“Eviction.”
A young woman sleeps uncovered on a mattress. A keyboard…what looks to be a box for an internet router…a wired mouse…a belt…assorted clothes…a cellular phone…a paper notebook…a black rectangular object that may or may not be a case for an electronic tablet…a teddy bear with the word “LOVED” embroidered on its chest…other personal effects…lay scattered around her.
“Empty, No money, no food.”
A refrigerator door sits open…a mere handful of condiments, grouped together in the center of the bottom shelf, the only contents within.
“Untitled.”
A small desk with a pile of small currency on it. Beside the cash, a large calculator. The digits “55.55” show on its display. Various paper slips–presumably invoices, receipts, and the like. A pink highlighting marker. A sharpened pencil. A single penny. Numbers etched in lead on the desk’s surface.
“Three generations, one room.”
In a bedroom, a blanket covers the window. A very young African-American girl stands in her crib, peering toward something out of sight above a dresser just a couple of feet away from her. It could be a television. It could be something else. Crammed inside the little room, near the place where the little girl must sleep, is another crib. A baby lies inside. With just enough room between them for a mother to tend to her children, the two cribs sitting so close together perhaps resemble prison cells. On the other side of the baby’s crib, just inches away, is a bed. Only the top of an adult’s head is visible through the bars of the baby’s crib–a little bit of hair, part of a forehead, an eyebrow…but not much else of the individual is identifiable. The person has the covers pulled over his or her body. He or she could be an anyperson. The photographer must be the third generation not pictured in the image.
“United.”
Several dozen clenched fists, raised toward the sky.
These are a sampling of the photos that appear in a piece today on Slate titled, “Fast-Food Workers Photograph What Life Is Like When You Make Less Than $15 an Hour.” Here we are introduced to one person who has had to endure life at $7.25 an hour:
Some days, Mona Lee, 20, starts work at McDonald’s in Kansas City, Missouri, at 6 a.m., ends her shift at 1 p.m., and then immediately starts another shift at Sonic, which ends at 8 p.m. But since both jobs pay just $7.25 an hour, she still often doesn’t earn enough money to pay for basic expenses.
“I don’t understand how I can work at two jobs and not have enough money to put food in the house,” she said. “We need to be able to live.”
Mona is no doubt a wise and experienced 20 years of age, but she doesn’t have the world on a platter yet. That’s just not right.
The article goes on to explain that these photos are part of a Kansas City gallery exhibit called “I, Too, Am America.” The exhibit was put together by a local labor organization to help promote the “Fight For 15” movement, which intends to get the minimum wage raised nationwide to $15 an hour. The photos in the article, taken on cellphones by minimum wage workers, “illustrate the long hours and financial hardships that come with the job.” The exhibit also includes “some lighter scenes with family and powerful moments of group solidarity.”
Look at the photos.
Look. At. Them.
Are you moved? Are you feeling sad and sympathetic for these, your fellow men and women, yet?
Does your heart not ache for these people?
Are you on board with the “Fight for 15” movement?
Say you’re on board.
If you don’t, you are a cold, callous, uncaring person. Probably white. Even more probably a white man. Shame on you.
SHAME.
Never mind that one union admitted on Twitter to Watchdog.com reporter Jason Hart that some people will lose their jobs under a $15-an-hour minimum wage mandate.
@jasonahart will some people lose their jobs? yes, but the work still needs to get done
— IBEW Local 570 (@IBEW570) May 13, 2015
Never mind that the movement to force companies to oblige the unions is what matters most to its union leaders and backers, collateral damage be damned. Never mind the unions who stand to rake in the dough when their members get mandatory raises.
Don’t read…
According to a Worker Center Watch analysis of U.S. Department of Labor filings, SEIU alone has spent more than $50 million on the Fight for $15 campaign in the past two years.
Never mind…
@jasonahart but you folks on the right would rather spend money bombing other countries than helping ours
— IBEW Local 570 (@IBEW570) May 13, 2015
You folks. You don’t care about blowing up wages for Americans in low-skill jobs. You’d rather blow your money on blowing up stuff in places you’ll never go.
Never mind that setting certain economic initiatives in motion will cause a chain reaction that will spill into other areas of the economy where others will get hurt, not helped. Never mind the ploys, gimmicks, and snazzy slogans that unions and progressives use to further their agendas, the intentions of which are not as selfless as you might assume.
Never mind aspiration and drive. Never mind responsible decisions. Never mind that the rest of the world will not and cannot grant you your every wish. Never mind that fairness has to go both ways.
Never mind Newton’s Third Law of Motion–that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Just feel. Just be emotional.
Never mind the logics.
