Rewarded and Compensated For

The Washington Post had an op-ed by a worker at Smithfield who was suing the company because they hadn’t provided adequate protection and were insisting workers continue on in close proximity without masks. We were going to cover the progressive movement today and I shared it with the girls and my wife on wechat, right the first thing in the morning.  The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire doesn’t seem so remote, the response and the moral of the story not so clear, when you consider our U.S. food chain during the epidemic.  All of these people should be rewarded and compensated for the dangers they confront for the benefit of all. 

We finished our Frank Lloyd Write puzzle today.  The girls drove the coup de gras, during class.  The older one was really coasting.  It had been my little one and I, and towards the end, increasingly her, who got the bulk of it done.  We’ve had two in a row where we’ve reached the end to find a piece or two missing.  In this case, we achieved completion.  It is such a vibrant evocation of Japan and Navajo and a medieval stained glass.  My little one suggests and I love the idea of pasting down the back and trying to hang it somewhere. 

I always begin our impromptu American History class by asking what it was we did last time. Perhaps the bar is low but hearing a “Theodore Roosevelt” or “Panama Canal” called back from the room is a great relief.  We’re moving very swiftly and pass over numerous topics and personages I note down as I’d want to return to.  How was it that Teddy, Roosevelt drove an albeit imperfect Progressive agenda, which Taft, his successor out did him on and Woodrow Wilson, when he subsequently took power as a Democrat, a Progressive agenda at home was assumed. 

I asked, but nobody had read the article I’d sent.  Oh well.  Explaining it I tried to draw attention to the fact that the struggle to secure respect and safety for working people was an active narrative, not something that was cured in the nineteenth century and that an editorial such as this would never be published in China.  My kids hadn’t seen it but I reminded my wife of American Factory, which she had first brought to my attention.  The film does a fine job of capturing the legitimate American worker perspective, their fear of working in a manner unsafe, under Chinese management, while making clear the Chinese frustration around for Americans who don’t seem to want to work hard, the way they commonly do, themselves.

Monday, 4/27/20