By: Seraphina Quinn
Two or three times a week, I drive by a mural of clenched fists raised over the bannered slogan “The people united will never be defeated.” This is a small-business incubator for fledgling entrepreneurs in the very individual process of striving to secure a foothold in late capitalism. No idea of origin story—when painted, by whom, with what intention. And which was there first. By now, the image has faded into streetscape, hardly noticed, an idea with its teeth pulled. But then, one day I drove by a Dollar General Store and saw a group I took to be workers there waving what appeared to be handmade protest signs protesting low pay and unsafe conditions. Of course, they too yearn for a firmer foothold, at least a few more dollars per hour. Next time I passed, personnel and signs were absent, and I saw a big “We’re Hiring!” sign.
The Faded Mural and Dollar General Workers’ Protest
My impromptu “windshield survey” coincided with students taking over university campuses to protest the Israel-Hamas-Gaza war/conflict and pressure their schools to divest from related financial alliances. The juxtaposition had me thinking about the distance between workers’ modest aims and elite students’ change-the world ambitions. Though the two populations may live in the same country, they inhabit very different worlds, at either end of the great economic divide of “Financial stability and wealth inequality…[and] related disparities and anxieties …stoking social discontent…increased political polarization and populist nationalism…” (Zia Qureshi. Rising Inequality: A Major Issue of Our Time. Brookings Institution. May 16, 2023). And the different actions indicate how “An increasingly unequal society can weaken trust in public institutions and undermine democratic governance.”
Juxtaposition of Workers’ Aims and Students’ Ambitions
The DG workers fit United Way’s ALICE (Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed) definition. Typically, unskilled or semi-skilled, living paycheck to paycheck, they have scant financial reserves for emergencies. Most days, they too fade into the background, taken for granted, hardly noticed. And yet, in the moment I witnessed, they looked excited, as if reveling in their own courage, reminding that they’re Atlas holding up the whole structure. Cashiers, stockers, warehouse workers, pharmacy clerks, day care and nursing home aides, without whom many key functions grind to a halt. Yet they are often treated as interchangeable “hands.” More where they came from.
Economic Divide and Social Discontent
View student demonstrators, in contrast, as lifelong winners. “The great and brightest,” they beat the competition to make it into universities. Some may be scholarship kids, but many presumably have parents who can foot the massive tuition bills. It’s said most have only a cursory grasp of the Middle East’s complicated history, newly picked up watching the conflict on social media. (Tawnel D. Hobbs, et al. Activist Groups Trained Students for Months Before Campus Protests. Wall Street Journal. May 3, 2024). Note the headline’s slant, trying to blame “outside agitators,” in an echo of the 1960s. PBS’ Frontline Crisis on Campus (2024) suggested many students view this as just another anti-colonial war of liberation, rather than “one of the world’s intractable and complex conflicts.” But interviews with Jewish and Arab students and professors at Columbia University in NYC indicate a strong grasp of issues from opposing perspectives. Campuses across the nation have been polarized, roiled by dueling accusations of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Jewish students at Columbia sued the university for failing to address threats to their safety. A major Jewish donor stopped his contributions to the university.
The Invisible Workforce: ALICE Workers
Disruptive behaviors could be the catchphrase for these restless, jittery, times, “rife with violence, injustice and disappointments.” (Sara Marcus. Political Disappointment: A Cultural History from Reconstruction to the AIDS Crisis. Belknap Press of Harvard University. c2023). Passion and resentment carry individuals, groups, and society along on tides of “mistrust, failures of elites, and weakened institutions.” (Zeynep Tufecki. Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. Yale University Press. c2017). Does the urge to direct action reflect a growing sense that the world’s grown too complicated and nothing’s working, except for a very few? And it starts to make a different kind of sense to go DIY, intervene and break everything down and start over. Nathan Schneider captured that impulse in his informal case study of the earlier Occupy Wall Street movement (2011). (Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse. University of California Press. c2015). It also emerges in miniature with comedians’ subversive campaigns for higher office. Must all be a joke. Kinky Friedman, who recently died, once ran for Governor of Texas with the slogan “How Hard Can It Be?”
View of Student Demonstrators as Lifelong Winners
But, of course, effective disruption takes organizing and is no joke. It takes belief in/hope for the possibility of a different future—vividly imagined, talked about, manifested. (Jesse Bossewitch paraphrased in Schneider). And weaving those beliefs and hopes into stories with the power to shift the narrative to capture minds and hearts (Tufecki). Hard not to suspect Hamas stage managed this story, calibrated the October 7 attacks and hostage taking to provoke Israel into scorched-earth retaliation. And stationed its fighters to put their own people in harms’ way in residential areas, hospitals, schools, knowing resulting images of death and destruction would bring the issue onto the world stage as never before. “The ultimate goal is changing the American and worldwide conversation.” But can that lead to a clear resolution? The only “solutions” offered remain finding a way to single state (a non-starter after decades of trying amid mounting mutual distrust, animosity, violence) or dismantling the state of Israel (not acceptable). And thus, the bloody circular stalemate drags on and on. (Bazelon). And could break out into wider warfare with other Arab factions.
