My Garbage Man Calls Me “Professor”

I look forward to being outside and walking in my neighborhood early on Tuesday mornings. I know there is a pretty good chance that the recycling garbage truck will be making its way down my street, and I’ll have a chance to chat with the man behind the wheel. I honestly don’t remember his name, but he was a student of mine approximately ten years ago.

Ever since he started working the route in my neighborhood, I’ve thought about one of the standard examples that I use in the class that he took with me. In my Introductory Sociology class, I always spend a few days talking about the theoretical perspective of Functionalism. Within this conversation, I always pose questions to my students about which jobs and professions do the most to create stability and order in our everyday lives. One of my favorite answers to this question is a garbage collector. If these folks were not doing their job and taking our garbage “away,” the problems this would create within a community are multiple.

Part of the reason I like this class discussion so much is that it causes some students who look upon these kinds of jobs as beneath them and less important than higher status/higher paying jobs to confront some of the prejudices they hold about many low status/low-paying jobs. The prejudice that some people have about this kind of work quickly translates into a prejudice against the people in these positions, since so many people have trouble understanding that people are not positions and positions are not people.

When I see my former student, I wonder if he remembers this discussion. He is the happiest garbage collector I’ve ever seen. He speaks to me with excitement, and he exudes a certain pride in what he’s doing. When I see him he often steps off the truck with a smile, walks towards me while taking off his gloves, and extends his hand to shake mine saying, “How you doing professor?” We chat briefly and then he goes back to his work, and I resume my morning walk.

I’ve never understood why so many white-collar professionals so casually ignore, dismiss, or demean people who are often performing labor that is absolutely fundamental to our everyday life. I’ve also never understood the animosity that so often seems to characterize the feelings that blue and white-collar workers hold towards one another. I treat people working blue-collar jobs respectfully, not only because they deserve it but in the hope of building alliances between them and me.

When my garbage man calls me “Professor,” he means it. I think he respects what I do for a living, even if he may not entirely understand it, and I think it’s because he knows I value and respect what he does for a living. I think he knows that what I teach is about more than just respecting what people like him do for a living, but that what I teach is about trying to help workers like him get justice and a fair wage.

Blue and white-collar workers are not enemies, and we must dismantle this artificial division that keeps people separated from one another and therefore leery and unwilling to form alliances. I think this is why I prize the few friendships I have with people who work or teach in professions that are more blue-collar and vocational. When I’ve had the opportunity to communicate my admiration and respect for their talents and skills, it has opened them up to considering that what I do is also important.

At a time when the label “Professor” has become a pejorative term, my garbage man uses it as a signal of respect and admiration. He knows I value and respect him as a person as well as what he does for a living. If my relationship with him could be replicated on a wider scale, there is no telling what could be accomplished once blue and white-collar workers realize our common economic interests and that we’re all getting our clocks cleaned by a system that encourages, rewards, and requires economic exploitation.

Yes, But What About the Economy?

It’s the last line of defense by reluctant Trump supporters: “Yes, but what about the economy?” Leaving aside multiple and ongoing civil rights abuses, sexism and misogyny, an eroding relationship with our allies, the war against the environment and blatant incompetence, it’s probably well past time to analyze this line of defense that some are using to rationalize and justify reluctant support of President Trump. Let’s begin with some context.

In December of 2007, the “Great Recession” began. By the time President Bush left office in January of 2009, the unemployment rate had risen to 7.6 percent. During the first ten months of President Obama’s administration, the unemployment rate continued to go up, eventually hitting a high of 10 percent in October of 2009. After a little more than seven years of moderate regulation and implementation of the Affordability Care Act, Obama left office in January of 2017 with official unemployment down to a very “normal” 4.7 percent, and approximately twenty million more Americans with at least some insurance coverage.

When President Trump took office in January of 2017, he inherited an economy of six straight years of job growth. Presently, he presides over an economy that is riding a wave of 93 consecutive months of job growth with an unemployment rate of 3.9 percent. The last time the official unemployment rate was this low was when Bill Clinton left office in 2000. The politically relevant question is whether or not current economic trends were established prior to the current administration or whether President Trump has done something in particular that has caused the trends he inherited to continue and improve?

There are two main answers offered to this question; deregulation and tax cuts. While both of these actions have clearly benefited the very wealthiest segment of the population, very little of the benefits have trickled-down to the rest of us. More people are working, but they remain working poor. The inequality gap separating the rich from the poor remains at historically high levels, just as it has been for decades, regardless of unemployment rate, party in control of Congress, or sitting President.

Corporate America has obviously benefited from tax cuts and deregulation, and it has been at the expense of low and middle wage workers, worker health and safety, and global climate, clean air, and water. Executives, investors, and shareholders are raking in windfall profits of corporations who are operating without a leash while funding the campaigns of the very people passing this legislation.  It’s unfortunate that so many low and middle class people think they are going to get a piece of any of this. They will be the first and hardest hit when this bubble bursts, and the people who benefitted most will leave them out to dry.

