Here Comes (My Musing On) Honey Boo Boo!

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo airs on TLC and is in its second season.

For the ridiculous sum I pay for cable, I watch approximately 5 channels: Food Network, Cooking Channel, Investigation Discovery, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and any random channel that might have a show that lets me get my crime TV/forensic fix. When these channels simultaneously broadcast shows that I have seen or that I don’t like, my life is thrown into an uproar. I typically throw down the remote and pick up a book. Occasionally, I go channel-surfing. During one such surfing-in-desperation episode, I stumbled upon the premiere of “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.” I saw people on Facebook writing about it and got the gist of the background of the Shannon/Thompson family (if you’re not familiar, the show is about the now-seven-year-old Alana Thompson, who competes in children’s beauty pageants and her family, including her mom and dad, three older sisters, and new born niece). I expected to be critical of the beauty pageant element, in particular, and what I thought would be the drudgery of it (I don’t like reality TV), in general. I do have a lot to say about the children’s pageant element, but I found that, overall, I liked the family. One of the main reasons is that, as rural southerners, they are familiar to me. I found the mother, June Shannon, funny, confident, and patient with her girls. I watched more than one episode, a true sign of my interest.

But… within a few episodes, I realized, to the producers of this show, my feelings about June and her family must seem an anomaly. In my opinion, whoever is staging this show goes out of hir way to make this family a subject of mockery, ridicule, and disgust. From the opening montage, the audience gets a clue of what to expect—the family is first gathered, all smiling, as if they are posing for a portrait. And then, someone passes gas and they dissolve into arguing amongst themselves. Why, you may wonder, are they repeatedly cast in such an unflattering light? I believe we are meant to be repulsed by them because of a number of social characteristics of the family members: they are southern, working class, and some of them are fat.
I cannot list all the tropes trotted out to play on stereotypes of people who fall in the aforementioned category, but let me try. We see June, the heaviest member of the family, eating. No shame in that right? But we see her eating in ways that we can look down upon. We see her eating with her hands. We see the show edited (for example, the Thanksgiving show) to make it seem that she eats non-stop. We see her eating large portions (as on her date with her partner, Sugar Bear). And we are encouraged to make judgments on how she cooks for and feeds her children, some of whom (including Alana) are heavy. She sprinkles sugar on their already sweetened cranberry sauce and says it’s how they get their servings of fruit. She makes a dish called “sketti” that includes spaghetti, ketchup, and butter. She tells us about feeding them venison culled from deer killed in car accidents. As if that does not drive the point home enough, Alana laments the fact that they haven’t had venison in a while, noting that, “It’s been a while since I had road kill in my belly.” Largely ignored is June’s comment that she is trying to feed a family of six on $80 a week, leaving little room for gourmet fare, and that she cooks almost everyday to control food costs.

And, oh, these uncouth southerners! The children curse. The parents curse. They argue and laugh loudly. The camera makes sure to document each time they pass gas or burp or pick their noses. They play in mud on several episodes (I mean, you know how we southerners love our dirt—food, toy, flooring—it’s multi-purpose!). They go to “Redneck Games.” The editing of one episode emphasizes that gnats fly around them. When Alana meets the current Ms. Georgia, Ms. Georgia notes that she is unsure of how far the little girl will go in the pageant world because of her lack of refinement. And attempts to teach Alana “proper” etiquette seem exasperating for the child and the instructor, as if the little girl is hopeless!

The presented image of Sugar Bear, too, is often unflattering. He is always shown with a pinch of chewing tobacco in his mouth, leading to comments about his breath. He speaks softly and seems shy and, quite often, scenes are edited to emphasize that June is the “boss” and the girls pay him little attention. This further contributes to the appearance of the family as disordered, given our culture’s creation and castigation of “matriarch” figure and common lamentations about men losing their status in various ways. But I don’t see Sugar Bear as weak because he is quiet. In fact, in Sugar Bear, I see my own dad and my favorite uncle. My dad was a quiet man who loved pickup trucks and hunting and fishing and dealt with my sister and me gently. My uncle is much the same way and, like Sugar Bear and many southern men, he’s usually chewing a pinch of tobacco and clamoring for a “spit cup.” I do not find him disgusting. I have never been repulsed by his breath or his tobacco habit. A quiet disposition does not indicate a lack of engagement or importance in a family circle. Sugar Bear’s love for June and those girls is obvious. He works hard for his family. And when June’s oldest daughter, his step-daughter, has a baby, his sweet words about how she reminded him of Alana and seeing him cuddling the newborn reinforced the comparison I made between him and my dad.

The Shannon/Thompson family has a strong sense of themselves as working class southerners and are even untroubled by the term “redneck”—and why should they be, given “redneck’s” origin as a term to describe hard-working farmers whose necks were burned red by exposure to the sun? But given all the negative connotations that label has, it seems outside the realm of possibility to the producers of the show that one can be comfortable and even proud of a rural southern identity. In comments of posts or articles that talk about the show, you will commonly see them called “white trash,” as well. Now, I have to say, first, that while I understand the sentiments of poor white people and scholars who have tried to “reclaim” the term “white trash,” it is a very problematic term, particularly in its implication that “white trash” is such an anomaly that we must include a racial marker. Most white people are not perceived to be trash, thus the label; but what does this say we think about people of color? The racialized terms by which we are referred have been constructed in ways that imply an innate subordination, impoverishment, “less-ness” in a way that the term “white” has not been constructed. In fact, so anomalous is “white trash,” that scholar Matt Wray explored the idea that people given this label are often perceived as “not quite white.”

For the purposes of this essay, I want to focus on another adverse meaning of the labeling of the Shannon/Thompson family as “white trash”: in the words of Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz, “white trash” is often the “white Other,” “the difference,” indeed, the “threat” within the bounds of the privileged status of whiteness. There is no clearer evidence in “Honey Boo Boo” that the South and, in this case, white southerners are being othered, portrayed as foreign, unknown, and unknowable, than the fact that the family’s speech is captioned, as if our English is any more accented than that of people from other regions of the United States! But those other accents are normative, unnoticeable, default, and, in the end, not an accent at all, but the way “real” USians talk!

