For American Workers

For American Workers

As Labor Day approaches, I find that the events of the past year have made ever more poignant the notion that work is sacred. That how we spend our days is more than a commercial necessity but a service to others and our community. That good work done well is grace, and a gift that we give one another. That “work is love made visible.”

With the onset of COVID, we have seen with greater clarity the sacrifice of those at the front lines of health care, those working so hard to preserve life and — when that proves impossible — being present with the dying.

Throughout this crisis, we have never stopped relying on the services of grocery and drug stores and those service workers we came to call “essential” even though we don’t treat or compensate them accordingly. My mother is one of these workers, compelled to show up for work at a store that has already had employees test positive for COVID in order not to lose her health insurance.

All parents and caregivers of the young, old, and those unable to care for themselves have been doing love labor from day one, being present for others while assimilating the uncertainty of this new normal. My brother is a parent and a teacher, navigating how to provide some semblance of instruction to students over a computer from an empty classroom while his own three kids are trying their best to stay engaged in no-contact education from home.

On Sunday, I approached my own home under smoke-filled skies after 11 days of evacuation orders due to the Lighting Complex fires in California. Grateful to have a home to return to (900 families in the Santa Cruz Mountains do not), I saw every emergency vehicle and temporary base camp as evidence of the 1,000+ firefighters doing valiant battle with the flames (still less than 50% contained as of this writing). And I cast my mind to what was happening in Louisiana and Texas with Hurricane Laura, and everywhere that workers are responding, rescuing, and restoring in the wake of disasters as climate change alters our natural world.

And I have never been more proud of American workers of all kinds who are bravely serving, defending, and healing our communities…who are making their love visible.

For America to Work

I also know that of Americans have lost their livelihoods as a result of the pandemic, and that not only are they and their families suffering but they are doing so while lawmakers willfully neglect to pass timely legislation to extend needed benefits.

This is the insult added to injury: that while so many are working every day (or wishing they had work), they are viewed with contempt by a President who has never worked a day in his life, does not respect the duties of his office, and who is consistently enabled and emboldened by cowardly sycophants who have given up doing their own jobs working for the American people.

For a Working America

This Labor Day holiday, I will reflect on the historic work and continuing struggle of the labor movement, but I will also cast my mind to the future — a future that will in November reject and repudiate those officials who do not understand, care about, or feel responsible to America’s workers. We owe it to our doctors, nurses, teachers, cashiers, caregivers, firefighters, and so many others to stand up for their value and worth with our votes — to stand up for our value and worth as a nation of workers doing our work and doing it well.