A complacent society is one fed by unrecognized labor, one powered by remote extraction, one happy with oligarchy as long as the man at the helm has the grace and poise of Barack Obama.

This complacent society consumes food picked and prepared with hands that are strong from decades of work, determined in the face of uncertainty. These hands feed us. Every day, our comfort a by-product of their struggle to feed themselves, their loved ones, their children.

And we eat, we feast, we do not think of these hands.

But they fuel the economy. Wealth accumulates above them. Farm owners, restaurant owners, retailers, developers: their profits amplified by these hands made cheap by our imperfect system of citizenship.

The acquisition of papers is granted, person by person, by a process that systemically segregates, designating the status of ‘worthy’ to some, of ‘unworthy’ to others. A process that is neither about misery nor heroism, but that bears our society’s incapacity to recognize the constructs by which we grant opportunity to some, and deny it to others.

This is a choice we have made, as civilians because we are indifferent, as business owners because we benefit, as politicians because fear of the other is a means of control.

May these hands, today, strike.

This is not just a fight to stay.
This is a fight for recognition.
A strike for a chance to change the rules of engagement.

These hands can no longer toil for a future that will not come.

STRIKE

To transgress the divide that assigns manual labor to some and citizenship to others,

STRIKE

Against the further isolation and division of the working class.

Undocumented labor is not a threat to our safety, it is a threat to the integrity of a society purportedly founded on principles of equity.

Unrecognized labor is an unrecognized caste system, the tacit acceptance of an underclass.

STRIKE

for self-determination
for dignity
for labor
for freedom from fear.

Mayday 2017: HUELGA!