I think the whole family is portrayed in a way to make each member an object of ridicule, but I believe our greatest disgust is supposed to be reserved for June. June seems, to me, to have a great attitude. She finds the humor in many situations and she is affectionate with her girls. She is confident about her relationship with Sugar Bear and her attractiveness to him. She is a bit adventurous and she likes to have fun. June is also money savvy; she endeavors to be an “extreme couponer”: “You save money for your family — that’s what it’s all about,” she said [on Jimmy Kimmel Live]. “I could be a multi-millionare and still want to get the best deal for my family.” Additionally, “she’s putting the show’s earnings into trust funds for her children,” noting that, “I want my kids to look back and say, ‘Mama played it smart.’”

Funny, confident, beautiful, smart… apparently, those are all things forbidden to fat southern women. When June decides to have fun on a water slide, the camera focuses on the fact that she struggles to climb it (even then, she laughs amiably at herself and is clearly having a good time, but the joke is supposed to be on her—HaHa! She’s too fat for this!). She notes that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that she and Sugar Bear both appreciate her beauty (a fact that he confirms). Yet, she is shown as the opposite of all those things that are constructed as beautiful in our society, from her disdain for makeup to her refusal to obsess over her weight. And, true to common characterization of southerners, there are plenty of “duh” moments when we are given the impression that the family members are not intelligent. I cannot, in one post, catalogue all the ways this woman is mocked and cast as the butt of some joke that everyone else is in on.

But, what really endears June, and indeed, all her family, to me, is the fact that, in the face of a country that derides most things about them, they STAY proud and true to who they are, something that I understand as (and I deeply, deeply hope is) a refusal to accept the mandate that they apologize for being themselves, for being working-class and southern. When I see June, I am reminded of Liss’s post about having the audacity to be fat and happy and I can’t help smiling myself. For me, the othering of the South and southerners, the positioning of us as inferior to northerners, the constant stream of jokes about our stupidity and “in-breeding,” our “strange” food (and even deadly, until soul food and southern food are properly gentrified by northern chefs—but that’s another post!) and weird customs, means that I proclaim my southern-ness often and loudly, from the language I use on social media to referring to myself as a southern (b)elle to making a conscious effort to use my “real” voice in my classes and other settings so that my accent, which I find lovely and luscious, shines through. And while part of that has come from the process of being comfortable in my own skin, part of it is DEFINITELY a “Ha! I am progressive, smart, funny AND southern”-thumbing-of-my-nose at those who would believe such a person cannot exist. I read June’s actions and attitude in the same light.

I have a delightful feeling that I am right.

Aargh!

Sometimes, I hate reading the news. Between President Obama's willingness to cut Social Security and Medicare, cuts "which would affect veterans, the poor and the older Americans," and the state of Tennessee's foolishness:

"A Tennessee bill that would cut welfare benefits of parents with children performing poorly in school cleared committees of both the House and Senate last week."

and

Twice a year, Tennessee holds a “health care lottery” that gives some hope to the uninsured residents in the state who can’t afford health coverage. Tennesseans who meet certain requirements — in addition to falling below a certain income threshold, they must be elderly, blind, disabled, or a caretaker of a child who qualifies for Medicaid — may call to request an application for the state’s public health insurance program, known as TennCare.

[snip]

State residents who have high medical bills but would not normally qualify for Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, can call a state phone line and request an application. But the window is tight — the line shuts down after 2,500 calls, typically within an hour — and the demand is so high that it is difficult to get through. [...]

[snip]

If Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslan (R) opted to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, more than 180,000 people would be able to be added to the TennCare rolls by 2019... Haslan has not yet decided whether Tennessee will accept Obamacare’s optional expansion of the Medicaid program, although he has indicated that he may make his decision sometime this week [week of 25 March 2013].

I despair of our ever having a truly effective safety net.

Also, it must be nice to have the luxury of time to decide if 180,000 people who need healthcare can get it. Uh-oh, Governor, your privilege is showing!

Survival Topics for the Uninsured

Copied with permission from Cure This. This is Part 1 and contains Topics 1-6 (of 10).

Topic #1: Stuff happens. Think ahead.
Find the time to learn about the medical, social, and monetary resources available in your area in case you have a major medical disaster. I discovered how difficult it can be to find help and information in a hurry. If you can, build up an emergency fund. It's easy to put off, but this sort of planning is as important to your family's welfare as any other crisis preparedness.

Moving has special challenges in this regard. When relocating, consider support systems and resources the same way you consider crime and cost of living. If you don't do this ahead of time, you should do this right after you arrive at your new place. Find and make appointments with new doctors ASAP, even if you have to pay for the visits. You need to establish relationships with them. Line up reliable baby-sitters. Look for ways to build strong ties to your new community. This might include investigating public programs, which vary drastically from state to state. Make new friends quickly by joining a church, club, or PTA. Don't count on friends from work. Unfortunately, those associations can dry up overnight if you lose your job.

This might all sound obvious, but I know from experience that the pressures and pleasures of a new city, new schools, and new jobs leave little time for anything else. If you are unprepared and disaster strikes, you may have to decide - like I did - if it would be best to stay put or to head back to your hometown.


Topic # 2: Meet Hill-Burton

Familiarize yourself with the Hill-Burton Act, a federal program started in 1946. With Hill-Burton, hospitals receive federal loans and grants in exchange for providing a certain amount of free care to needy individuals. I found out that not all hospitals participate in the Hill-Burton Act. Each hospital seems to have its own rules within the federal guidelines for eligibility, benefits, applications, and decision notifications.

For example, my husband's hospital paid 100% of the cost of care for qualified persons, and rendered their decision before admission or treatment. My hospital provides a percentage of the cost for qualified persons on a sliding scale, but does not make a decision until after an admission or procedure has been completed. Both of those facilities will also consider Hill-Burton funds for out-patient care and insurance co-payments, but apparently not all do.

Also, at some hospitals, it's far better to try for assistance earlier in the year before funds run out, while others may dole out free care monthly or quarterly. It pays to ask. If your admission is urgent, you might call other hospitals where your physician is on staff to check on the availability of funds. If it's not an emergency, you might be able to postpone it until the next disbursement period.

Topic #3: Pay Less for Prescriptions

Ask doctors if they have drug samples, especially for new prescriptions. It is awful to buy a month's worth of an expensive drug only to find it doesn't work or you can't tolerate it. Often, my doctors prescribe my meds based on what they know they get samples of regularly.

