Mayday, May Day

When I recall images of the hundreds of thousands who marched on Washington D.C.’s Mall in the 1960s, I often fantasize marching shoulder to shoulder along the intoxicating ride for Civil Rights. In the face of such formidable and omnipresent injustice, I wish that I could have joined this momentous wave. I charge those who rationalized it is more practical to hide with moral bankruptcy.

On this first day of May, I arrived at the courthouse, a pretty building that has come to define Santa Barbara’s architectural authenticity, and surrendered to a delicious sea of white shirts framing brown skins.

Within minutes, a palpable excitement and electricity enveloped me and I sensed I was a witness to a historic event, played out many folds across the country. Activism reborn?

While we pontificate obsessively on our participatory democracy, the public forum does not figure in public speech. Whereas the list of grievances may stretch ad infinitum, a peculiar feature of our national psyche permits our individual selfishness to repel the collective struggle to the margins of society.

Workers have the right to work – an actual legal phrasing, with no small irony – which translates to the right to get fired with remarkable dispatch.

The only benefit afforded all other Western countries that exists on these shores is an anemic minimum wage. As it is, it has not been raised at the federal level in 10 years.

Health care, sick days, vacation days, job security stand as illusions. The trend spreads increasingly to professional sectors as corporations argue it is vital to cut or eliminate benefits. In constant dollars, the average non-executive wage lingers where it was in the early 1970s. Last year, again, it dropped.

Don’t count on my profession to point this out too often, lest the masses grow restless. The lead article on economic forecast in the Santa Barbara News-Press proclaimed “Bright Outlook” on Friday. An informational graphic accompanying the same story pointed that salaries were expected to fall, but that pitiful fact doesn’t dampen the rampant real estate speculation, the cause for our celebration.

The previous day, editors picked the picture of a woman filling up her car and bemoaning the rise in gasoline prices. That she drives an expensive model BMW and therefore should not have too much of an issue with the cost of gas if she can plunk down $80,000 for a car seems of little consequence in our fairytale times. The urgent concerns and struggles of the majority in my town – any town – don’t make it to the front page very often, and when they do, they are overlooked or minimized. On the other hand, the lifestyle of the self-obsessed and self-indulgent dominates our pages and airwaves. Today’s lead story on the immigrant boycott and marches battles an exposé on bottled water that occupies twice as much space. This impeccable news judgment allows us to express “shock” at the poverty Hurricane Katrina forced to the surface in New Orleans.

When immigrants voiced their displeasure at the immigration reform debated in Congress, they likewise forced into the glare of the media the issues of a constituency that most ignore. Politicians promulgate this invisibility, and journalists become willing accomplices when they fail to raise questions.

Utah State Sen. Howard Stephenson framed the debate in no uncertain terms. He hails from a state famously traditional. Outside of Salt Lake City, the state delegation is 100 percent Republican. At election times, you can bank on its people, just like in other hard core blue states, to endorse conservative candidates massively, at levels that would make run-of-the-mill dictators proud. When dissent dissolves, can we still talk of a democracy?

“Every citizen who buys a flat of strawberries for $16, or who enjoys a cheap motel room or an inexpensive restaurant meal is essentially demanding that people come across the border illegally to fulfill their economic request,” he said, boldly. (In California, strawberry pickers earn 15 cents a basket.)

With that statement, he echoes the wishes of business groups who will not let decency, or even laws, stand in the way of profit. Always first to resist wage increases, they do not oppose immigration, legal or otherwise. Philosophically and practically, as we insist on tariff-free trade and unrestricted economic expansion abroad, can we say with a straight face that the movement of goods, capital and people is one-way only?

Speaker after speaker extolled the virtues of a united people and broaden the fight to economic justice. The crowd (with an achingly minority of white folks) cheerfully applauded. Local politicos who cannot resist the opportunities to self-congratulate and proffer platitudes were notably absent, aside from former city council member Babatunde Folayemi.

Emboldened, the crowd chanted: “Sí, se puede, “ and “El pueblo unido jamás sera vencido.” I hope they take comfort in the recent victories of workers in France who forced the government to abandon its plan to reform hiring and firing practices to align them with American customs. As newspaper editorials and even reporters belittled their resistance to what they think of as progress, they showed the power of an organized and united citizenry. I am eternally proud to read that more than three quarters of those polled rejected the new law, seeing it as a slide toward the grotesque American social model.

“Despierta el Gigante,” read a sign. The giant awakens. Bravo to all those who marched and braved threats. Our notion of debate and discussion works best, we are told, from within the framework of established channels, the very same wretched avenues that have brought us this abysmal failure. While some businesses closed and let their employees attend the demonstration, others faced firing and jail time confronted students.

But they came by the hundreds of thousands, holding banners and waving flags. A speaker remarked the American flag is most beautiful when waved by the hands of those who fight for justice and equality.

And a powerful statement.

Thank you for daring to talk back out loud when most only grumble silently.

Thank you for instilling some hope.

Don’t give up.