*Carlos is a fake name used in this story to protect the real identity of the characters involved.
A creak opens the door of a ground level apartment as a young Latino man walks out on a sunny summer afternoon, a day perfect for swimming. He wears a uniform consisting of black pants and a red polo shirt with a commercial logo on it. He is hunched over as his pair of glasses slide further down his nose. His expression remains emotionless as he stares at the ground below him. Keeping the movement of his upper body consistent as well as the elevation of his head, this young man begins to walk to work.
As he passes my view, I notice that this young man no longer looks young, instead his body has changed. His tucked in shirt is tight at his belly, which is placing pressure on his shirt. His belt is deep within his guts as he struggles to fix its position then gives up to keep walking. This man is not only now an adult, rather, he now looks like a middle aged adult. One who with a tired expression begins to walk to work, slowly muttering to himself along the way.
I live in an area where it is not uncommon to see young men work on weekday summer afternoons. In fact, to have people begin to work early seems to be a cultural norm that continues to be respected by American society, liberal and conservative alike. Hard work is believed to make one capable of being a complete person, of being able to survive and prosper, of enabling one to achieve the overused but rarely defined notion of the “American Dream.” However, unlike most young men in our neighborhood, he does not attend college, 4-year or otherwise. The real tragedy is that this young man I once knew as a happy child full of dreams works a low paying full time job all year round, and perhaps for the rest of his life. His life is confined around an afternoon shift at a single department store, where perhaps his job is to pass materials through a machine that is not only automated but also causes him to become automated. The tragedy is not that he has to do this, it is that he is likely stuck doing this for the rest of his life.
I in fact, remember his family, an elderly Latino mother who would try to keep her kids out of the temptation of sweets and candy by giving out dollar bills on Halloween and taking her kids to church. One who tirelessly tried to provide for her children even if she herself worked a low paying job. Constantly I question myself how it was possible for a mother who cared so much for her children, and her children who were so full of hopes and aspirations to become so hopeless and dulled out, and the depression sunk in with the fact that no one is helping.
From my own inaction, I feel an immense sorrow. I have failed to keep in touch with this childhood friend and have in fact never fully considered what his post high school graduation status was. Perhaps due to our own inadequacies to care about these people, our lawmakers fail to enact legislation to help more people get out of the minimum wage job and into a career. Regardless, action must be done to give these people meaningful work that not only fulfills their needs (food, mortgage, insurance) but also allows them to spend their day doing something that they find enjoyable. Thus, the question becomes - if we all want to do this for everyone, how do we do this? And what can we do as individuals to allow this to happen?