Look into pharmaceutical manufacturers' patient assistance programs. You can try the widely-advertised Partnership for Prescription Assistance website. However, my experience has been that PPARX underestimates a person's eligibility. Also, not all drug makers participate in PPARX. I have had much greater success going directly to the website of each individual company. You might have to search hard for the link to the patient assistance program or you might need to call. Not every maker has a program and programs vary wildly in requirements and benefits. You'll often find coupons instead of or in addition to assistance programs. Programs all require your doctors to fill out forms regularly. Ask your doctor to forgo some or all of the fees for this service.

(Pennsylvania has two programs called PACE and PACENET. These helpful programs benefit older residents, but your state may have similar ones. Although the age requirements presume you are eligible for Medicare, what's special about them is that they supplement or replace Part D for low income individuals. This might be helpful for future reference.)

As I have never actually used any of these options, I'll just mention them. Consider alternative medicine. It may be better and/or less expensive. However, this is a subject about which I know nothing. Mail order prescriptions are widely available via the Internet and could be worth exploring. I am aware that many people acquire their prescriptions by traveling to or ordering from Canada and Mexico. I wish I could comment on the quality of those drugs and the legality of this option.

Nowadays, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Target, and numerous grocery chains such as Krogers, Giant, Food Lion, and Safeway offer $4 prescriptions for generic drugs and other great deals. There may be other stores with similar bargains. Some of these companies have their $4 lists posted online. Ask your doctor to prescribe from these lists if possible. Ask your doctor or pharmacist if they have or know of any coupons for the medications you have been prescribed. Request generics where available.

Beyond that, prescription prices differ significantly from store to store and from week to week. With a monthly cost of $1200 to $1800, I could never afford to get a full month's worth of prescriptions all at once for my husband. Pharmacists are generally willing to fill partial prescriptions, by be aware that you may pay dearly for this.

For example, one of my husband's drugs was $350 for a month's worth, $250 for two week's worth, and $150 for one week's worth. Sometimes, I could only afford one or two pills before payday. Every single week, I called every single local drugstore and got prices for every single drug my husband took. I always had to go to at least three pharmacies to get the best overall price. Some pharmacists were nice about this and others weren't. Eventually, the owner of one small pharmacy said he would match the lowest price being given anywhere else. I still had to make the calls, but I sure did save time and gas money.

Topic #4: Save on OTC Drugs

There isn't much new I can tell you about OTC drugs. Shop sales, use coupons, look for stores that double coupons, buy in bulk and share with others, and try store brands. If you have prescription coverage, ask your doctor to write a script for OTC drugs whenever possible.

Topic #5: More-Affordable Medical Devices

Check with friends and family. Of course, try want ads, CraigsList, and FreeCycle. That's where I have seen $100 hospital-style bedside tables for $5 and free non-motorized wheelchairs. Put up ads at the supermarket. Contact the hospitals, churches, and local organizations. Watch for estate sales. Look for places that sell used durable medical equipment. You can sometimes rent this kind of equipment, but that is often the most expensive route in the long run. Ask at the doctor's office, at work, and at even your child's school. Most makers offer at least one of their glucometers at no cost. Just be sure to check the price of the testing strips before you order one. They vary widely.

Where I live, it is against the law and it carries a stiff fine to put used syringes and lancets in with the regular trash. My trash collection company charges a fortune to take them away. I discovered that the local hospital has a program to collect these items. They must be in safe containers, like coffee cans with lids, and be clearly marked with the person's name and phone number. It must also be noted on the containers that they hold hazardous medical waste.

We bought my mother's stair lift gently used for $2000 (including installation) at a company that sells them. After she died, we sold it there for the same price (including removal) minus a small commission. The one she had would have been about $6000 new. I got my husband's hospital bed for only $25 through a lead from the local veteran's center. A family member found us a free wheelchair through a former co-worker of hers. After my husband died, I called the school nurse. She happened to know of a child who was in desperate need of a hospital bed and wheelchair. I donated those to him. Various organizations like the Lions offer assistance with glasses and hearing aids. LensCrafters has a campaign during which they provide eye exams and new glasses to the needy at no charge.

Topic #6: If you think you're dealing with serious and/or long-term illness

Start a journal immediately and keep it with you. Record emergency phone numbers; names of doctors and hospitals; symptoms and diagnoses; allergies; treatments, doctor visits, and hospitalizations (dates, locations, outcome); prescriptions (names, doses, dates filled, efficacy, side effects, interactions, warnings, prices at different sources); phone calls (contacts, dates, reasons, outcome, follow-up); "significant events" like accidents, strokes, heart attacks, seizures, 911 calls (dates, treatments, where treated, outcome); programs (contacts, application date, outcome, follow-up); notes and anything else pertinent. Keep copies of medical reports and aid applications. You will refer to this journal over and over again.

I condensed the emergency and medical information into a spreadsheet and kept a copy in my purse, my husband's wallet, and on my refrigerator. Doctors, ER staff, and EMTs were thrilled when I was able to present this and I know it expedited my husband's treatment. Now I utilize the Vial of Life. This is a large pill container with a rolled-up paper inside listing all pertinent information. It comes with a bright sticker to affix to your front door that notifies emergency personnel where to find it. It also has Velcro on the outside so you can stick it anywhere. Some people keep it in their refrigerator. I have three, which is not uncommon - one in my purse, one in my glove box, and one on the outside of my fridge. I got mine free at the front desk of my hospital. There are several other similar products available.

Begin saving every medical-related invoice, cancelled check, and receipt in an organized manner, including for OTC drugs and parking/gas or bus/taxi fares for doctor/hospital visits. This may become vital when applying for programs, declaring bankruptcy, doing your taxes, and other circumstances. For example, my son was given better terms on his student loans because of our situation. Some students receive additional grants or tuition reduction. To get this benefit, though, I had to submit copies of everything I listed above to the financial aid department of his university - in a very large box.

Apply for Social Security Disability right away if it seems that the patient will not be able to return to work. Even the Social Security Office recommends this because there is a six-month waiting period for benefits once you have been determined to be disabled. You can always withdraw your application if things improve.

Cut back as much as possible on your expenses. Even with a great deal of help, without insurance, you will probably accumulate massive debt. You are likely to miss work or even lose your job. Use the money you save to pre-pay utilities and your mortgage (be careful - check with your mortgage company about the way to do this that is most advantageous to you), to build up your pantry, and to cover medical needs. Be aware that if you simply bank your savings that it may hurt you when you apply for help.

