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January 31, 2006
We Are Having Fun. We're Changing Our Lives.
That was what one of the medical lab technologists said this afternoon as she smiled for a group picture after the Labor Board Hearing. It was one of those "Ah, I love my work," almost brings me to tears moments. After fifteen years of languishing in a union that held these folks back instead of helping them mobilize and do better for themselves, a group of 700 health care professionals are in the process of leaving that union and joining our union. It hasn't been easy... it never is. But today at the Labor Board they started to feel how much power they really do have when they're united. It goes beyond wages, benefits, and working conditions. It's about respect, about feeling like you have a voice in your job -- and actually having one! About knowing you can speak up if you see an unsafe practice, one that might hurt a patient, without fear of losing your job. About knowing that you'll retire with some dignity after a lifetime of caring for others. Not too much to ask, but so hard for American workers to get.
It was a good day for an "I love my work" moment because today was the three year anniversary of the only strike our union has had. It was up in coal mining country in northeast Pennsylvania, and the main issue was mandatory overtime. Yes, in the US it is perfectly legal (in most states, but not New Jersey, thanks to the work of my previous union! Jersey Girls know how to fight.) to force a nurse to stay for a double shift, even if she's already worked eight, ten or twelve hours. Even if she has children at home and a husband who has to leave for work and no childcare. Even if she has no one to pick up her kids from school, or no one to make dinner for her elderly mother, or even if she's just so tired she can't think straight. Yes, that nurse could be forced to keep taking care of patients, not just under threat of losing her job, but in far of losing her nursing license. A nurse can't abandon her patients, and if her employer won't provide another nurse to relieve her, she's trapped.
It was a very cold winter that year, much colder than this year. The nurses had had enough: they knew their employer wanted to not just win on the issue but to break their spirit and break their union. They said no, and they gave notice and walked out. Management paid millions of dollars to a scab nursing company from Colorado to fill the hospital -- heaven forbid they lose revenue by ceasing to do business!
I was fairly new to my union at that point, having just returned from Vermont three months before. I had known my boss for years, but had never been close friends with him. But the strike threw us together, and he knew instantly that he could depend on me to do whatever needed to be done, without asking idiotic questions or complaining about being tired. When 400 people are putting their livlihoods on the line, it's not a good time to argue or whine. He had led many strikes, but they're always scary, and the responsibility is awesome.
I had just come off leading that giant campaign in Vermont, so I knew what it felt like to have hundreds of people's hopes, dreams and paychecks riding on your ability to think clearly and lead. He is one of very, very few people who are willing to shoulder the entire weight of a real fight. And he never ceases to amaze me with how good he is.
I remember calling Francis (who was in the process of having his epiphany, but hadn't quite busted out with it yet) to tell him about the strike. "You know how arrogant I am," I said to Francis, "But this dude I'm working with just blows me away. I am honored to be in the same room with him." I think Francis was just a tad jealous... not because of any sexual tension (my boss is both not my type and also very married) but because I was passionately admiring another organizer's work.
Scenes I will never forget... the nurse coming in crying because a friend of hers who was an LPN (and not in the bargining unit on strike, so she had to go into work) had been fired for "not being nice enough" to a scab nurse. I held her and we talked about it until she was ready to get up and walk the picket line again. After the strike, she wrote me a letter saying how much she appreciated it... "It was like you appeared out of nowhere for us. You were truly a Godsend." I still get weepy when I re-read it.
The moment when my boss (let's call him Edward, because that's not his name) stood up at a meeting of 400 nurses who were voting to reject management's lame offer and stay out in the cold, without a paycheck. "I will never apologize for having passion!" he shouted. He talked about how the coal miners, many of them the ancestors of the nurses in the room, had shed blood to make this land safe for regular workers. The nurses knew that they were part of something much bigger than just their hospital or their job. Their spirits were joined with those workers who had fought and even died for the rights we have now, the rights we have to fight to protect.
Watching Edward's two sons, then 6 and 10, marching at the front of a rally procession, carrying our union's banner proudly, with their mom, a radical nurse herself, beaming at them. Watching a 30 year nurse get up in front of 2000 people at a rally, speaking in public for the first time, and tell her community members why she was standing out on a picket line when she'd rather be inside caring for sick patients. Just being there while so many people stood up for themselves, for their families, for their patients and their profession, and for what's right. Being able to be a part of that.
