This Land Is Their Land….

Last night I saw Barbara Ehrenreich at the Seattle Public Library; she was lecturing on her latest book: This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation

 

From Publishers Weekly
When a hospital employee whose hospital-supplied insurance doesn’t cover her hospital-incurred bill finds her wages garnished, where’s a political satirist to go for material? Feisty, fearlessly progressive Ehrenreich offers laughter on the way to tears in 62 previously published essays that show the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer. She investigates pockets of poverty among undocumented workers, military families and recent college graduates. Ehrenreich’s reach is capacious, encompassing not only unemployment, health insurance and inflation, but corporate spying, cancer studies, marriage education, the abstinence training business and Disney’s Princess products. Her passion, compassion and wit keep these excursions lively and timely—even when yesterday’s headlines provide the immediate provocation, e.g., JetBlue’s snow snafu. The vignettes go down a bit like eating peanuts—too many at one time palls, but they’re not unhealthy, unless you have an allergic reaction to Ehrenreich’s message: America is being polarized between the superrich few and the subrich everyone else. Entertaining Ehrenreich certainly is, but she raises a hard, serious question: How many ‘wake-up calls’ do we need, people…? (May)

 

Ehrenreich was unassuming, sharp and entertaining, and I had the incredible opportunity to speak with her before the lecture. I don’t know that I made many friends at my table. After waiting a polite pause or two for questions like “Where do you live” and “how was your flight,” I pretty much pounced. With her two books, Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch, she has hit a nerve in me…and I believe there is a third idea out there – the burden the boomer children shoulder.

I’ve written previously on the topic of white collar layoff and would like to explore it further. So much so, that I’m starting another blog on the topic.

Back to the lecture…

Ehrenreich started the evening talking about how scapegoating is the latest tactic in taking focus away from larger issues. She posed the following thoughts:

…On the airport bathroom shenanigans that went on last year:

“Why is it that we are in a orange alert state, and there are police men with detail in airport bathrooms?”

On gay marriage:

“If you don’t like the idea of gay people getting married, don’t marry one.” 

Illegal immigration:

“There is a primitive rage at illegal workers who do all the manual work that make our lives possible.” People make $3/hr at a car wash because businesses get away with it.

She proposed a new scapegoat group: old white people. “They are lazy, play cards, lay on benches…all on the government’s dime – social security checks! What’s eating their money, drugs! We should be on the look out for geezer gangs to maintain their insulin and Lipitor habits.”

Ehrenreich went on to observe that we are in increasingly polarized society, a hot topic in books I cover in the social venture labs blog. That globalization is an excuse for pushing wages down for Americans but that the globalization trend does not affect CEO salaries. “You should put one of the border crossers in as CEO, because anyone who can get across the border has strong leadership characteristics – someone you would want in your company.”

She has a point, it wasn’t a Mexican who took the promise for a pension or hope for social security away from so many families – it was a CEO.

The theme I’m picking up on here after seeing Ehrenreich, Florida, Friedman another others speak comes back to a lecture I went to years ago: Azar Nafisi

“American values used to mean something real and concrete. Huck Finn ponders the question: should I give Jim up? He had been taught that to harbor a slave meant that you would go to hell. But he thought about Jim in the morning and Jim in the evening and Jim was his friend. Huck made a decision to help Jim – he was “going to hell.” 

American values meant the ability to make a tough decision by way of self analysis. Now….we sleep. Imagination (innovation, alertness) is the key to development (into maturity) and we risk losing it.”

 

Have we lost that ability to self reflect? What will it take (how much more damage needs to occur) before we start to rally like we have in the past?