Instilling Fear in Poultry Processing Workers, Part 2

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about how large poultry processors systematically instill fear in their workers. Step Seven, according to my observations, was this:

Step Seven: And now that other plants have been closed, employees have been arrested, and hours have been cut, have the union present the first set of results of the "discussions" to your worried workforce (Keep in mind that the Union and the plant only recently negotiated a new agreement):

1. Elimination of paid rest periods. Employees currently have two 10-minute and one 45-minute break, for which they are paid. They are being asked to agree to two 30-minute non-paid rest periods.
2. Holiday Pay. Employees currently are paid double-time if they work on a holiday. They are being asked to accept time-and-a-half instead.
3. Insurance Costs. Currently, Employee insurance contribution is 20 percent of total cost. On 1 January 2009, that would go up to 25 percent.

Well, employees rejected the options.

You wouldn't believe the backlash. (continued after fold)

First, on the day of the vote, one employee emblazoned these words on his apron: Vote No! Don't Let Pilgrim's Pride Take Your Money.

He was fired. Now, the Supreme Court is worried about people infringing on employers' free speech (primarily the right to speak out against unions), but this man was fired.

Then came the recriminations voiced in the local paper. In the Eldorado News-Times's July 4 issue, there is an article entitled "Hanging in the Balance"* that begins:

The future of Pilgrim’s Pride in El Dorado continues to hang in the balance, and a vote by members of a local labor union this week added even more uncertainty to the continued operation of the facility and the economic forecast of El Dorado and South Arkansas.

Members of the union soundly rejected concessions that were offered by the company in an effort to improve quality and productivity at the El Dorado poultry processing plant and stave off full closure of the facility.

The union reportedly cast a 5-1 vote on Wednesday, and company officials and community leaders met the action with a resounding expression of disappointment.

I knew it'd be downhill from there. Plant workers, who are trying to protect their interests are about to cause the downfall of the whole city.

The closing of Pilgrim’s Pride would devastate an already sluggish local economy with a loss of more than 1,600 jobs and hundreds of contracts for growers in Union and surrounding counties and northern Louisiana.
(snip)
Dumas said he believes the vote will prompt “some serious downsizing” of Pilgrim’s El Dorado facility, and he offered a bleak outlook on the results of a very likely shutdown.

Then there are the not-so-veiled threats.

Ray Atkinson, director of corporate affairs for Pilgrim’s Pride, said all of the community’s efforts will be taken into consideration in future evaluations of the performance of the El Dorado facility and decisions about its future in Union County.

Unfortunately, so will the local union’s vote, which Atkinson called a “setback.”

Emphasis mine. And yes, the "objective" reporter did use the word unfortunately.

Then there are the statements that employees took as slights.

“I was hopeful that the company and union officials had explained to union members how important this was, not only for them, but for the community,” [Mayor Mike] Dumas said.

Because they are incapable of deciding what is important for them, their families, and communities. And

"[M]any of those (Pilgrim’s Pride) workers are unskilled, so there’s nowhere to go."

This is just the argument town booster's put forth to attract industries to the South, the promise of cheap, docile, unorganized labor with few options. I guess I just never expected to see an acknowledgement of that in the local paper.
__________________________________________
*Subscription required

More on the Stemilt Cherry Pickers

Background here.

I just received this via e-mail:

Help Stemilt Cherry workers get food, housing and justice.

Late Friday we told you about the situation in Shafter CA, where more than one hundred cherry pickers were evicted after talking to news media about their working and living conditions. Today we want to ask you for financial help so we can continue to aid these farm workers and fight the company responsible for this travesty, Stemilt Growers Company--which boasts of being the largest shipper of fresh-market sweet cherries in the world.

If you can and have the desire, please donate.

Instilling Fear in Poultry Processing Workers

It's one of the most effective tools poultry processors have used over the past 6 decades or so to keep workers "docile," willing to accept less, afraid to ask for more. One such scenario is playing out with the Pilgrim's Pride Plant in El Dorado, Arkansas right now. It seems a textbook case. How it's unfolding from my perspective:

Step One: While suffering from the closure of seven sites, realize that the silver lining in this cloud might be newfound leverage to use over historically vulnerable black employees and newly vulnerable Latin@ employees who are afraid of losing their jobs.

Step Two: Further intimidate your immigrant employees, who's labor you rely upon heavily, by turning many of them into ICE.

Step Three: Go to your employees, tell them that their jobs are in danger because their work is substandard and that the plant might close... unless, of course, they improve immediately. Use phrases like,"There isn't much time" and "We have to see significant and immediate changes,"* to heighten anxiety and the sense of urgency. In simple terms, you tell them work harder, produce more, and you might keep your jobs--this, in an industry in which work speed is already inhumane.**

Step Four: Plan to have "discussions" with the United Food and Commercial Workers local, a local for which many employees express distrust and the sense that the union is on the side of the company.

Step Five: Hold a meeting at which you have employees sign a blank piece of paper that is to serve as a loyalty oath of some kind. Have supervisors walk around collecting the papers, while talking about faxing them to corporate headquarters. Leave employees to wonder what the ramifications are if their names are not on that paper. (Recently, employees of the plant told me that their supervisors asked them if they were dedicated to their jobs. If they were, they could indicate that by signing a blank piece of paper. Some employees refused, uncomfortable with placing their signature on a page with nothing else.)

Step Six: Cut an hour of the work day, an ominous sign.

Step Seven: And now that other plants have been closed, employees have been arrested, and hours have been cut, have the union present the first set of results of the "discussions" to your worried workforce (Keep in mind that the Union and the plant only recently negotiated a new agreement):

1. Elimination of paid rest periods. Employees currently have two 10-minute and one 45-minute break, for which they are paid. They are being asked to agree to two 30-minute non-paid rest periods.
2. Holiday Pay. Employees currently are paid double-time if they work on a holiday. They are being asked to accept time-and-a-half instead.
3. Insurance Costs. Currently, Employee insurance contribution is 20 percent of total cost. On 1 January 2009, that would go up to 25 percent.
   

And of course, once they refused to accept these terms, they were warned over and over that the alternative was no job at all. I talked to my mom about it and she's sick of the worry and fear. Tonight she told me she wished, "if they're going to close it, they'd just close it, or stop talking about it!" ***
__________________________________________
*There was a much more detailed article in the Houston Chronicle but it's no longer available. I even searched the archives. I'd saved a copy to MS Word, but dang, I wish it still existed.
**Plus, the onus is upon the employees--if the plant closes it becomes primarily "their fault" for not working harder, instead of the result of all the other factors (feed and fuel costs) that Pilgrim's Pride cites.
***I recognize that times are difficult right now, but you have to understand my skepticism as someone who's watched family members work in this plant for over two decades and has heard the threat of closure over and over.

