Misadventures in the city
By Beth Connors-Manke
Sometimes persistence is not a virtue. And this guy had it. The first time, he pulled up next to me in a way I could easily ignore as coincidence. When he then did a U-turn and honked at me, I started to get it. My ire flared, but I figured that the complicated maneuver of following me the wrong way down a one-way street would deter him. The issue would be finished. Continue reading »
Paid for by a Community Supported Journalism share.
Misadventures in the city
By Beth Connors-Manke
In December, I wrote a column about stickering over sexist images and graffiti that popped up along on my daily commute. In both cases, my resistance was reactive: I was trying to block someone else’s message. Since then, more sexist—sometimes virulently and violently sexist—messages have come my way, although not always at street level. Continue reading »
The continuing struggle of garment workers
By Beth Connors-Manke
If you view history as a discrete set of events, then the similarities are eerie. March 1911: 146 garment workers, many of them young women, die in a factory fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. November 2012: 111 garment workers, many of them women, die in a factory fire at the Tazreen Fashions Company. Neither building had a sprinkler system, although the technology was available. Both factories had fabric stored in ways that led easily to raging fires; in both factories, escape routes were blocked and workers were hindered from speedy evacuations. In each case, workers had protested labor conditions before the disasters.
However, if you view history as a long struggle for progress and social justice, the similarities are depressingly tragic. One hundred years after the Triangle fire in New York City, the Tazreen blaze in Dhaka, Bangladesh, again finds Americans thoughtlessly complicit in deadly working conditions for garment workers. It may not have happened in one of our industrial cities, but the Tazreen fire still occurred in our supply chain—it is still a product of our economic structure and attitudes about labor. Continue reading »
Be George Bailey
By Beth Connors-Manke
The transcendent part of It’s a Wonderful Life is supposed to be George Bailey’s realization that his life, disappointing as it was to him, had positively impacted others’ lives. As viewers, we’re supposed to empathize with George’s struggles and be warmed by his hope and reconciliation at the end. However, when I watched the film again last week, the part that resonated the most wasn’t George’s redemption; it was the economics of housing. Continue reading »
Misadventures in the city
By Beth Connors-Manke
I’ve been a feminist for a long time and have always seen it as a survival skill, a way of protecting myself. For instance, when I was in grade school I was issued this warning: “Stay a way from that park—a girl got raped there.” (The park area abutted our suburban neighborhood.) This turned out to be one of many warnings that I received over the years, many of which were validated by stories of friends who were raped, friends who were persuaded that sex was the main thing they had to offer, friends who circumscribed their lives because of sexist pressures. All this made me immensely angry—as it should have—and feminism helped me push back. It also helped me survive girlhood relatively unscathed. Continue reading »
Misadventures in the city
By Beth Connors-Manke
Last summer, I wrote a column entitled “It’s getting dangerous around here” about being bitten by a dog in my neighborhood. The result of the incident (besides the aforementioned column) was that I bought pepper spray as a mild attempt at holding off canine attacks.
From that Misadventures dispatch: “When I get home [from being bitten by the dog], I’m pissed. I’ve spent the last year and half negotiating the hazards on N. Lime so I could make the streets safer for myself, and now someone’s damned dog has made my walks dangerous again. Seriously, I’d rather have a drunk yell profanity at me three times a week than have some lame-o’s loose dog take a big chunk out of my calf.” Continue reading »
Shadow economies, part 3
By Beth Connors-Manke
In parts 1 and 2 of this series, Beth discussed sex trafficking and labor trafficking. Here, she ends the series by considering how the economy of human trafficking denies individuals a place in the public sphere.
In the course of this series, I’ve gotten to speak with, or listen to, anti-trafficking activists of various stripes: lawyers, academic researchers, social workers, politicians, grassroots activists, and once a survivor of sex trafficking. In my research, I’ve found mostly statistics and anecdotes—articles on the topic generally read: “there are this many victims, and here’s a representative story.” When speakers who have survived trafficking come to town, they are usually women, and it’s usually about sexual slavery.
In other words, in most of the discourse about the issue, the response is numbers and drama. Sometimes the discussion wades into the structural elements, economic and cultural, that contribute to human trafficking, but rarely does it go deeply into those waters.
That’s to be expected. Anti-trafficking activists are attempting interventions that will affect lives right now, whether that be through legislation, law enforcement practices, social services, or consumer awareness. All of this is necessary and timely, and there is much work to be done.
However, in my last piece in this series, I’d like to ask different questions, ones that reflect on the direction of our public sphere. Continue reading »
Homegrown labor trafficking
By Beth Connors-Manke
In part one of this series, Beth discussed sex trafficking, especially in the imagination of middle class American culture. Here, she turns her attention to forced labor.
On May 25, Marco Antonio Flores-Benitez pleaded guilty to conspiracy to sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion. This is the first conviction for human trafficking in Kentucky, and not surprisingly it was for the sex side of human trafficking and related to illegal immigration. Flores-Benitez and three others orchestrated a commercial sex delivery service that shuttled women between Lexington and Louisville and then stretched further to Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee. According to the March 2 indictment, two of the four defendants had been previously deported; the other two had entered the U.S. illegally.
While burgeoning popular understandings of human trafficking often associate it with commercial sex and illegal immigration, it may be more useful to see it through an economics and labor lens: this is a shadow economy that’s has been growing, and continues to grow, amidst the humdrum of our daily lives. Continue reading »
Will pay for public education
By Beth Connors-Manke
On April 5, 2012, The Herald-Leader ran an opinion piece by Whitney Tilson, a hedge fund manager and a member of Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength. Following Warren Buffet’s lead, Tilson came out of the closet as a person who cares about more things than just his own bank account.
Tilson began his article, which originally ran in the Washington Post, with a statement that surely caused angina, if not outright cardiac arrest, in the R. Paul family:
“I am part of the 1 percent of the 1 percent. By that I mean that I am fortunate to be a wealthy American and I say, ‘It’s okay to raise my taxes.’”
Gasp, sputter.
Inspired by rich people who display that philanthropic spirit also known as paying equitable taxes, I’ll offer my own public plea:
“I am part of the 99 percent. I am fortunate to have had access to a good American education and I say, ‘It’s okay to raise my taxes to support public education.’” Continue reading »
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