It seems like yesterday I was an ignorant production worker busting out small parts for intake manifolds. Ignorant as in work really hard for a company that doesn’t care about me at all. It was 3 years and three months ago that a brick fell out of the sky and knocked some sense into me. This was the height of the great recession we had been working for a “bankrupt” corporation since 2005. The corporation had hired a ceo that was a specialist in the field of bankrupting corporations. It was his job to make sure they could close plants and move production to overseas operations (mostly china). The bankruptcy was a crock of shit and everyone knew it. I remember in 2011 reading about how some of the executive were in court over this. It never really made main stream media. I have no idea what came of it. So in 2010 another bigger corporation bought us, because they had to. We are the top part of their engines. And then again we went through bankruptcy. They tried to enforce a contract that we didn’t vote on, this became an issue when we were due for a raise. This created major labor unrest in our plant, I was pissed and that’s when that brick hit me. I needed to get involved.
That’s when hell started, we got our raise, I went to black lake, became a labor council delegate, President of a young worker group, I had my life threatened, called a communist, bullied, victim blamed, kicked out off the e board of the labor council (not the right way either I can go back). My heart broken so many times when what I thought was a family wasn’t a family at all. Expectations of what I had learned in conferences and educational weren’t true at all. I kept at it with this idea that I was going to be the change I wanted to see in my union( you know Gandhi shit). The first few months in my new role as steward I was in learning mode and I let go a lot of the shit that I didn’t like in order to try to develop working relationship with my new coworkers. Then I couldn’t take it anymore when an issue came up, I was subjected to rape culture in my workplace. I had heard that in the men’s bathroom there were nasty sexually charged things wrote about me on the wall. This would be the 3rd time that this happened to me since I first started there. I ask my fellow steward to file a grievance for me. He argued against it. I had to fight him basically to do it. So I decided to teach my coworkers about rape culture and I was shocked about how ignorant they are about rape. One said “ if a girl is drunk and she gets raped it’s her fault because she should know better” man did I get pissed, this time I knew that I had to say fuck these assholes, I am going to continue to call them out. The next time was over the n word, I said “I find that word offensive, please don’t say it in front of me again” that’s when the full on assault of my boundaries happened. the whole committee as well as others that were in the room ganged up on me “ it’s just a word” I said “if It was just a word go say in on the shop floor and see what happens” it was a bad day. Even those who kept silent contributed. Silence in the face of oppression is just as oppressive as the oppressor. I had to confront the use of queer, fagot, and the use of minimizing words that referred to women as nothing more that bitches,“sissys”and whores. Are these the kind of people you want protecting you? As a union rep we have a duty for fair rep of all. By law! It makes me sick. Now I am truly on my own. Major passive aggressive behavior has become my work environment. No one talks to me and when I seek information for membership I can’t get it. Its hostile and I get confused a lot on what is real and what is misunderstanding. I misunderstand things a lot. My trust in humanity is very low. In fact I can’t tell you if there is a single person I trust. I am a very compassionate person who believes no one should be left alone to fight battles. Yet when I look back after the dust and the hurt settles I am still growing. I wish I was growing in trust. When I first became an activist I was so trusting and giving of myself to others. I had to in order to learn. What I found out was that I was misled, back stabbed and hurt. As I continue in my activism I struggle so much with the: who is going to hurt me now. Or how to constructively address that fact that I am hurt because my ideological world that I want to make happen isn’t happening and what’s abusive and what’s not?
Trying to self-criticize doesn’t change anything. I am combative, agrumentive, truthful, misunderstood as well as someone who miss understands, aka comprehending problems with an extereme sense of pride. I personally think my pride is the most harmful. I use to feel so empowered when I hit the streets in protest now it’s just something I do. I have basically gotten into a time management activism in which I schedule every day of my life around activism or organizing. Not my own shop mind you. The labor community and the broad community as a whole. Vacations are spent at educational union leadership conferences and workshops. Or events that I feel passionate about. I don’t think that there is anything that I’m not involved with when it comes to the empowerment of people, justice, equality, and freedom. How do we get that stuff? By working together. There are days when I’m like how the fuck did I just make that happen? There are other days when my combative behavior is so over the top I ask management when they work with male stewards to get something achieved if it was my vagina that was preventing them from working with me on this stuff. I have to forgive myself a lot, I often ask myself, is it you or is it how you are being treated. Is it capitalism and the state or is it just plain asshole? The truth behind that is that we are all suffering of these two diseases. I listen to a single mom cry as she is telling me about how she doesn’t remember the last time she had a day off. The father of her children can’t keep a job and she wants to provide her children with the best she can give them. As the tears roll down her face I just want to hold her and help her in any way I can. It’s those stories that are giving to me by the members I represent that drive me till I’m burnt out much like she is. Over worked and wondering if I am even making a difference. I use to think I was. I can’t discount all of it. It’s more than enough. Why do I have this guilt resting on my chest like I can’t do enough, I need to do more, when will I see the results of my hard work? Is this why the labor movement is so complacent? Because activism is a time management thing, we go to meetings, workshops, rallies, pickets, and somehow get so use to it, it becomes disempowering. Why don’t I just stop and focus on the single mother with her tears rolling down her face and talk to her about why those tears should turn into rage. Focus purely on the fact that people are depending on us to live more freely, that the children that they are working so hard for can have a better future one that is freer than ever. One in which the earth will not be consumed by consumerism. That when her children have children they will be breathing fresh air and spending time with them. Teaching them how to read and to love life and each other. To not fear other humans to love them with all the fullness of their hearts. In that way we can make a better world not focused on work and nice things but on relationships. Please world don’t create another me. I beg of u. I want to love whole heartily. I want to be able to love people without fear. How do I tell this single mother without alienating her with political ideology that capitalism is and will always be what is causing this heart ache? Cause it is what is the cause of mine.
I still have to work with my coworkers who say the most fucked up shit. I still love them but I wonder if they know that. I wonder if they even know they are fascist misogynistic fuck heads? when I explain that, do they even know what I’m talking about? I wonder if my comrades know that when I flip the fuck out it’s because I feel rejected by them. I only know that when the time comes we will be the ones building up the barricades. I will be right there with them and still feel completely alone in our struggle even though I know I won’t be. That I long for deep connections that I can never have because of my trust issues. I love everyone so much from the depths of my soul its drives me to do what I do today. I am always in so much pain and suffering. This fucking culture is killing my heart but making me stronger. I am sensitive and take everything personally. I don’t know how to disconnect. I am back in therapy. I don’t know what else to do. My life as a shop steward could be so much better if I didn’t give a fuck. That I just can’t do.
Butterflies and Barbed Wire 