Complexity of Disruptive Behaviors in Modern Times
DG workers aspirations for something closer to a living wage don’t have the same degree of resonance. But if our domestic arena has become international, it’s yet another signal of “mounting global disparities [that continue to] imperil geopolitical stability.” (Qureshi). It also raises a critical question. Why does it seem so much easier to empathize with folks on the other side of the world than with people right here, our fellow citizens, like the DG workers? Because they’re less abstract? This distance plays out in the ways the two groups interact. We can’t quite say, “never the twain shall meet,” but the power imbalance is undeniable. Have student protestors ever entered a dollar store? Their interactions are more likely with barely noticed “support staff,” like janitors, baristas, wait staff, Uber drivers, etc.
Impact of Organized Protests and DIY Interventions
And that has me wondering. Can’t we do better? If student protestors can imagine a new order, why can’t I? Fortunately, I am not alone in this kind of thinking. I’m even aware of two possible alternate models. I first read “The Great Game of Business” in Inc. Magazine almost 40 years ago. This is a self-described “management system that starts and ends with getting employees educated, engaged and involved in making the financial, process and cultural decisions that build a company.” And understanding that “allowing employees to set their own targets can lead to increased buy-in and engagement….and commitment towards achieving goals.”
Media Influence on Perception of Conflicts
Then, on another drive on another day, (I do drive a lot), I listened to Freakonomics Radio on NPR: Should Companies Be Owned by Their Workers? (Episode 587. May 8, 2024). Host David Dubner explored that question with 1) the director of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) Association; 2) a very mainstream private equity manager who founded the non-profit Ownership Works to promote profit sharing during mergers and acquisitions; and 3) a Democracy Collaborative critic of private equity and its influence on the economy and concentration of wealth. Only tried on a small scale so far, but the ideas are slowly gaining ground.
Global Disparities and Domestic Implications
So, if we have these models, why have we been slow to adopt them? Both might smack of creeping socialism to some. And no surprise, given corporate and CEO egos, there’s resistance from the top. Climbing the ladder tends to come with a fondness for command-and-control management. And what would folks like the DG workers think anyway? Could they imagine/envision workplaces leaning even a bit more toward dialogue than monologue? Where they’d be “treated with respect for their intelligence and creativity” as per the Great Game? Would that seem too good to be true? Would they suspect, if not a scam, it’s window dressing, lip service like the bromide “Our employees are our greatest assets?” That they’d be expected to work harder for no more gain?
Exploring Alternate Business Models for Worker Empowerment
The greatest barrier seems to be assumptions about workers, that they lack the capability. They may even doubt themselves. Think of John Fogarty and CCR song “It Ain’t Me,” with the refrain “I ain’t no fortunate one.” But what if we can start changing these perceptions? Our revolutionary act could be doing all we can to ditch deep-seated prejudices and stereotypes that discount many fellow citizens. Philosophers like Edmond Husserl identified the practice of Othering, “…labeling and defining a person as belong[ing] to a socially subordinate category…exclud[ing] persons who do not fit the norm of the social group…[and]…displacing them…to the margins of society…” (Wikipedia). This shows up, of course, in race and gender relations. And it’s certainly prominent on both sides of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also applies to financial growth differences, as summarized in NIH National Library of Medicine. National Center of Biotechnology Information. “Rich people…are cross-nationally (37 samples in 27 nations) stereotyped as more competent (but colder) than poor people, especially under conditions of greater growth inequality. In contrast, poor people are stereotyped as lazy and substance abusers in the US as well as in egalitarian Sweden.”
Overcoming Assumptions and Stereotypes to Foster Inclusion
From a human perspective, the toughest part of capitalism for workers must be knowing they’re perceived as interchangeable parts, easily replaceable. Probably a legacy of mass production and batch processing that persists in the service economy and customizing. Old habits do hang on. What can we do to change this part of the narrative? If we’re imagining, perhaps we could recruit already energized student protestors. Could we pique the curiosity of these future captains of industry and finance about how the world works and doesn’t for folks like the DG workers? And encourage them to test drive and improve alternate business models like the ones described above. The venture capitalist Dubner interviewed belongs to a working-class family, so such crossover can happen. At my most optimistic, I can envision such efforts leading to greater worker inclusion not just in economic benefits, but also greater agency and fuller participation in running businesses, since they are the ones with actual experience of what it takes to do the job. I like Schneider’s quote from an Occupy participant adjusting to the aftermath of that movement. “Keep walking and keep asking questions.”
Published by: Martin De Juan
