It’s happening in Belgium, Scotland, and Spain, in India, South Korea, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Italy, Portugal, Greece, France…need I go on? It only remains “fragmented news” here in the US that, rising fossil fuel prices are impacting people’s ability to feed themselves, and they are protesting, loudly, collectively, sometimes violently.
What might we expect from the average working-class American, as economics in this country continue to worsen? Will they organize in labor unions or protest as isolated individuals expressing their individual sense of hopelessness and despair? Will it be sparked by some “organized” movement, or from some shift in their internal emotional reality? Frank Lee gives his future fantasy version of what he sees could be coming, and folks, it isn’t pretty…
Kathy McMahon
Peak toil
Wednesday August 4, 2010
Another hot and muggy day in what seemed to be an endless summer of scorchers. Mary Cole was fighting an intestinal flu, but found it impossible to take time off from her job at Wal-mart. She couldn’t “afford” to be sick. When her bowels told her that she had to “go,” she notified her boss, who blandly told her that it wasn’t her “break time.” She tried to explain, but he walked away. Within three minutes, she soiled herself and started crying. Frank, another clerk, hears what happens, and begins an angry exchange with Harold, the manager. Enraged at being yelled at, Harold fires Frank on the spot. A small group of employees surround the two in a tight huddle. Frank, instead of leaving, continues to argue, as other employees join in. It escalates with Harold being dragged into the employee lounge and assaulted. Someone calls the police, and four men, including Frank, are arrested. Mary is eventually fired for “instigating” the incident.
When his wife bails Frank out of jail, they are strapped for cash, and fall behind on the rent. A buddy calls him to tell him that a guy has shown up to repossess his car. “I need that car for work,” he tells Frank. “If it goes, my job goes, just like yours did.”
It doesn’t take very long for a half dozen people to show up on the street where the repo man leans on the tow-truck. More people join them. Several of them have already faced the same tow-truck and bored looking repo. Shouts start, and bottles fly at the tow-truck, which speeds away in the August heat. The repo guy dodges a bat, and takes off with a fresh array of dents to the car he came in.
Frank has looked forward to his day in court:
“We are the decent, law-abiding citizens,” he began nervously, “that built America. We are the ‘Joe six-packs’ who have always played by the rules, paid our taxes, and our mortgages. But they lied to us. We can’t refinance, like they promised. We live in Ohio. We live in Kansas. We live in Michigan, and Indiana. The last few years have been hard, but we’ve known hard times before. We’ve been ground down, but what’s happening now is different. The plastic is maxed out, and the interest rate is insane.
“We’ve given up our decent car. Now we drive a beater to work. We gave back the keys on our dream home. Now we live in a crappy apartment. Go out to eat? Hell, our wives have been reduced to hitting up the food pantry behind our backs. We’ve eaten too many “Velvetta” sandwiches for lunch, and our families have shared one too many cheese pizzas for dinner. We took a second, even third job, and our crummy pay check can’t provide enough gas money, steady meals, or a decent roof over our heads. Our kids are freezing at night in the winter, and still the oil bill is completely ridiculous. We’ve cut out all the extras, but the “math” doesn’t add up.
“We aren’t getting by. Not in the slightest. And it’s eating us up. We tried to keep some dignity, some pride. We’ve even hit up our relatives until they’ve had to say ‘I’m sorry. We can’t help. We’re hurting too.’ We’ve lost our dignity, because we had to, to keep our kids fed. We fought with our wives and screamed at our kids. We became the kind of men we promised ourselves we’d never be… because we’re angry. No. Angry doesn’t even capture it. I’m sorry, your honor, but we’re pissed.”
Frank begins to tremble. His voice cracks. Tears well up in his tired eyes.
“I’m one of the people who was supposed to get by…. I spoke to Sean Hannity once, and he said I was a ‘Great American…’” Frank sputters. “ And I voted for President Bush both times…”
“That’s quite enough!” the Judge cuts him off. Frank’s mouth is still slightly open. His lower lip trembles.