Temporarily gone are the days of paining over the national debt and budget deficits, because debt is currently incurred to finance tax cuts for the wealthy. Going into debt to extend tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations has been deemed fine and desirable, but going into debt to feed people, fund education, provide healthcare, and extend unemployment benefits is irresponsible and emblematic of big government spending out of control. Any questions?

Understanding these issues has less to do with debates over Neo-Classical economic theory and Keynesian economic theory and more to do with history, and this history should concern us all. When the next recession begins, the narrative of budget deficits and the national debt will return with vengeance. The same people who supported massive tax cuts and deregulatory schemes that benefited the wealthy and brought on the next recession will call for cuts to programs designed to serve the poor, working class, and middle class people.

The wealthiest 10 percent are betting that the bottom 90 percent will remain divided, unengaged, and unable to understand the democratic power they hold to alter this system. The history of the United States is the history of class warfare, and the wealthy “win” this war by stoking the fires of resentment among people who fight one another over the scraps. Welcome to the real “Hunger Games.”

The Gift of Impermanence

It’s been a challenging summer. I write these words with an abundance of self-consciousness that I live a pretty damn good life full of privileges, and to write that the past several months have been “challenging” may ring hollow in innumerable ways. Despite this, the past summer was filled with personal anxiety, doubt, and stress, and it began to physically impact my life.

A convergence of variables conspired to undermine me: my dad’s death in April, my compulsive worrying about the condition of the world, my preoccupation with the demise of democratic norms, and anxiety regarding my physical health. In retrospect, I think I may have experienced my version of a “mid-life crisis.” Once my downward spiral began, my obsessive personality took over, and it began to drive me into the ground.

Correcting this trajectory started with all the usual stuff; more exercise, healthier diet, less alcohol, and more sleep.   It helped, but stress and anxiety still occasionally overwhelmed me and caused me to worry about my physical health. One day I was sitting with a colleague and sharing what I was experiencing. When I finished, he calmly and simply suggested to me, “You should read less.” I knew he was right. I also began limiting my daily news intake. This all helped, but it still wasn’t enough to get me back to normal.

I decided I needed to reconnect with Buddhism and learn how to meditate. I started spending more time outdoors and in more direct contact with nature. I started flying a kite. I began meditating daily and teaching myself to exist in the moment. My anxiety slowly began to dissipate, my thinking began to clear, and my blood pressure normalized. I discovered that the roots of my anxieties lie in the idea of permanence.

When my dad died, I thought I was prepared because I knew it was coming. His loss alone was manageable, but what his loss revealed to me about the impermanence of everything proved more challenging. Impermanence began to dominate my thinking. For most of my life I’ve devoted my time and energy towards achieving certain goals, secure in the idea that even if I were not alive when my goals were realized that I could at least take refuge in the idea that my actions played some minor part. I now realize in a deeper and more profound way that as soon as any achievement is realized it begins to give way to forces of change. Permanence is an illusion.

Impermanence is life. I had to reconcile the reality of impermanence with my belief in the fierce urgency of now. I had to understand that “letting go” of permanence is not “giving in” to nihilism, and that accepting impermanence is not a path to passivity but an invitation to embrace freedom and the power of our choices.

On some level we are profoundly unimportant, but every action we take or don’t take has an impact on the river of consciousness that we leave behind. Accepting the impermanence of life means accepting that we don’t know how, when, or even if anything we say or do matters, but it’s vitally important that we do it anyway. Our ancestral past is a guide for our present, but our future is uncertain and unwritten, and we are its authors.

My personal grief has passed. Hope abounds. Anxiety has given way to a commitment to mindfulness. This time won’t ever come again. I am no longer going to obsess about things I cannot control, and I will remain mindful and ready to seize moments that arise when I can have an impact, at peace with the knowledge that nothing is permanent. In the words of Gandalf, from The Lord of the Rings, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Every breath we take cannot occur earlier, and every breath we expel will never come back. We’re here. We’re right now. That is the gift of life.

I’ve relocated the accelerator. I’m back!

The Maverick of the Senate

It has been noted by many that even if you didn’t agree with John McCain’s politics it was easy to respect him and what he stood for. What I respected about John McCain was that he understood the legislative process, he abided, protected, and enforced the rules and norms of Congress, and he rarely allowed his legislative goals to take precedence over the democratic process. The ends rarely justified the means for McCain. He understood that once the norms and rules of procedure were abandoned that the very fabric of democracy would begin to fray and gravitate towards authoritarianism. He understood the long game, and he knew that any abuse of power by one party would come back around when the opposition party gained control. When John McCain said “country first” he lived it.

