Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 303-306

I have an MA and my husband has a PhD in biology. He has won major research awards, etc. He was still struggling to find work a year ago. We are just now (he is 36) on the cusp of a permanent job for him (one that will not change in 2 or 3 years). If he were not a citizen, he would have no trouble finding job upon job in research. Yes, it's all a scam. We are in loan debt up to our ears, and we did a lot of smart things. He went to a very cheap and good undergrad, and we both had fellowships. We started to "Get it" with regard to the fraud of American education and jobs about five years ago. Oh, and we just moved back here from Canada because guess what? With awards and with a proven track record in genetics and research my husband could not get a job at the time in his own freakin' country (gotta love the Bush years). We say we want math and science to have a bigger place in America, but I don't believe it. My husband has questioned many times whether he should have gone down this path... he is good at it, but it's a LOT of work and life sacrifice for very little reward ultimately. I think this will only get worse with H1B Visas.
Posted by: gazey
Dec 2, 2008



…we often reveal what we most loathe about ourselves via our jobs. They represent how we want others to perceive us. I ask every nurse, “Why did you become a nurse?” “I wanted to help people.” Anyone who has ever done any inner work knows that we can’t ‘help’ anyone. We can only assist others in their healing. We all must do our own work. Nurses tend to believe that taking care of others is more honourable than taking care of themselves and their self-loathing is revealed by their rampant addiction to substance as well as behaviour. Most nurses are one of or any combination of: overweight, smokers, drinkers, or druggies. Those who aren’t don’t claim to identify themselves as BEing a nurse. They are likely to know, “I am not my job.” Those who try to hide-out with their professions are doing themselves a disservice, not to mention those with whom they come into contact. Cops, collection agents, and all others who intend to intimidate people want the world to perceive them as ‘powerful’ – but only because they believe they are not. Since at some visceral level we all know this the cops become bullies because their jobs fail to assuage them of their belief in their powerlessness. The status of one’s job might seem powerful yet those behind the titles are powerless, by their own estimation, or they wouldn’t have chosen that particular vocation.
Mary Elizabeth: Croft



"‘You fill out a job application and you can’t write ‘long-range reconnaissance and sniper skills.’"
ANDREW SPURLOCK, an Army infantryman who was disabled in the Iraq war, on his search for a job that paid better than delivering pizzas.
New York Times
November 18, 2008





I Will Not Obey


The new ruling party is holding the aces
The rest of the cards are all missing faces
I’m sorry I can’t know you today
What can one say? I will not obey.

Give us your sons and give us your daughters
No one is safe or immune from the slaughter
How indifference makes them rage
What can one say? I will not obey.

National Guard or freedom fighters
All houses belong to cigarette lighters
But who hides in the smoke?
What can one say? I will not obey.

Better perhaps to perish outside
Of the bunkers where our generals hide
I turn away and spit
What can one say? I will not obey.

Give us the minds of your children to learn
The substance of books we have not yet burned
But can they read the sky for rain?
What can one say? I will not obey.

Soon all tyrants will feel our impatience
We choose to create our own combinations
I was always willing to agree
What can one say? I will not obey.

The essence of contract is agreement
Not coercion or obedience
And agreement is sacred
What can one say? I will not obey.

There’re so few wars of people’s liberation
For the people have so seldom risen; only the armed faction
Listen, the armed faction lies
They recreate the state through their action
When the people rise
It is not they, but the state, which dies

I sing this song for the prisoners’ release
Most of all now for the new state police
You see, the guns have changed hands - again
What can one say? I will not obey.


Utah Phillips, 1935-2008