Honor workers, especially in troubled times
How do you honor labor on this day, in these sad and troubled times? Here are some suggestions. Show your respect and consideration for the people who work in stores by wearing a mask. Thank them for their help and for keeping you in Kleenex and toothpaste and baked beans and sundries, whatever they are. If someone asks you to put on a mask, don’t be a jerk; these employees have enough worries already.
If you’re lucky enough to have a job, especially one you can do remotely, give a thought, plus thanks and perhaps a gift, to the people who regularly help and serve you. One trash collector interviewed on the evening news recently said it means quite a lot just to get a bit of appreciation from people along his route.
Continue to honor and remember the health care workers who have given their lives for us — there have been more than 1,000 now. Let their names be enshrined in the places where they served. Remember to thank the many people who keep things going and who often risk their lives doing so: rescue workers, utility workers, police, firefighters. Give a thought and perhaps some help one way or another to the people who clean houses, pick crops and provide the rest of what we eat — many of them migrants, cruelly misrepresented and maligned by commentators and politicians, many of whom do their fulminating these days from the safety of their living rooms.
Those are just a few things; there are many others. One of the most heartening was described in a Washington Post story by Cathy Free: a report on a small rural town in northeastern Colorado called Holyoke. Some of the community’s essential small businesses were hurting and facing shutdowns.
A banker named Tom Bennett got the idea that some farmers in the area might be getting by well enough that they could share at least part, and maybe all, of their federal stimulus payments with the town’s endangered businesses. It turned out there were quite a few ready to do just that, and a great many other people who were happy to help out. Local leaders of various organizations, including youth groups, joined in, and more than $93,000 was collected for the town’s small businesses.
“We were overwhelmed with emotion,” said Brenda Hernandez Ramirez, whose taqueria had been forced to shut down. Her business got a cash infusion, and her six employees received bonus checks.
“Feeling our community’s support during the pandemic gave us the ambition to keep on going,” she said. “I’m beyond thankful.”
There is reason to be grateful, not just for the help rendered to some but for communities large and small, urban and rural, that combine generosity with an understanding of our common humanity and how much we depend upon the labors of others.