Toiling

Last Monday, I participated in a service project for Martin Luther King Day near Anacostia Park in southeast Washington, DC. We were tasked with trash pickup on the side of Interstate-295. In the course of three hours, we literally picked up several tons of trash, including couches, beds, and a full, frozen oil can. The site of all that waste was powerful; even more striking was that the green grass we were cleaning up was seeded on top of a reclaimed landfill site. All of these ideas led to a question about waste and work: at what point do we think certain tasks are above us?

Housekeeper of the streets

I remember being encouraged as a child to do chores, from washing the dishes to taking out the trash. However, these responsibilities were not strictly enforced, and their was a lack of punishment for failing to complete our house duties. As my peers and I entered college, we definitely experienced far more rights than responsibilities. Our food was magically paid for and our housing costs were invisible during college for most people. We were told over and over again that we were being trained to lead: to be thought leaders,  captains of industry and decision makers in key policy areas.

From where I sit, it seems as though all of this rhetoric of election has a truly deleterious effect. Many people given a white-collar education, regardless of their economic background, are indoctrinated with an idea that certain types of work are beneath them. By extension, those who do the dirty work of our society (e.g. garbage collectors, housekeepers, window-washers) are given little notice if any acknowledgment as autonomous individuals in their interactions with the first group. I would go so far as to argue that the dehumanization of the folks doing our dirty work is an essential cause of the lack of outrage over their working conditions and their treatment.

Some people’s reaction when it comes to doing the necessary work of cleaning up intrigues me. The same food that they would indulge in suddenly becomes hazardous material upon entering a black plastic bag. The dust of our modern life becomes a battleground upon which haughtiness often triumphs over common sense and decency.

What do we do to make sure we are not so artificially removed from the leftovers of our consumption? How do we make the idea of cleaner homes and communities transition from disrespected and overworked laborers to a common exercise of free choice to do something about our surroundings. Most importantly, how do we simplify as not to have yours truly, or a young child, or two generations hence come upon the same withering couch or bed, slowly sinking into the ground on the side of the road?

I think the first step is to be more actively curious about how the food, the furniture, and even the walls around you come to be. What industrial processes and imagination came together to form the building blocks of the life you live is information worth knowing. Looking at how far the wood for your chairs or the rubber for your tires and insulation has traveled wouldn’t hurt either.

Next, it would be pleasantly shocking, I think, to the dehumanized cleaners if you actually talked to them; not smalltalk about the weather or the latest sporting event, but about what their lives are like. It would be eye-opening to see the sacrifices they make to be at your home or in your workplace cleaning for hours a day; how the lack of recognition impacts those full human beings you see in front of you, but feel some ineffable separation from. This is a solid strategy for keeping both feet firmly planted on the ground, in the midst of being primed to “ascend” the socioeconomic ladder.

I’ll leave this pondering with a quote from MLK himself, who most people are not taught was as much a campaigner for the rights of working-class people as he was for racial equity and integration. He said the following at a Memphis Sanitation Strike in 1968:

So often we overlook the work and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs. But let me say to you tonight that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.