Plymouth, Massachusetts (Occupied Wampanoag territory): 42nd National Day of Mourning, November 24, 2011.
Photos by redguard
William S. Burroughs, ‘Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1986’.
despite how I’ve materially benefited rather enormously from the conquest of the Americas, and how, on the basis of a few ancestors scattered in my maternal line (and the general theme of emigration as a good option for religious minorities that pervades my ancestral history), I should feel a connection to the hegemonic narrative of poor downtrodden English Protestant religious refugees looking for a better life in the so-called New World, and blah blah blah-
not grateful, so much as enraged.
however much you love the United States and how important the thanksgiving ritual is to you personally and conceptually, it’s important to remember that it memorialises something awful as well. it is not neutral- it is ambivalent, perhaps, but not neutral. like a lot of other dominant narratives and rituals that form part of U.S.ian nationalism, it is made of much that is truly wonderful and inspiring and much that is truly horrifying and unspeakable, all at once.
how you choose to negotiate that is your prerogative- I’m not saying there’s any right way to do, or not do, Thanksgiving, or that there’s any inherent good in opting out (as I’m doing). I’m just saying that it’s important, for non-Indian U.S.-Americans, to remember all aspects of the terrible burden and marvelous privilege that come with this particular national identity, and to think critically about what it means to have so much invested in nationalist ritual.
Happy Thanksgiving from Wounded Knee, December 29th 1890
Just saw this on twitter. BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY ALL PEOPLE WHO WORK RETAIL CAN AFFORD TO JUST TAKE A DAY OFF and probably lose their job to ~strike a blow~. For fuck’s sake.
What the fuck. Not coming in on Black Friday when you work retail is pretty much an insta-fired offense. Where the hell do they get these people? You can tell most of them have never actually worked retail in their lives.
More anti worker bullshit.
Also how is it ever helpful to recommend to people who are probably already poor, that they go ahead and lose that job?
Are you serious dood?
RLY DOOD?
….
RLY?
And that’s how the system is designed, to make you feel dependent on it.
This is up there with being mad at protesters for blocking you from making it to work.
Who should you be mad at, the protester working against a corrupt system, or the corporation cutting hours, laying people off, cutting benefits, all while collecting more and more money?
Besides the fact that I’m sure you could easily take a sick day. The only reason to make excuses not to do it is if you’re afraid. Because if you weren’t, if you didn’t care, you wouldn’t take issue with the idea in the first place, and could just brush it off.
“Besides the fact that I’m sure you could easily take a sick day”
“the only reason to make excuses not to do it is if you’re afraid”
AHAHAHAHAHAHAH. You just have no fucking idea how working in jobs like retail works, do you?
Take your epic class privilege and shove it up your arse.
dashingbilly, please go work shit-end retail for a few months, complete with pressure and stress and shitty customers and long hours - if they give you enough hours - or barely any hours so you’re struggling to make ends meet, and also work through the Xmas season at any retail business and then you look me in the eye and you fucking tell me “I’m sure you could easily take a sick day” on fucking BLACK FRIDAY and that choosing not to FUCKING LOSE YOUR JOB “FOR THE CAUSE” is just “making excuses” because “you’re afraid”.
Spoken like someone who has never been dependent on a shitty retail job in their life.
To clarify: Most retail jobs do not HAVE “sick days.” ”Sick days” are an artifact of middle- and upper-class jobs, and even then, they are often quite minimal; my spouse has avoided taking any this year because he’s going to need pretty much every single one that he’ll have banked by February in order to take a week off when our daughter is born (not having worked at the company for a year, he is ineligible for family medical leave, the only federally mandated leave that can be used for paternity leave). Similarly, a manager in retail work, even if in a salaried full-time position, cannot afford to squander a sick day, much less in a way that is guaranteed to piss off their superiors and make retribution likely.
But forget that, anyway, because the vast majority of retail workers are not in middle-class jobs. The vast majority of people working retail jobs are not actually full-time employees; they are kept at 39.5 hours (or fewer) in perpetuity, to avoid having to follow labor laws that only apply to full-time employees (such as having to pay benefits or provide any kind of leave at all). Working at Taco Bell as a teenager, I witnessed an adult co-worker get screamed at by our manager for going over 80 hours in two weeks and thus costing the company for overtime, and risking the possibility of being reclassified. I don’t know if her hours were subsequently drastically cut, but they might well have been.
Similarly, a retail worker who calls in sick for a scheduled shift, even one that isn’t considered high volume and crucial, is taking a risk—often a very high one—that they will see all their hours disappear from the next schedule, because the manager can find someone else who will work through a 103-degree fever if instructed to do so.
Because, see, retail workers hardly ever get “fired.” They just lose all their hours, or are given the worst, least desirable hours, until they effectively no longer work there. This allows management to circumvent even the tiny possibility that a wrongful termination suit could be brought (as if the majority of retail workers have the resources to do that).
Many many good points in this. Some of the bolding and italicizing is mine, and some is not. Read it how you will. Food for thought.
I do think that, if you can, you should indeed demand working these days are voluntary, not required. If you can.
Me, I have a part time job that won’t kill me that I *could*, theoretically, walk out on. But you’re not just hurting “the machine” or some corporate, you’re hurting the team of people you work with. Then again I actually like my coworkers…
(Source: indigoferarchived)
