I was sitting in the Kmart parking lot this evening flipping through the radio stations (as I had forgotten my cd's in my van). As I was doing so I came across a station that told me "Dr. Whomever of Wherever University had been researching Dr. Martin Luther Kings speeches and wanted you to think about this line." Whereupon they played the obligatory ending of his "I have a dream" speech. Right as this played I looked up to see a black man unhappily pushing all the carts together to walk them back to the store. I don't know why but this struck me as rather poignant. I guess it was just thinking about what a shit job that must be. Thinking that if we all pitched in and helped each other by walking our carts back to the store (lets face it America, we could use the exercise) this guy wouldn't have this particular job. No we wouldn't be taking his job away from him, I'm sure he has tons of other menial tasks to attend to within the store. Maybe I'm wrong, it just seemed sad to be hearing this speech about all people being equal and seeing some poor bastard having to do crap work. Punctuated by the fact that King was a leader for black civil rights and this guy was black, and doing a job his pre-desegregation ancestors would have had to do. The only difference being they didn't have a choice because of laws, he doesn't have a choice because of the state of the economy.
we've come a long way, and have further still to go...