Saturday, November 23, 2013

The Class War


What happened?  All the years away and I never saw it coming.  My workmate said, “Everything I was told as a child was a lie”  Work hard?  Where does it get you?”

            Good question.  I am probably working more hours than I have in years and it isn’t leading anywhere.  There are no raises, no opportunities in sight.  This is what has happened in America in the years I was gone and is beginning to occur in Europe too.  You can work full time at McDonald’s and be told to apply for food stamps and to eat more slowly so you feel full.  You can be like the adjunct professor who wrote that his salary was so low, he sometimes resorted to selling his blood.


You can be like a workmate who said she can only afford the interest on her school loans so she’s hoping they’ll be forgiven when she retires. 

That leads us to the second statement my workmate said was a lie, “Education will make a difference.”  It always did to me and to my immigrant parents.  It’s still what I tell my students but am I wrong?  How much debt does it take?  Can you study something you love?  What is waiting for you when you finish?  The job as a security guard at Walmart?  That ever present adjunct job?

When did the decision get made to squeeze out the middle class so that profits for the famous top 1% can be scandalous?   How wealthy are the wealthy? I taught English to an insurance exec in Barcelona who said he had enough for his children and grandchildren and didn’t need to amass more wealth.  That seems reasonable but not very common.  How far are we from the grim future of the Scifi novels?  Already studies show the wealthy are less likely to show compassion.


More questions than answers.  How do we live in a more compassionate society?

 

One of my poems from “A Remedy of Touch”

Love this Place

 

Am I to love this place,

no bridges arch

over a glittering city.

No gargoyles keep watch.

 

To love this place

where steel mills lay fallow,

hunks of metal shade

gutted homes.

Past the Michigan Avenue

Baptist Church,

my mother and father

enter home on their wedding day,

She dreams of white

And thresholds

 to be carried across.

 

Love this place,

drip drop of ice

slides off eaves, 

like so many promises.

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