With the stock market casino meltdown and the mounting worries that it already represents for all of us, many other challenges facing working people can get sidelined.
I just had a chat with my brother who works as a handyman at a half-way house. This morning he sat down with the cook and laundry lady as he does every morning to have a cup of coffee before work. The cook had a black eye. The two other workers asked her how she got it. She said she fell. Andy explained, sympathetically, that it was near impossible to fall and get a black eye. The laundry lady added that such a fall would leave you with scratches too, but none were apparent.
Such moments can visit us often in the workplace and beyond. How do we offer solidarity to those that shun it. Sometimes it means small acts of solidarity till people are ready to fight of their own accord.
When it was apparent that the cook’s hearing had been impaired by her “fall” then the other two workers pushed her to go to the ER. The laundry lady’s boyfriend was called, he said he‘d take the afternoon off from his job and take her down to the hospital. Andy mentioned that the laundry lady’s boyfriend is actually the cook’s husband’s cousin. I asked if he was trying to protect his cousin. ”Oh, No. He said if he finds out that her injuries were caused by her husband, he’s gonna beat the shit of him.”
The workers felt a bit stuck for helping out their comrade at work, as the cook was still protecting her husband, but they consipired to make sure that the doctors contact the police about the case. Andy got a call at work later letting him know that the cook’s injuries include a broken jaw and she will need some kind of a plate in her face.
What a fucking world we live in. What a world to bring up daughters into.
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