I have been in too many unfortunate discussions in my life where people tense up or out right dismay political discussion at work. I’ve got some time on my commute back home and maybe I can say a few words here. Maybe you’re also having a few minutes to spare and can take a look.
Here is my point: workplace is inherently a political space!
Everything in your workplace is political. From the simple fact that it operates under this capitalist system instead of many many other options available to our kind to organize our work, to how much control it has over our bodies as it drags us out of bed in the morning (or sometimes when ever it deems necessary) and puts us to work to its benefit. And all we get in return is a sugar cube at the end of the month for being a good cart horse. Try this one day and you will see, go to work early in the morning in public transport, and look at your co-commuters’ faces as they drag themselves to work. Is this waste of human life not political?
It’s political when it can only harvest profit through exploitation of its workers. Look at Amazon. Look at Tesla. Look at all the Union busting companies… exploitation can’t be nonpolitical. look at the insane wage gap in these entities between CEOs and the workers. look at them not paying their tax either.
It’s political when we are groomed from childhood in their school systems to become the good future worker for their companies. Not even having the ability to imagine a different world.
It’s political when the workplace has a severe impact on our future and the future of all humans who will come after us through its mode of production, its direct side effects, its policies or the behavior of the decision makers(as they travel around the world on their private planes, making sure that there is no tomorrow).
It’s political when they all band together through condemnation, divestment and sanctions, when people of their economical world are in misery but turn a blind eye when my kind are being massacred.
It’s even political when we sit and talk about our lives, at the lunch table, telling each other how lovely our middle-class weekend was, without thinking what it means. How it is only possible to have this life on the back of the rest of the world. Or when you call yourself an expat instead of an immigrant. Or when you tell everyone how proud you are that a head of a state visited your workplace. Or when you complain how these lefties make everything political… its all politics!
I eat alone at work as much as I can. I don’t join social events. Its not cause i think im not like the other girls. Im very much like the other girls. Im just tired of your politics that you are so blind to its presence. Politics where elimination of all spoken politics leaves only one option… the unchanging state of dominant politics of pain and misery.
and everytime I say this, someone says, why don’t you go somewhere that you feel good. as if there is anywhere to go to…