Get a Job!

I get incredibly frustrated with the common - and frankly weird - reaction to people who protest: "Get a job!" There are several assumptions that underly this reaction that upset/irritate/sadden me.

First, most people who are protesting for better life conditions - either on their own behalf or as conscious constituents - *do* have jobs. In fact, so many are overworked and struggling to engage in movement activity. Many sacrifice a lot in the name of social justice. I just want to clear that up to the random assholes who yell at protesters most of whom surely follow this blog.

Second, the assumption is that there are plenty of jobs available. This shows a profound disconnection from the realities of the job market. There's the "McDonalds is always hiring" or somesuch. I can't be sure but those who say this are likely people that are fully employed and have somewhat satisfying career tracks. They often harken not their own bootstrap experience but their parents or grandparents - "My ___________ worked 80 hours a week in order to put food on the table and care for their 3 kids. They never complained... blah blah blah."* This statement leads me to my third point.

Third, working 80 hours a week and not being around to raise your kids or have leisure time is the best we can do? Is that the only kind of society we can hope for? Underneath a lot of the rhetoric is an implicit support for a failing status quo and a PROFOUND lack of imagination. One of my all time favorite quotes is from Stephen Duncombe in his book about zines. He writes,

...the powers that be do not sustain their legitimacy by convincing people that the current system is The Answer. That fiction would be too difficult to sustain in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. What they must do, and what they have done very effectively, is convince the mass of people that there is no alternative.

I see this failure of imagination when I teach. When I pour my heart out to students when we learn Marx - that Marx was in awe of capitalist production for its tremendous productive capabilities, that these mechanisms can free us from toil rather than enslave us. For a moment, maybe 5 people get it. But "reality" sets back in, for all of us really, and we go on.

All in all, I think we can demand more. It's possible and it's not wimpy to want more time with our families, our friends, cooking *real* food, relaxing, caring for our neighbors. We don't need to exhaust ourselves making others very rich. To me, it's that simple.

*I fully realize that the idea that a career as a measure of self worth is a "first world" notion and that many people work many hours for little return. I will get to that in a moment.