Excellent and heartbreaking and enraging. The contrast you experienced reminded me of when our daughter who speaks Spanish had a summer job as an interpreter for a mobile health unit that served migrant workers. One weekend when we visited her we took her to dinner at an expensive restaurant thinking this would be a special treat. The contrast was intense and she looked at some beautiful asparagus on a plate and said she knew how it got there, and lost her appetite. Today she is now 60, tutors immigrants and protests at the Tacoma concentration camp.
This is such a powerful and important first hand experience, and, as someone who has demonstrated frequently over the years at the Detention Center aka Prison, your words slammed into my heart. I'm embarrassed to say I've never done that deep-dive reflection that I believe is key to doing this work with all our hearts and minds and commitment. I hope you'll consider sharing it with La Resistencia, the brave & beautiful organizers of the protest. I hope folks will read (or in my case listen to) this piece, share it widely, and then find the detention center aka prison nearest you and lift your voice in protest! Thank you, Susan!
Thanks for writing this, Susan. There is a racial divide and a cultural divide, but i think the economic divide is the most pernicious because the people that need to see it are not purposely mean, overtly prejudiced or stingy, but they live in a bountiful and happy bubble and do not need to experience the contrast between their lives and that of the less fortunate. Nor do they necessarily pay respect to art and artists. To some extent the value of the art is in what they have paid for it rather than what is intrinsic to the work itself. It is all about the money.
When I was 11, my mother left our father with we three boys surrepticiously one day to get a divorce in a state that recognised that she as a mother and woman had rights. We drove to Florida, got a small apartment and my mother worked as a teller in a bank. We had a wonderful two years there, expecially being out of the shadow of our imperious father. Two years later, we moved back to Chicago and my mother married her former choir director from her church. He was a nice man but in need of being part of the prosperous class. The point of this story is that, after my time in florida where we had very little money but much wealth in happiness, I found myself in the back seat or our Cadillac entering the drive into our country club. I noticed the workers raking and sweeping, and wondering why I was where i was and they were where they were. Ever since then, I've always had a distaste for pursuing economic prosperity. Freedom, independence, friends, peace, beauty I have in abundance as well as enough to more than satisfy my bodily needs: much more than many have and I am supremely grateful, but in a place that I can be comfortable with.
That is why I tend to be somewhat circumspect about hobnobbing with wealthy people. Perhaps the distaste many have for immagrants is not so much their race as their lack of wealth.
Thank you, Terry, for this vivid insight.
Excellent and heartbreaking and enraging. The contrast you experienced reminded me of when our daughter who speaks Spanish had a summer job as an interpreter for a mobile health unit that served migrant workers. One weekend when we visited her we took her to dinner at an expensive restaurant thinking this would be a special treat. The contrast was intense and she looked at some beautiful asparagus on a plate and said she knew how it got there, and lost her appetite. Today she is now 60, tutors immigrants and protests at the Tacoma concentration camp.
Keep writing!
The perfect story, Jeanie. Thank you.
Bravo!!
This is such a powerful and important first hand experience, and, as someone who has demonstrated frequently over the years at the Detention Center aka Prison, your words slammed into my heart. I'm embarrassed to say I've never done that deep-dive reflection that I believe is key to doing this work with all our hearts and minds and commitment. I hope you'll consider sharing it with La Resistencia, the brave & beautiful organizers of the protest. I hope folks will read (or in my case listen to) this piece, share it widely, and then find the detention center aka prison nearest you and lift your voice in protest! Thank you, Susan!
Thanks for writing this, Susan. There is a racial divide and a cultural divide, but i think the economic divide is the most pernicious because the people that need to see it are not purposely mean, overtly prejudiced or stingy, but they live in a bountiful and happy bubble and do not need to experience the contrast between their lives and that of the less fortunate. Nor do they necessarily pay respect to art and artists. To some extent the value of the art is in what they have paid for it rather than what is intrinsic to the work itself. It is all about the money.
When I was 11, my mother left our father with we three boys surrepticiously one day to get a divorce in a state that recognised that she as a mother and woman had rights. We drove to Florida, got a small apartment and my mother worked as a teller in a bank. We had a wonderful two years there, expecially being out of the shadow of our imperious father. Two years later, we moved back to Chicago and my mother married her former choir director from her church. He was a nice man but in need of being part of the prosperous class. The point of this story is that, after my time in florida where we had very little money but much wealth in happiness, I found myself in the back seat or our Cadillac entering the drive into our country club. I noticed the workers raking and sweeping, and wondering why I was where i was and they were where they were. Ever since then, I've always had a distaste for pursuing economic prosperity. Freedom, independence, friends, peace, beauty I have in abundance as well as enough to more than satisfy my bodily needs: much more than many have and I am supremely grateful, but in a place that I can be comfortable with.
That is why I tend to be somewhat circumspect about hobnobbing with wealthy people. Perhaps the distaste many have for immagrants is not so much their race as their lack of wealth.