I am not one to publicize my views. I don't have bumper stickers on my car. I don't put up yard signs. I don't, as a rule, march or demonstrate. The Women's March in 2016 and 2017 were an exception on that last one. Boy this president brings it out in you, doesn't he? I probably ought to call my senators and representatives more, but don't.
Don't get me wrong. I vote. In every blessed election. My daughter and her friends know that if you don't vote, you don't eat in my house. I listen to the news. I certainly am willing to discuss, on a personal basis, my views. I have them.
I also vote with my pocket book. I buy organic. I bring bags with me to the store, and jars and cloth bags for produce. I donate to causes that are of interest to me. I just don't habitually demonstrate.
There are likely some who will condemn me for the convenience of my views, my behaviors. I don't feel much pain this way, do I? Not putting myself out there on the line. They have a point.
This winter has brought a national and a local issue to my doorstep. The impeachment hearings are saturating my news feed. I simultaneously can't get enough of it, and am thoroughly sick of it. The whole affair feels like one of those movies where there is a train hurtling down the track toward the bridge, and we all know that the bridge has been sabotaged and the train will crash.
Of course the big question here is what does the train represent. I will just leave it there. But I despair for our constitution and rule of law. I despair for a large chunk of our represented leaders and their constituents who somehow think that this is not important. Not relevant. Up for debate.
As if riding out the winter in Seattle were not enough, the looming strike at my place of work occupies the portion of my brain that Trump and the impeachment has not subsumed. Never in my career did I expect I would need to participate in such an event. I have been working in healthcare, and been part of a union for decades. There have been sticking points, to be sure. But never have the twice a decade contract negotiations devolved to the point where a strike was imminent.
I admit that I reluctantly came to support the themes that the union was fighting for. They were only partially relevant to my day to day work life. I wanted to turtle in, try to stay below the bar so as not be noticed. I think the day that I discovered that the hospital was declining to pay the wages of the bargaining team after a grueling week of negotiations, when they had publicly stated that they would do so was the day that I realized that turtling in was not an option.
As we move day by day toward the strike date, and more and more details emerge, my resolve galvanizes. They are hiring security guards, painting stripes on city sidewalks and erecting chain link fencing? Just who does the administration think it is dealing with? We are not thugs! This sort of behavior on the part of the hospital disappoints me to the core. I realize that we are merely faces and not names. Numbers but not people. That their opinion of us must be quite low. I truly think they are expecting rocks and molotov cocktails.
My trust in my employer has taken a real beating. And I am tired. The tension at work is high. But it has forced me to publicly stand with my fellow employees, and to demonstrate. And to prove them wrong as we peacefully exercise our right to publicize the unacceptable working conditions that are a daily reality for many of my peers.
