Resources / Ripples & Wipeouts

I’m conflicted about SEIU’s challenge to the presidential candidates to “walk a day in [the] shoes” of its members. On the one hand, it’s great to call attention to the situation faced by many working people – work hard all day, but still not be able to support a family, or even yourself. On the other hand, can you think of a better media bonanza for the candidates? And how much do we really think the experience is going to do for a candidate’s views and practices?

Last week, Barack Obama tagged along with 61-year old homecare aid Pauline Beck while she cared for an 86-year old home-bound man in Oakland, California.  Obama washed dishes, dusted furniture and did the laundry, all the while being praised by Ms. Beck, who called him her “co-worker” and said the three hours he spent helping her would make him “a president who cares about labor.” How do I know this?  Because I read the feature story that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle the next day, and saw some of the ample television coverage that ran on the nightly news.

This Tuesday, Hillary Clinton is going to “walk in the shoes” of Michelle Estrada, a nurse who works in a Las Vegas surgical ward (and I’m betting not related to Erick).  Somehow, I doubt that our junior senator will be emptying bedpans, but one can always hope.  What I’m pretty certain she will be doing is parading around in the glow of the floodlights from NBC’s Today Show, which will be following Hillary while she sees how the other half lives.  She couldn’t buy that kind of coverage, or maybe she can, but you get my point.  Hillary spends a day on the ward and becomes a hero, while Michelle gets to go back and do it all over again, day after day after day.  I can’t help but think this whole “in my shoes” thing is just a gift to the other “other half,” those on top.

In 1890, in the first sentence of the introduction to his famous book, How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis wrote, “Long ago, it was said that ‘one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.’ That was true then.  It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those who were underneath so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat.” I wonder if that isn’t, on the whole, the way it is today. 

Now I’m not saying Hillary Clinton thinks that way, or indeed that any of the candidates do.  But it is disheartening that the gap between the very richest Americans and the average, working Americans keeps getting wider and wider by the year.  And also that we “average bears” persist in voting against our own economic self-interest. Perhaps that’s because gimmicks like “walk a day in my shoes,” and of course the media coverage they generate, keep fooling us into believing that the rich aren’t really that different at all.  But they are.  We work, and they run for office.

I would be happily convinced I’m wrong.  Calling all true believers: Does anyone out there see it differently?

--BONNIE