One hundred plus farm workers evicted following news coverage

Via Prof BW.

From the United Farm Workers site:

Yesterday more than 100 migrant farm workers were living in an orchard. Tonight they have no place to go.

Why, you ask? These Washington state cherry pickers came to Shafter, California after being told by company representatives to come to Califronia for a job in the cherries. Consequently workers and their families traveled from Washington State to work at the Kyle Mathison Orchards. Kyle Mathison is part of the Wenatchee, Washington based Stemilt Growers Company--which, according to its web site, is the largest shipper of fresh-market sweet cherries in the world.

When these farm workers reached California, things were not as expected. A number of the workers were hired, but other workers were told to just wait and see if jobs were available.
[snip]

While in Washington, some of the workers were informed that housing would be available to them when they got to California. However, when they got here there was no housing. They had no choice but to sleep in the fields. Some stayed in tents, others in cars and still others slept on cardboard or simply the dirt.
[snip]

When workers went public about being left out in the cold, things only got worse. Last night Bakersfield area television stations showed the workers' bleak situation. Today, Stemilt company representatives' called the sheriffs to have the 100 plus workers and their property evicted from the orchard.

There is a message template at the UFW site.

Looking for a Word...

**See this, too.**

What do you call companies who make a practice of hiring immigrants, knowing full well some are undocumented, depend on their labor, subject them to brutal, crippling work, pay them low wages, set them in opposition to other exploited workers, and aggressively combat the workers' efforts to organize for better conditions, then turn them in to ICE?

Me, myself, I'm sitting here saying, "Them motherf*ckers!" From the AP:

Nearly 300 people were arrested Wednesday in immigration and identity theft raids at Pilgrim's Pride poultry plants in five states. … "We knew in advance and cooperated fully," said Ray Atkinson, a spokesman for the Pittsburg, Texas, company. ...The raids were part of a long-term investigation, officials said. Plants were raided in Mount Pleasant, Texas, Batesville, Ark., Live Oak, Fla., Chattanooga, Tenn. and Moorefield, W.Va., authorities said.

Atkinson said the company went to ICE agents with information about identity theft at the Arkansas plant. (emphasis mine)

If you think anyone is pulling the wool over poultry companies' eyes, that they are unwittingly hiring undocumented immigrants, please allow me to disabuse you of that notion. Let me point you to two newspapers series: The Chicken Trail, a 2006 Los Angeles Times series (abstracts free, articles cost), and The Cruelest Cuts, a 2008 Charlotte Observer series. An excerpt:

Of 52 current and former Latino workers at House of Raeford who spoke to the Observer about their legal status, 42 said they were in the country illegally.

Company officials say they hire mostly Latino workers but don't knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

But five current and former House of Raeford supervisors and human resource administrators, including two who were involved in hiring, said some of the company's managers know they employ undocumented workers.

"If immigration came and looked at our files, they'd take half the plant," said Caitlyn Davis, a former Greenville, S.C., plant human resources employee.

Former Greenville supervisors said the plant prefers undocumented workers because they are less likely to question working conditions for fear of losing their jobs or being deported.(emphasis mine)

Also, Russell Cobb's The Chicken Hangers, much of which is part of a paper he wrote for a series of occasional papers sponsored by UT-Austin's Inter-American Policy Studies Program about poultry workers.* Cobb recounts the story of Esteban, an immigrant poultry processing worker:

[A]fter a year on the job, Julio Gordo, a manager at Peco Foods, called Esteban into his office. (To protect his identity, Julio Gordo is a pseudonym.) According to Esteban, Gordo told him that the Social Security Administration had notified Peco Foods that Esteban’s Social Security Number had repeated as a number for another worker.
At first, Esteban feared he would be fired by the plant and deported for document fraud — a fate not uncommon among undocumented workers. “Gordo told me he could have the cops here in five minutes if I didn’t cooperate with him,” Esteban confided to me later.

After Gordo allegedly threatened to deport Esteban, he reassured him that he could stay on at the plant if he could get a new ID and Social Security Number. Esteban knew this would be difficult; fake documents cost hundreds of dollars and were sold by only a handful of people in southern Mississippi on the black market. Furthermore, Esteban knew he would run the risk of being fired or deported if he bought a new Social Security Number, since he would be admitting his old one was false. Even with a new I.D., his seniority — including the two raises he had received for a year’s work — would be revoked. Esteban would be starting over from scratch.

Then, according to Esteban, Gordo told him he was willing to do him a “favor”: Esteban could buy a new Social Security Card from Gordo for $700. This was a favor Gordo had done for many other Mexicans in the same situation, he claimed.

So, given the current employee makeup, poultry processors depend heavily upon the labor of immigrants, including undocumented immigrants. In order to obtain work, these immigrants often become involved in a "fake document" black market,** risky actions that can see them deported or land in jail. Employers are well aware of the risk immigrants take. Federal prosecutors certainly believed so when they charged Tyson "of conspiring to smuggle immigrants to work at the company's poultry processing plants."***

Yet, despite the fact that "immigrant labor" has become a necessity to the poultry industry, immigrants have not. Poultry processors are used to high turnover--the UFCW suggests that annual turnover is well over 100%--and treat their workers as interchangeable, a disposable workforce. They themselves incur no risk. The article on Pilgrim's Pride lists a number of charges that immigrant workers will face then states succinctly, "Pilgrim's Pride faces no charges." Tyson beat the federal case by disavowing claims that they recruited and smuggled immigrant workers, blaming those actions not on company policies but on a few "rogue" employees.

And the immigrant workers who are fired, jailed, deported with little recourse will simply be replaced.
_______________________________________
*Anita Grabowski was an author of one of those papers and has gone on to produce Mississippi Chicken. From the film's synopsis:

In the 1990s, poultry companies in Mississippi and throughout the American South began to heavily recruit Latin American immigrants, most of them undocumented, to work in the poultry plants. A decade later, there are now large immigrant communities in poultry towns all over the South, and the immigrants find themselves in an extremely vulnerable situation, where they are frequent victims of abuse by employers, police officers, landlords, neighbors and even other immigrants.