Suddenly, Frank has an epiphany that feels like a ball of boiling oil in the pit of his stomach. Thoughts pop into his head. Strange thoughts. An eerie calm relaxes the muscles in his face, and spreads through his entire being.
He doesn’t care what I have to say. He doesn’t even care what happened to Mary. He’s just one more big shot that could care less if we can pay our bills, keep a roof over our heads, or feed our kids. There is no justice. I’m on my own… We’re on our own….
Frank is not alone. Something inside the American working class “snaps.” Soon the feeling spreads like a treetop wildfire.
No one knows why, or where it started, but thousands of people from working-class neighborhoods write, “I’m so broke I can’t even pay attention!” on there credit card bills, and mail them back, postage paid.
Frank tries to explain himself to the local news reporter on the courthouse steps:
“I’m not a criminal or some kind of terrorist. I’ve never been on probation before…”
But local TV news ran a story that night that said he was. They lied about me. It didn’t happen like that at all. He no longer trusts “El Rushbo”, or Sean Hannity. Once he listened to them every day on the way from work. He never really thought about it, but now realizes that they’re not on his side. They’re on the other side: Harold the Wal-mart Manager’s side, the repo man’s side, the credit card’s side, the banker’s side, the bankruptcy court’s side, the judge’s side, and now, inexplicably, disorientingly, Frank struggles with the knowledge that he is now on the opposite side from where he thought he was his entire life…
In Terre Haute Indiana 13 cars are vandalized in the parking lot of a collection agency boiler room. The next day in Columbus Ohio, another collection agency office is torched at 3 am and burns to the ground. Within 3 months 28 collection agencies have suffered arson attacks totaling over seventeen million dollars in property damage. Assaults on repo men become so commonplace that police escorts become necessary. By Christmas Day 2010, over 150,000 people with no prior records have been arrested for assault, vandalism, and disorderly conduct. Fox News labels them the “Deadbeat Vigilantes” and “Blue Collar Bullies.”
Bloggers, labor organizers, and talking heads, all scramble to explain what’s happening to all the “Franks” across the country. What’s behind this wave of “Econo-Crime?” Some attack or defend, while others apologize, or demonize. But it doesn’t matter. Not to Frank. Frank has already taken a baseball bat to his TV and dropped it on the curb.
When six families on his street get their electricity shut off, he visits the electric company, and smashes all the car windows in the executive parking spaces. The next morning, in silent solidarity, six more TV sets are in broken heaps, curbside, on his street.
Frank played by the rules and expected to keep his dignity in tough times, to keep body and soul together. He was even willing to surrender the notions of prosperity and upward mobility that his parents had told him was his birthright.
But how can he give up the expectation of having the basics? Food? Shelter? Gas money for work?
The “Franks” become political, but only in the most radically personal way. There are no “leaders” in any traditional sense, even though some will try and run ahead to act as “spokesmen.” Politicians at first, will strive to “contain” them, but it will not matter. Demagogues will try to harness their rage, but will be ignored. They will not be contained by politicians, or co-opted by opportunists.
It will all unravel, unexpectedly and sporadically. While “official” reactions will incoherently bounce between condemnation and conciliation, sympathy will burgeon on the sidelines. Like the Argentineans who took to the street chanting: “Everyone Must Go! No One Can Stay!” working-class Americans will come to feel in a very personal sense that the system has failed them, and they have nothing left to lose.
We haven’t seen this kind of class rage in over a century. So far these Americans have been quietly complacent, waiting for the fundamental change that never comes.
There could be any number of flash points: a currency crisis, bank failures, skyrocketing food and oil prices, massive lay-offs, etc. Or perhaps there will be concurrent whirlpools of misery, sucking in the collective grievances of millions. It will manifest what has always been the single greatest fear of America’s ruling elite: “There’s a f*ck-load of them, and they have guns.”
What will happen when Middle America can no longer muddle through? Maybe it’s time for a Frank conversation.
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Frank Lee is a community organizer, social critic, and writer.
