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D'Ammassa: Politicians Should Honor Working Class Or Be Replaced

  This week, let's dip into the mailbag.

 

This is not a real mailbag, of course, but Desert Sage's dedicated email address: DesertSageMail@gmail.com.  In hopes of making this column a bit more interactive and to invite Luna County's denizens to share their stories, questions, and concerns, please feel free to drop a virtual letter.

 

In particular, Desert Sage invites personal experiences regarding employment in Luna County. We would like to hear personal experiences, on or off the record, from employers to employees, from policymakers dealing with our economy and its consequences, from people looking for work or who have given up looking for work.

 

Desert Sage has heard second-hand about employers' frustrations, and welcomes their insights as well. If this column contributes to an improved conversation across social classes about the greater welfare of local business and workers in Luna County, the space will have been well used.

 

Another way to participate in the conversation is to send letters to the Headlight for publication, which is just what Philip Skinner, the mayor of Columbus did last week. (For our internet readers: this is Columbus, New Mexico, a village south of Deming bordering Mexico - not the city in Ohio.)

 

Mayor Skinner was unhappy with this column for criticizing the rhetoric of politicians who cover their failure to increase opportunity for the working class by scapegoating the poor. I criticized Congressman Steve Pearce for doing so at a recent event in Columbus and suggested that elected officials focus on improving training and jobs first rather than demonize the poor for being lazy or dishonest, something we hear all too often from elected officials of both parties. The unemployed and underemployed are constituents deserving the respect and concern of elected officials.

 

At the town hall meeting in question, Representative Pearce said, "There is a culture in the town that simply says we are not going to take the available opportunities." Skinner claims I took these words out of context, but provides no new context in which those words mean something other than what they mean.

 

Skinner also accuses me of dishonestly painting "a false class-warfare narrative" to divert from the issue of creating jobs. Dismissing class analysis as a false narrative is as preposterous as denying the existence of numbers. If you grasp that employers and employees at any given time have different problems or interests, that people in poverty choose among different sets of options than those who are more secure, that some people are born into different advantages and opportunities than others, you are acknowledging that class conflict is part of human reality. It shows us much about how our world works.

 

Social class is not simply about income or lifestyle, but about the power you have over your own life and the life of others. It is about our economic positions in society, the range of choices available to us, and the power and autonomy we enjoy in the workplace. Economic power and political power are interrelated. 

 

Blaming unemployment on a bad "culture" is scapegoating. Show us some data. Fraud  can be dealt with. If we have widespread drug addiction, it's a public health emergency, not a moral problem. If local workers aren't prepared for the jobs that are available, we need education and training, not demeaning rhetoric.If local contractors can't win bids for local projects that employ local workers, let's address that. If our economy can't provide enough secure, well-paying jobs, let's address that.

 

Otherwise, the working class should use its electoral power to elect new representatives who regard them with honor and work for their benefit.