The United States corporate world has a long history of exploiting labor. We started with owning slaves and worked our way to child labor, paying more for mens work than womans and keeping pay to starvation salaries for blacks and people of color.
Today it is those same old white men who want to take away those protections earned and fought through the loss of lives and many injured to establish fair and equal employment for those in this nation.
I am 58 years old and I can still remember growing up in Detroit, my father coming home with huge gashes in his arm one day from working in one of the auto factories.
Protections did not exist for safety and it took another ten years for the auto unions to win those safety procedures and protect those on the assembly lines.
The unions not only provided protection for employees, fair wages for a days work, they kept the factories honest.
Today we have huge problems. As deregulation occurs, we have recalls of a myriad of products right down to larvae in Similac formula. It was removed from the shelves when my grandson was two months old. He is now 11 months old.
Baby cribs have been recalled. Children's toys imported by prominent American toy stores recalled because of lead paint. This, the result of "shipping" our production overseas to third world countries to exploit poor countries running the same kind of sweatshops outlawed in the United States.
Americans are shortchanged by an education system which gives short shrift to history, social studies and science lessons, all for the perceived notion we don't need those as much as we do reading and writing.
The results of our narrowed view of education is a narrowed view of the world, a lack of understanding and a mature world view.
Ironically, America is moving backward as less democratic countries move forward.
It is exciting to see Egypt and other countries dominated by monarchies and dictatorships willing to die for a free and fair country.
It is sad to see such a world power as the United States continue to erode freedoms and protections such as unions, regulations to ensure safety, labor laws, and our very right to privacy (i.e. terrorist act).
It is the ignorance of our general population which the wealthy corporations, banks and peoples prey upon to advance and promote the increase of wealth for themselves.
I have a history of watching those strikes in Detroit and the strikes did not derive from greed or exploitation.
I remember a country once proud of the protections and considerations citizens received and expected.
I see a country now steeped in ignorance and anger.
History repeats itself. I am old enough to see it. This history we are creating now is the past to the 1800's of Robber Barons and general poverty.
When we are willing to remove formula from a poor babies mouth (WIC) allow solo seniors to struggle and die alone such as the elderly man in Michigan whose power was shut off in the dead of winter and froze to death, , punish children for their parents choices, we are no longer a democracy.
We are no better than the lawless and brutal regimes of third world countries who kill, allow to die and exploit citizens, who are considered property and not fully free , self directed humans.
Video games and reality shows do not replace the important, no, critical need of our citizenry to learn about and understand our history as it is related to employment, workers, standards of living and corporate greed.
If the only way to teach our population about these events is through cable tv, cartoons, and video games, internet, You Tube and Tweets, let those brave enough to teach our population, please, do it now.