I did not love John McCain’s politics, and many times I found him to be a hawk on military and foreign policy issues. Yet, even with those issues, there were times when he spoke out with great courage against the use of torture during the Bush administration, again, because he understood the long game, and he was willing to publicly acknowledge what research on torture tells us; torture does not work.

McCain voted against the original implementation of the Affordability Care Act and then ironically cast the deciding vote to save the Affordability Care Act because the repeal effort led by his own party did not go through “regular order.” McCain wanted the process to be followed; he wanted a bill to go through committee and be subject to amendments, like the Senate is supposed to work.  The ends did not justify the means, so McCain voted against the repeal.

My earliest recollection of John McCain as a legislator was in 1996 when he voted against the Telecommunications Act, a bill that was passed in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion and signed into law by President Clinton. McCain was one of very few voices to call out the bill as a massive public giveaway to corporate America that would lead to corporate media monopolies and undermine journalism. History has shown that he was absolutely correct, and he never received proper credit for this vote.

I think the tributes, memorials, and eulogies for Senator McCain all point to one common refrain; he understood that democracy itself is more important than party politics.   Perhaps the best example of this commitment to democratic process and procedure was McCain’s bipartisan effort to pass campaign finance reform. The “McCain-Feingold Act” was an attempt to curb the influence of money in the political process, and it became law in 2002.

In planning his own funeral, McCain took one final opportunity to teach us what democracy looks like. He invited people to speak who represented the entire political spectrum, including former political rivals, and this chorus of voices weaved a tapestry of democracy. Those from the Republican Party spoke of a man who would not shy away from bucking his own party when necessary. Those from the Democratic Party spoke of a man who never saw them as enemies but rather as political opponents. Both Republicans and Democrats spoke warmly and affectionately of a man they equally respected and admired. And both Republicans and Democrats spoke of a man who was willing to work in a bipartisan fashion in order to get something accomplished.

John McCain taught us we could be political adversaries AND friends, and he used his death to throw a celebration for democracy.  He also understood that no modern political party should harbor white supremacists, and his funeral was a public and carefully crafted rebuke of the Trump administration and the politics of fear and bigotry. McCain understood history and knew that an unbridled politics of fear was not only destructive to the country but a dangerous precursor to authoritarianism, something he simply would not abide even in death, regardless of party affiliation. While the country mourned the loss of John McCain, we simultaneously mourned the loss of something far bigger than McCain himself – the temporary loss of America’s soul.

 

The Radical King

On August 28^th, we celebrated the 55^th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s widely celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech. The only part of this sixteen-minute speech that most of us ever learn or recall is, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” For most of us, this is the extent of our knowledge of this event and Martin Luther King.

It’s not an accident that public memory has fixated on this one specific sentence from this particular King speech. Taken out of context, this line has been co-opted and distorted to maintain the system of white supremacy behind a veiled curtain of colorblind rhetoric. Many in the majority group have inaccurately interpreted this line to mean that King aspired to a society that is colorblind, a society in which we pretend that race does not matter or impact our lives. Nothing could be further from what King was articulating. King advocated racial consciousness, not racial obliviousness.

It is curious that we have not fixated on another line from the same speech. How might our national politics look and how might we understand race and racism today if instead we all remembered and celebrated the line, “In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.” If this line were lodged in public memory it would speak to the need for policies that affirmatively work to offset the accumulation of historical injustices that people of color face everyday.

King understood this history very well, too well for comfort for many in the majority group who were threatened by his message. This is precisely why the dominant white historical narrative of this country has sanitized King and his legacy for public consumption in an effort to make him a palatable hero for mainstream white culture. If people studied King and understood the full scope of what he spoke out against in his lifetime, many would be opposed to most everything King stood for.

The mainstream narrative of King does not discuss or acknowledge the King who referred to capitalism as inherently destructive and inconsistent with democracy. We never mention in polite company the King who once referred to the United States as the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” And we certainly never recognize the King who called for reparations not just for those who inherited the consequences of historical racial injustice but also for poor people of all colors.

Having achieved major legislative victories for racial justice with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, in 1968 King set his sights on a Poor People’s Campaign aimed at achieving economic justice for all workers. Given his previous success as an organizer and orator of social justice, the launch of this campaign sent shock waves and fear through those who had everything to lose from the demands of a multi-racial democratic coalition demanding social and economic justice. By April of 1968 King was assassinated, and just two months later Bobby Kennedy, who posed a similar threat to power, was also assassinated.

King understood better than anyone in modern history the power of democratic movements and intersectional coalitions. King held a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from Morehouse College, and his ability to use his Sociological Imagination and clearly articulate complex issues, educate, and motivate people was unparalleled. King’s radical legacy currently lies in hibernation, waiting for the next generation of leaders to rediscover it and move the arc of the moral universe one step closer towards justice and the realization of his dream. As former Senator Ted Kennedy once observed, “The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”