The First Post!

This is the first Wandering Gentile post from the summer of 2003, discovered in the bowels of my Yahoo account. It is brought to the Gentle Reader in celebration of our hundredth post. We apologize for the pretentious use of Canadianized English, but hell, it seemed like a good idea at the time. The same excuse goes for the first G.W. Bush administration, spicy food, and any automobile built in the 1970s. Glad you're here, and thanks for spending time with The Wandering Gentile. Gil. Such a week, such a week. The face of evil was found on the face of a 31-year-old trucker from Schenectady, and it is a perfect irony. A black man was trafficking slaves. They were a commodity he was being paid to ship, just as his ancestors were on the ships out of Africa. They were a commodity to be sold for their labour in the streets of scores of municipalities across this great nation. It is with a heavy heart that one observes the complete lack of understanding this grave situation engendered. The trucker had cargo he was being paid for. The condition of the cargo did not matter to him. He did not consider the value of dead slaves on the open market:none. The black trucker's ancestors were valued more than the cargo he let die. Such is the course of human bondage in the twenty first century. Aliens without documents, education or legal recourse are better than slaves. They are expendable. When one dies or is deported, another five are queued for his place on the farm or in the chicken processing plant. These are menial jobs that most natives of the United States are not willing to take. This is not a defence of undocumented immigration...both of the enabling principals;i.e. the immigrants and the employers are equally guilty, but this is not exactly true. An undocumented alien does not have the education to understand that the United States disproportionately punishes a hungry neighbour for daring to seek scraps of our affluence in the rubbish bin. Yet there is no equivalent compulsion that would sanction someone who willingly seeks the hungry so that he may give them only scraps. Those who employ...and they do so knowingly...the undocumented face nonexistent scrutiny. Criminalising poverty does not repair the problem. The procedural crime must be less than the crime that engenders the procedural issue. People with education know better. The employers...at the highest level...must be accountable. The issues at more than one famous poultry processor are examplar. Large contributions to the previous administration appeared, and few charges have been filed. More contributions followed to the subsequent administration. Both political parties are equally culpable. But a deported undocumented employee has no voice, and more often than not, no paycheck. Anyone who believes that no one knew that there were deliberate mechanisms to recruit and employ undocumented workers in the poultry industry has never been to places like Gainesville, Georgia, or Chincoteague, Virginia, or any other place with a large poultry processing plant. As recently as fifteen or twenty years ago, the poultry industry was employing U.S. citizens. Once it was discovered that undocumented aliens do not speak out to the Labor Department or OSHA, the Americans went out on a rail. The eighteen who died on that truck in south Texas last week may not have been seeking employment in a poultry processor, but the conditions that make undocumented employees attractive to poultry processors empower the exploitative in many industries. Eighteen lives were worth US$2500 to a black trucker from Schenectady. Slaves are now rented instead of owned. Where are the Democrats from the civil rights community and the Teddy Roosevelt wing of the Republican party? The civil rights community will defend the black man and there will be Republicans who seek less scrutiny of business practices in spite of TR's abhorrence of injustice. It is a disgusting headstone for eighteen hungry people who died last week, and not worthy of the people of this Nation.