**For more, see House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims, Illegal Immigration Enforcement and Social Security Protection Act of 2005: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims. 109^th Congress, 1^st Session, 12 May 2005 (Washington: GPO, 2005).

***The INS accused Tyson of cultivating a culture “in which the hiring of illegal alien workers was condoned in order to meet production goals and cut costs to maximize profits.” The indictments alleged that Tyson aided and abetted these workers in obtaining fake documents.

A Familiar Refrain

Okay, on my way to my 9:30, but just wanted to point some brave souls to this article: Divorce, Unwed Parenting Costing Taxpayers, which from a quick skim seems predicated on the notion that married couples/families "cost" taxpayers nothing; that "taxpayers" are all married people; and a dubious $112 billion figure that purportedly takes into account:

households headed by a single female have relatively high poverty rates, leading to higher spending on welfare, health care, criminal justice and education for those raised in the disadvantaged homes. The $112 billion estimate includes the cost of federal, state and local government programs, and lost tax revenue at all levels of government.

Quickly, does the answer to these costs have anything to do with addressing systemic reasons why ao many women and their children in this country are poor? Why there is higher spending on "criminal justice" for poor people? Etc. Etc.

Nope the answers all lie (wait for it)...

in marriage strengthening programs. Wasn't that easy?

I so hope someone critiques and deconstructs this report.

So Timely

Yesterday, while thinking about my junior class trip to the King Center, I went to the Center's website and saw excerpts from Dr. King's sermon, "The Drum Major Instinct." I found the full text in his papers. And there was something so timely about much of the sermon.

For example this southern/labor historian's heart jumped when she read Dr. King's analysis of the wages of whiteness:

The other day I was saying, I always try to do a little converting when I'm in jail. And when we were in jail in Birmingham the other day, the white wardens and all enjoyed coming around the cell to talk about the race problem. And they were showing us where we were so wrong demonstrating. And they were showing us where segregation was so right. And they were showing us where intermarriage was so wrong. So I would get to preaching, and we would get to talking—calmly, because they wanted to talk about it.

And then we got down one day to the point—that was the second or third day—to talk about where they lived, and how much they were earning. And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, "Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. [laughter] You're just as poor as Negroes." And I said, "You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. (Yes) And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And you're so poor you can't send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march."

And an encapsulated critique of the U.S. as warmonger:

God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now. God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.

And a wonderful sentiment , one that I think shapes the spirituality of people like my mom and Quaker Dave, one that I'm working and struggling to live by:

And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. Recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.... (I)t means that everybody can be great.... You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

Because I Missed Blog for Domestic Workers Day...

...and I promised my girl I would do it. And since she was nudged by my other blogmiga, I just have to take a break to talk about it.

I was going to write a semi-bitter post fueled by my experiences as the granddaughter and grandniece of women who worked as domestics and nannies--and I'll get to that in a minute. (though, BlackAmazon wrote something like I wanted to and hers is amazing).

But first, I looked around to see what other people were saying about domestic work. And though it is not connected to Blog for Domestic Workers Day, I saw this statement by Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy:

Some women suggest that a marriage may be made tolerable with the introduction of a third party to muck out the filth. This bit of feudal reasoning, with its profoundly antifeminist essence, is problematic.

The implications of hiring a menial — always a woman — to perform low-status women’s drudgery suggest an unsophisticated grasp of feminist theory...

And so we see that marriage may be made palatable to women who view housework, rather than male privilege, as the primary agitator against equality in their relationships. To maintain the illusion that she can be married without simultaneously capitulating to the megatheocorporatocratic machine, the feminist wife cannot engage in stereotypical wifey-work behavior. Instead, she hires a surrogate drudge. Unfortunately, this merely demands that she oppress, in turn, women of a lower caste than herself, while doing nothing to address the power differential in her own relationship.

Good point, I think.

But hold up! Some of the readership disagree, using the tired tried and true observations:

"Cleaning as an activity does not make the 'underclass of women'; our attitude to women and women’s work makes the underclass."

"[W]hy are women the only ones guilt-tripped about being feudal exploiters?"

And more generally, "Since I am paying 73 bajillion cents an hour, how can I be exploiting anyone?!"

And I thought, something is being skirted, flirted, danced around here. Even the observation about women's work being undervalued = the reason domestic work is undervalued is missing a big point.

Which women's work is valued least of all? Who's being hired for this newly-fabulously remunerated, unexploited work? Twisty gets at it here. You see, this work is not being undervalued just because it is cast as women's work, but because it is cast as the work of women of color. And yes, white women have and do benefit from our assignment to low-status, low-paid work. From Dr. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, who expresses it much more eloquently:

White women may actually have a material interest in the continuing subordination of women of color in the workplace. To understand the contemporary divergence between the priorities and interests of White women and women of color, we must first understand the historic differences in their experiences as workers. A careful reading of the history of Black, Hispanic, and Asian-American women workers reveals a persistent racial division of "women's work." This division of labor has subjected women of color to special forms of exploitation, subordinating them to White women and ensuring that their labor benefits White women and their families.*

In other words, work may be divided by gender, but it's divided by race, as well, a significant factor to "overlook." From another article by Dr. Nakano Glenn:

In the first half of the [20th] century racial-ethnic women were employed as servants to perform reproductive labor in white households, relieving white middle-class women of onerous aspects of that work; in the second half of the century, with the expansion of commodified services (services turned into commercial products or activities), racial/ethnic women are disproportionately employed as service workers in institutional settings to carry out lower-level "public" reproductive labor, while cleaner white collar supervisory and lower professional positions are filled by white women.**

It's almost as if Dr. Nakano Glenn anticipated some of Twisty's readers' responses:

We may have to accept the idea that any policy to improve the lot of racial ethnic women may necessitate a corresponding loss of privilege or status for White women and may engender resistance on their part.

My point is, white women aren't just haplessly caught up in this unfair! capitalist! patriarchal! system that's got all us women down equally. They sustain it. They derive benefit from it. And not just the benefit of not troubling themselves with such menial work; in my experience, they derive a mental wage, a sense of "too good to do that work," or "generous me, I'm helping poor her!" or the ability to talk about domestic help and never once bring up issues of race and ethnicity.

And that is where my personal experience is, watching the outward expression of that mental wage. I hated, hated, hated that my grandmother and her sister were domestics.

