Is there a difference between a bus and a slave ship? [View All]

Except for the shackles on the floor of a slave ship they are both fundamentally the same. Their job, transfer as many human beings as you can to work for almost non-existent wages. If you haven't seen the new flagships of slavery, the bus, then you haven't been looking hard enough.

I just returned from a photo trip in central Washington, for those not familiar with the area it's full of orchards. Apples, peaches, pears, and berries of all kind bloom along the hillsides. A very beautiful place with a distasteful underbelly. Early morning and late afternoon the roads are alive. Not with commuters on the way to work but full of dilapidated school buses with the logos covered in black paint. Men, women, and children, heads down fill the seats. America's new slaves, hispanics are being bussed to and from the fields to do "stoop" labor for mere pennies. The people who hire them are the Bush die-hards, bumper stickers on the cars at the beautiful farm houses speak volumes.

The faces on these human beings tell a story of long travel, far away from home, no chance of escape. How on earth can we not care for these people? The human beings that pick our food. They are not a commodity, traded from farm to farm across America. Some may never see their home again, some may never touch those they love. They only want to live, they only want to provide.

During a break in my photography I grabbed a local newspaper. A story on the second page caught my attention, a sort of putting two and two together revelation. It seems Washington has one of the highest unclaimed body count. You know, the bodies no one knows, the abandoned. I don't really know what would be a high number for unclaimed bodies but 14,000 seems high to me. I then began to wonder, when a migrant worker falls ill what happens? If one dies who knows? When one wants to go home, who drives? Fourteen thousand unclaimed bodies. Who are they? Did they pick one of our meals?

Whatever one's thoughts are on immigration it should never supersede the way we treat our fellow beings on this wonderful planet. I'm teaching myself Spanish, no real reason. I just wanted to tell the next worker I meet, "Thank you and I care".

Michael Harris
I get bothered real easy.