This I/A goes out to all the "essential" workers, are you like me fucking tired of risking your lives for pennies, tired of serving Karens who refuse to wear masks because they don't see you as human, tired of working 10+ hour shifts but mysteriously never earning overtime, tired of watching your co-workers get sick one-by-one? Fucking me too dude it's time we seriously start thinking about a general strike.

There is no business without us 'unskilled' labourers, the grocery store clerks, stockers, cashiers, baristas, budtenders, burger flippers, janitors, warehouse pickers, delivery drivers. It's time to stop throwing ourselves into the covid meat grinder so that members of the Portland Business Bureau can sit comfortable in their million dollar mansions

This probably seems impossible, at best foolish and naive, at worst it's some very preachy commie shit. I cannot stress enough to you that that's by design, corporate propaganda spread for decades because turns out organized labor is VERY effective. How the hell do you think those European mfs got shit like four day work weeks, family leave, and long stretches of paid vacation? Why do you think Amazon executives get weeks of training on union busting? They're afraid of us.

Talk to your friends about organizing, to that one co-worker who brings in cookies for the break room, to the guy from the deli counter who you gripe about work with, and go look up resources for collective bargaining there's tons.

If they're going to call us essential, we can demand they treat us like it, or watch how bad things get when we all decide we've had enough.