memberships for faux “exercise” because their desk jobs were so … easy.
Shortly after Labor Day, I was hiking in the woods with my friend “DB”, an independent book-seller who formerly wrote and edited a workers newsletter. The sky was such a startling cerulean blue. We had taken a bus up to the edge of the city late one afternoon, to a part of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park called Forbidden Drive, because, well, vehicles are forbidden. As we hiked, we talked. DB told me about applying for a job in a metaphysical bookstore where they interviewed him but – get this – would not tell him what his hourly rate was.
Finally they said he could have the job. “But what do you pay?” DB queried the ponytailed dude conducting the interview. “We were hoping you’d be so thrilled at the opportunity of working in a beautifully spiritual environment,” he was told, “rather than focusing on your hourly wage.”
They implied his spiritual development was wanting.
Turns out, the place was barely paying minimum wage, not nearly enough to cover food and rent even at Philly’s moderate levels, while the metaphysical bookstore owner had apparently grown wealthy from running this booming New Age business providing her with regular trips to India to enhance her own “spiritual development.”
Welcome to plantation life for the new millennium.
Then DB told me about his father, a steady, stalwart man in his mid-50s who developed a heart condition after being forced to work six days a week, 12 hours a day, at a factory. And if you missed work, you received demerits. And if you received enough demerits, you were fired – and that’s when you knew the bosses were getting ready to move their factory to Mexico.
“NAFTA,” DB snorted derisively.
Now DB’s dad works as a school janitor, “just” five days a week, regular shifts, his health is improving and he has a chance to actually live a life.
While DB is a mostly gentle soul – he wears pleather shoes he purchased in England, eschews all meat and dairy products, follows a macrobiotic diet – he does not shy away from vociferously standing up for his beliefs.
Recently, he witnessed a strange situation of a guide dog leading a blind woman around a parked car, and suddenly the woman begins kicking and kicking her dog until the dog yelps out in pain.
If you don’t stop that, DB told the woman, I will call the police.
“Give it a rest,” buddy, a buttinsky bystander bleated.
But DB persisted with his intervention. Why are you mistreating your dog? DB asked the woman. “This is a bad dog, it was taking me into the street,” the woman replied. “Lady, you had the light, and your dog was leading you around a parked car,” DB said patiently, describing the obstacle course she faced. Oh, she said, “But this is a really bad dog.”
DB really did have to stop himself from calling the police and taking the dog away from her. “I’m against using guide dogs for the blind,” he said, “Let them learn to navigate with canes instead.”
I wondered aloud how could anyone possibly be against guide dogs; the animal-human bond is so intense.
Species exploitation, DB explained, and suddenly I saw his point. Animals forcibly conscripted into servitude. Animal slavery.
Welcome to plantation life for the new millennium.
If that’s how she treated her dog in public, DB declared, you can imagine how she abuses it at home when no one’s watching.
Hmmm, I had never thought about guide dogs in that light, though seeing carriage horses – horse slaves – slogging through city streets in the summer heat really upsets me.
For nearly two hours, DB and I talked as we hiked past some breathtaking vistas of gently swelling hills covered with dense vegetation, meandering creeks, rocky cliffs, curved thorned bushes, trees growing upside down, ferny vistas. Upon returning downtown, we ate vegetarian Indian food including the same stewed okra DB swears instantaneously cleared his lungs clogged from city air pollution.
That night, I encountered a coincidental coda to our conversation which made me think DB was clearly correct on this guide-dog issue.
The following exchange took place while chatting online via Instant Message at midnight, Pacific time, with my AOL friend “Alicia” who was visiting some relatives near Frisco:
Alicia: OMG, I have no clue what is going on. My cousin just woke up and awoke my aunt, who just yelled. Ohhhh, I see. The puppy threw up in her kennel. Now they are washing the puppy. It’s a yellow lab, a seeing-eye-dog puppy in training. She’s almost four months old. A great little puppy.
WorldNetDaily: Your aunt is training the puppy?
A: Yes, they keep them [at home] for the first year and then hand them back to the trainers for the rest of the training, etc. They are taking the puppies to the airport next week. I went to the puppy (training) class tonight. There were 10 to 12 dogs there. It was cool. This is the 5th puppy (her relatives have worked with). So far, none have succeeded, though one is at level 3 which is high. My relatives want her back if she doesn’t succeed.
WND: What happens to the dogs that don’t make the grade?
A: They are sold, for 175 bucks each, which is dirt cheap considering they are more than likely pure breed and have had all that training.
WND: Well at least they aren’t killed.
A: Oh, they wouldn’t do that.
Comforting thought, that. But what about the other four dogs that failed to make the grade? Are they beloved family pets? Or animal slaves being tortured in a lab somewhere?
Welcome to plantation life for the new millennium.
Unlike Hercules’ Twelve Labors, some work is never done.
