Reply #77: Yes, I am -- my color is red [View All]

I am personally glad you have the luxury of leading a humane life. It affirms for me that it is still possible in this society. I would like that for the millions of working people who are in a position similar to mine, but are denied such liberty so that people in a position similar to yours may prosper.

I am a product of an inhumane world -- a world that tells me from birth that I am less than a person because my place is to work, and only to work. So, yes, the "human factor" is not as central to me, since I have yet to be fully treated as a human being by this society. I am merely "help" (as in "help wanted"), or a sequence of numbers and events. I am called "Mister" out of social custom, not respect. And I am expendable -- more easily replaceable than the machines I use. At my last job, an ink pen was worth more than the life and well being of one of my co-workers.

That's the world that the bosses, managers and professionals made for me. If I fail to consider the "human factor", it is because I am not considered human. My ability to work is a commodity, bought and sold by the hour, and traded back and forth among your "hard working" managers like so many baseball cards; my body and mind are merely the vehicles for delivering that ability to work to and from the point of production, and are "entitled" to nothing save the bare minimum it takes to keep that body moving to and from the point of production.

What humanity I have been able to preserve through all this I save for my brother and sister workers. For if anyone deserves that modicum of humane compassion, generosity, love and affection, it is they. If I am indeed bigoted, it is because I am protective of my people.

I am a classist, a partisan of my class; I make no bones about it. But, like your father, I did not "burst from the womb" that way. No, that was the result of a lifetime (my lifetime) of hard work on the part of your "hard working" managers and professionals. Every one of them did their part. People like me are not born, we're made.

Don't get me wrong, though. I do not doubt for one second that you or your father are nice people with good intentions. But you know as well as I do what is paved with good intentions.

I am not someone who holds grudges or lives on vitriol -- I don't have that luxury any more. Indeed, if you are ever in Detroit, I'd probably invite you out for a beer (for you, anyway; I can't really drink any more). It's not about being "good" or "bad" for me; it's about where you stand in the relations of society that matter to me. It is about class and politics, I freely admit that. But I don't make or break friendships on that basis. I have friends from different classes and family with very different politics (my parents, as a matter of fact, are teabaggers -- can you imagine what my holidays are like?!).

I am 37 years old. I will likely be dead before I am 40, and it is because the bosses, managers and professionals in my life made decisions that condemned me to this existence. Their "business decisions" have cost me the rest of my life. I consider that to be the height of terrorism and violence ... no different than if they put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger or set off a bomb in my home. If I express my hope that what has been done to me is returned on those who have given me my death sentence, it is not out of a desire for violence, but out of a sense of justice.

If I have a goal in relation to the Young Pioneers, it is that the young people who are involved learn to preserve their humanity in the face of an inhumane world and direct it toward positive, constructive tasks that benefit their class and community -- that they learn they are not simply "help" or a commodity, but that they can be thinkers, leaders and builders of a new humane and just world. While we have to do these things ourselves, without outside interference, it is not for ourselves alone that we do them.

So, yes, I am showing my true colors here (along with a lot of other things). My color is red -- the color of human progress, social justice and a new world.