Not because I was ashamed, but because of the way white people treated them and us.

Like never once saying, "I'm way younger than you; you don't have to call me ma'am!"

Or, giving my grandmother and aunt money, long after they'd retired, not because they didn't pay taxes for domestic help or because they objected to the fact that our government excluded domestic work from social insurance or because they appreciated the sacrifices my grandmother and her sister made. No, that money was proof that, just as their slaveholding ancestors argued, they took care of their negroes even after retirement!

Or, coming to their funerals and sitting on the front row with the immediate family because they had notions of their own importance. "Nanny raised us!" one of my aunt's "white children" exclaimed, then stood there regally as the family cooed and comforted her.

Whether or not hiring domestic help is exploitative is not solely a matter of how much you are willing to pay. Silly rabbits! The most common reasons for hiring--because you don't like housework and can afford to pay someone else to do the damnable stuff or your time can be better spent doing "more important" work... well, that reeks of privilege.

And before we label it as just the result of a patriarchal society's mandate that all women adhere to some standard of cleanliness that does all women an equal disservice (hah!)...

...why do certain women, who so radically dismiss so many other patriarchal demands, choose to abide by this one?
___________________________________
*"Cleaning Up/Kept Down: A Historical Perspective on Racial Inequality in
'Women's Work'," Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1333-1356.

**"From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of
Paid Reproductive Labor," Signs 18, no. 1 (1992): 1-43.

On Becoming a Feminist, pt. 2

**Yes, it's long and I apologize, but if you love me :-) bear with me and read it. I really want your opinions on the last part.**

"Your mama on welfare!"

When you're a black child, growing up where I grew up (and in many other places), that is one of the worst insults other children can hurl at you. Before we can even put into word our biases, before we can fully engage in our own stigmatization of poverty, we know, in the simplest terms, that welfare is racialized, feminized. Shameful.

My mom's mom was a retired domestic and farm worker, relegated to the "welfare" provisions of our social security system. I've mentioned before that she was a cook with unmatched skill. What I haven't mentioned is that she also bought much of her food with food stamps and that during the summers, we were the one who'd have to walk the short distance to the local grocery store to buy the makings of lunch and dinner.

Those were the most humiliating experiences of my young life. Typically, my sister, my cousin Tesha (Trinity's sister) and I would have to go. We never went in together--each day, one of us had a turn and the other two lagged outside, as if people in our small town wouldn't realize we were a group. We went early in the morning, so no one our age would be there and shopped quickly as possible, the shopper of the day dreading the moment she had to tear the appropriate amount out of the booklet and receive her change in paper stamps. It seemed as if the cashier took forever and that the quick scurry out of the store, head down, eyes glued to the tile, was never fast enough.

Eventually, we pretended to overcome the shame in a "radical" way: "Yes, I am in this store with food stamps and I am not ashamed!" as we slapped the stamps on the counter and eyed the cashier. It seemed bold at the time, but it was not. It was more of a "See, I'm not ashamed to do this shameful thing."

As I got older, my behavior morphed from scorn and ridicule to a condescending sort of pity. You know, the kind that expresses itself verbally as "Those poor people. I just don't know what I'd do if I were them" and silently as, "But thank God I'm not!" By the time I was in my MA program, I had the distinct feeling that something was not right about the discourse surrounding welfare and mothers and children who received it. Still, I had not formulated my own theory and while I thought I identified with poor women, part of me wanted it clear that I was not like them.

And then I found some of those works I mentioned here, Linda Gordon's Pitied but Not Entitled, Jill Quadagno's The Color of Welfare, Gwendolyn Mink's Welfare's End, Whose Welfare, and The Wages of Motherhood, Winifred Bell's Aid to Dependent Children, Lisa Levenstein's “From Innocent Children to Unwanted Migrants and Unwed Moms," JoAnne Good's Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform and so many more.

I learned how white women reformers championed only one mother as deserving of assistance--the widowed, white woman--how they ignored other mothers for fear that they--these never married or abandoned or brown or non-western European mothers--would turn public sentiment against the call for mothers' pensions. I learned how white men crafted the Social Security Act so that people most "deserving" of assistance would be white males attached at some point to the work force, so that there are two tiers--the unemployment insurance and retirement pensions that people "deserve" after having worked--and the "other tier"--the despised welfare programs for people who had not worked or who had been employed in excluded categories. I learned that excluded categories included jobs like teaching, social work, and nursing, thus excluding many women from the top tier, and also domestic and agricultural work, thereby excluding most blacks from the honorable tier. I learned that the later distinctions, that created a top tier category for women who had been married to men who worked in one of the included occupations, meant that many white women got to leave the bottom tier programs.

And I finally knew what was wrong. From its earliest days, the system was designed to leave people of color and women in bottom tier, "handout" categories. It never valued the work of women outside the work place, never acknowledged the right of women to be mothers outside any but the most narrow of confines. It was never meant to be a true system of social provision, characterized as it is with paltry payments and intrusive interrogations. In its most recent forms, it spurs people to question recipients' abilities and rights as parents, an idea I think Fab addresses here:

What can we do in the name of integrity and justice to stop the state’s attempts to destroy low income and people of color by taking children away, by CPS investigations on low income families, the resorting to second class citizenship via one’s lack of access to efficient, free to low cost, friendly and of high quality health care including dentists and psychiatrists–ending the immigration bullshit operation, constant police intimidation of our communities and families, how it is expected that our act of change be done with “grace” and non “angry”, or divisive, dreaming for the better tomorrow and living as our life depended on it, because our integrity is shattered daily by poverty and those out to protect us and the bullshit services for low income people. Where supposed criminal behavior, bad parenting, neglect and abuse is judged upon [by] a middle unaffected class.

If there is ever an experience during which it feels like scales fall away from your eyes, this was it for me. My politics, my self-identification, my thinking--all have changed since.

