Whose Labor is Your Life’s Foundation Built Upon?

We give lip service to “essential workers” during a pandemic, and are about to celebrate a holiday for those who “labor”, but these recognitions often don’t help the most vulnerable of workers.  We buy and eat berries but don’t give much thought to who grew those berries, picked them by hand, and delivered them to the marketplace. We buy a piece of clothing online and don’t give a thought to how it was made or who made it (and who delivers it to our door). Teachers, health care and nursing home workers, janitors, service and tourist industry workers: the list goes on and on of people we deeply depend upon, but who are often not compensated fairly or have limited control over their work lives. I’ve read many good articles recently about some of these people (migrant farm workers), a transit worker in New York, and a woman returning home to the South and overcoming a fraught relationship with the people and the land.