Which brings me to another point (related, I promise). Considering John Edwards's anti-poverty platform, Nonpartisan asked me did I think Edwards was an urban populist or an agrarian radical. I had to do some quick research (and I'm so grateful NP brought this to my attention) and I found this speech, excerpted at Ezra Klein's

Work gives pride, dignity, and hope to our lives and our communities... To be true to our values, our country must build a Working Society – an America where everyone who works hard finally has the rewards to show for it...
In the Working Society, nobody who works full-time should have to raise children in poverty, or in fear that one health emergency or pink slip will drive them over the cliff.
In the Working Society, everyone who works full-time will at last have something to show for it...
In the Working Society, everyone willing to work will have the chance to get ahead. Anyone who wants to go to college and work will be able to go the first year for free.
In the Working Society, people who work have the right to live in communities where the streets are safe, the schools are good, and jobs can be reached.
In the Working Society, everyone will also be asked to hold up their end of the bargain—to work, to hold off having kids until they’re ready, and to do their part for their kids when the time comes.

And, though his proposals are different and sound wonderful, here is where I have a problem: what is the difference between his rhetoric and that of the Social Security Act framers? Why are the only ones deserving are the ones engaged in paid work? For that matter, why do we still work under definitions of who is or isn't "deserving?"

If we prioritize paid work over all else, ignoring that paid work is not always liberating, honorable, possible, or desirable, what happens to the people included in the 5%+ who are always unemployed in a "full employment" capitalist society? What happens to those that can't or don't work? Why are we steadily trying to fix and fix?

When do we change?
___________________________
For more of my struggle with the stigmatization of welfare, see here.

Janitors' Strike

From VeganKid, who was clever enough to realize, "Hmm... maybe people don't just want updates. Maybe they want to do something!"

You can get more information about the campaign and watch several more videos at the Houston Justice for Janitors website. You can head over to LabourStart and send an email to Chevron CEO David J. O’Reilly. November 15th is Chevron Day of Action, but feel free to call them any time and ask them to support the striking workers.

So, there. Get busy.

In Janitors' Own Words: Veronica Taboada

Clergy members did step in to support the janitors' cause. They attempted to talk with Gerald Hines, who manages 7% of Houston's commercial space. Hotel staff at the Hilton-Americas where Hines was speaking turned them away.

But no worries for Hines and the professionals with whom he was meeting!! According to the Houston Chronicle, "Despite the protest, the mood at the downtown event was upbeat."

But... but... What about Our Culture of Life?!

Okay, is this really how we want to be known? As people so selfish, so single-minded, and so hypocritical that our nation does stuff like this? From the NYT:

Under a new federal policy, children born in the United States to illegal immigrants with low incomes will no longer be automatically entitled to health insurance through Medicaid, Bush administration officials said Thursday.

(Y'all want me to say something about the fact that this sentence manages to turn "U.S. citizens" into "children born in the United States," don't you?) Highlights:

Under the new policy, an application must be filed for the child, and the parents must provide documents to prove the child’s citizenship.

The documentation requirements took effect in July, but some states have been slow to enforce them, and many doctors are only now becoming aware of the effects on newborns.

Obtaining a birth certificate can take weeks in some states, doctors said. Moreover, they said, illegal immigrant parents may be reluctant to go to a state welfare office to file applications because they fear contact with government agencies that could report their presence to immigration authorities.

Now, let me look at this little piece of legislation through the lens of my knowledge of medicaid. From what I remember, while in the hospital, a newborn used to be covered under Mom's medicaid (for undocumented moms, this would be emergency medicaid. Don't get me started on how we say "Fuck prenatal care! All we can begrudgingly offer you help with is labor."). Then, baby got her/his own coverage for the first year of life. You could apply to have coverage continued after that.

So now there will be no automatic extension of coverage until the child's citizenship is proved? And this only applies to certain parents? Words like "discrimination" and "desperation" are running through my head, but first, I have to ask one question.

Why do you have to prove citizenship of a child that is born in the U.S.? Can someone explain that to me? Did I miss the repeal of the 14th Amendment? Sarcasm aside, I really don't understand this.

Let me look at something else--acceptable proof comes in the form of the child's birth certificate. My child was born in early July. I got his birth certificate in late November/early December. Five months. Let's imagine a newborn going without care for five months. How do parents pay for:

The 2 weeks check-up where the PKU will be repeated?
The 4 weeks check-up?
The 2 months check-up at which the child needs DTP, Hib, OPV, HBV vaccinations? (Vaccinations at a doctor's office can be pricey!)
The 4 months check-up at which the child needs DTP, HIB, OPV vaccinations?

Oh, and perhaps you just get the birth certificate in your hands at five months. You still have to go file for coverage (assuming you are comfortable enough to go into a government office*, which, we all know, they're hoping you're not). In the interim, your child may also need her/his 6 months check up and vaccinations.

And what about:

If baby has jaundice?
If baby gets sick?
If baby doesn't adjust to formula or isn't receiving enough breast milk?
If baby develops thrush?
If baby cries a lot and you don't know why?

And all those other reasons we take our babies to the doctor in those early days.

Sometimes I wonder, when things like this come up, does anyone sit down and say, "You know, it's really not worth the health and well-being of our children to take this opportunity to bash immigrants once again."

And the irony of it is, once these parents, who can't get routine, preventative care, start taking their children to emergency rooms for overpriced care, this administration and its xenophobic base can start saying "Ah-hah! We told you they were a drain on local resources!"

I'm tired of the hypocrisy of conservatives. I want them to let me write their slogans. I'd come up with something snazzy like, "We love all life... right up until birth. And then we care about life if it belongs to an American. And typically, a white American. And truthfully, a wealthy, white American. And, specifically, a wealthy, white American born to married, heterosexual parents..."

But all those qualifiers get tiresome.

H/T to Feministe. Phantom Scribbler has more.

http://haloscan.com/tb/becceratoo/1995467952211285838 (Y'all know my trackback skills leave much to be desired... somehow, I'm thinking that link is not supposed to show up like that!)

*My son's paternal grandmother, who is a social service analyst in Louisiana, says that undocumented immigrants can apply for services for their children and that the analysts may not report their status to other agencies. However, she says that parents have to be constantly reassured of this and many of them simply decide they don't want the potentially damning paper trail.

Janitors seek help from church leaders today

Read here.

I'd like to believe the reasons I'm watching this strike so closely are related to my interest in U.S. labor, economic justice, and my belief that people deserve better.

But that's all my "head" stuff. My heart knows that it's because they remind me so much of "my" workers. And in the case of my workers, churches have provided immeasurable assistance in the push for justice.

I hope they step up again.

In Janitors' Own Words: Austraberta Rodriguez

They average $5.30 per hour. They have no health benefits. They're keeping their promise: Invisible no more.

Update: Something was going wrong so I reposted this. There is a series of these on youtube.