I have a video that we took during the strike, and I showed it to MR the first time we came into contact with a VCR. I broke down crying halfway through, unable to believe that I had even for a couple of months been able to leave the work I love. Edward says "That was about MR," but he's wrong about that. He chalks it up to being unhinged by love... Edward can understand being unhinged by love, but he didn't quite get the anti-aging thing. (I would like to point out however that he is an Mprize donor!) He found it hard to believe that I could believe so strongly in another cause that I would walk away even for a moment from the movement we've fought so hard to keep alive. It is a testament to how strongly I do believe in the work of Aubrey de Grey, the Mprize, the SENS project, and my Orange Angel, that I was willing to, as P Diddy sayeth, "Trade it all." I eventually realized that I am not me if I'm not organizing workers -- after all, being around to see a better day for labor was my original motivation for getting into life-extension! Well, that and not wanting to look like crap. But anyhow.
As it turns out, I can do both... I love my volunteer work for the Mprize, and I feel like it makes a tiny bit of a difference. But organizing isn't a part time job, so I've got to pour my whole heart, soul, day and night, into it. My Orange One is extraordinarily supportive. He's got good politics himself, and he too is not one to apologize for having passion. In fact, it is his passion for what he believes in, and his willingness to stand by it no matter what it costs him, that constantly amazes and awes and attracts me.
You can see why my work is so important to me, so much so that for years I let it be more important than my health. I was so happy to be in such a good environment when I got back from Vermont, so overjoyed to be surrounded by some of the most amazing people on earth, that I thought it was too much to ask for fulfillment outside of work too. I really felt like I had to work 24/7 to be worthy of the gift of this meaningful calling that pays me. Sure, I sorta wanted a partner, but it was hard to imagine a man who would put up with me and would be able to not just handle but share my crazy passions.
When I think about how I let my health go in the immediate lead up to my conversion to CR, I think a lot of it was motivated by the sense that any time I spent doing anything other than working would cause me to lose the happiness I had found at my union. Rather silly, but I was so grateful, so glad to be out of the hell I was in in Vermont that I was a bit nuts. I was re-feeding on the spiritual level, and I just took it a little too far on the physical level.
When I started to read the CR Society list, I was in some ways exactly where those nurses were when they went on strike. I was fed up, and I had to make things better, even if it meant taking drastic action. The changes I made in the beginning made me feel so much better that I was hooked, and the CR Society archives became my new addiction. I felt like I was sneaking around... I'd come into the office at 4 in the morning to archive search and blog. I'd carry MR's posts with me when I went to meet nurses outside their hospital at 6 am. I remember sitting outside a hospital in Philly, watching the sun come up over the skyline while reading The Rant, my all time favorite post. Sure, MR was just a fantasy then, but my experience with Francis had taught me to believe that dreams do come true, and I had a sense that I wasn't wrong about this one. I turned out to be more right than I even imagined.
CR taught me that I can love myself without taking away from the love I feel for others. Today, after an exceedingly long day in an exceedingly long week in an exceedingly long month of work, I realized that I could go home and make calls for hours. But I also realized that I was dead exhausted, and that since tomorrow will start with a meeting at 6:15 am for which I'll need to be up at 4 (again!), that I needed some rest and rejuvenation time. So I came home, invented a new game to play with my cat where I run across the living room floor dragging a yarn scarf and he chases and grabs it. Then I drag him across the hard wood floor by the scarf, all the while blasting Gwen Stefani. This is very silly looking and made me feel great. Then I needed to write, because writing this blog is like therapy for me. In the morning I will meditate before I leave for my early early day. I was worried that while MR was out of town, I would forget to take care of myself, and I have had some moments, to be sure. But the combination of CR and MR have taught me that I do better all around when I stand up for me too!
As it turns out, it is possible to have meaningful work, close friends and comrades, and true love. Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed with gratitude that I run around the house setting out little offerings for our household gods. As of late, I've been leaving grapefruit about (whole, not peeled) because I think they like that. Every morning I heat my coffee to almost boiling and bring it into my meditation/prayer session... I figure God(s) like the smell as it wafts up, and I sure do find it helps me focus.
Work/life balance is never easy, especially when you love your very demanding work. But it is essential, because I love life itself, and I want to squeeze every drop out of it that I can. Maybe I am unhinged by love, but I've come to believe that taking a few minutes to myself every day is worth the effort.
And you know what? It's fun. Changing my life has been hard, but it's fun. In the same way that feeling the power of their unity today uplifted my health care professionals, feeling the power of CR regenerating my cells lifts me up every day. Everyone in the office has a cold -- I don't. I feel a bit godlike. I may be meditating too much.
It's going to take a long time to finish the project of changing the political economy of this country to one that is more fair, more just, and more equitable. Sometimes I despair of living long enough to see it... even if everything we do works! The other day Edward said something about not living to see what we've worked so hard for, and I just about cried. I have to live longer to make his life's work come to fruition, to make a better world for his kids. I thank Goddesses every day that I have MR to journey with me into the unknown, someone to hold onto as we face the unfathomable future. The inevitable loss of close friends is horrible, but bearable, knowing my Orange One will be at my side. I constantly remind him to be careful, and I hope he looks both ways before crossing the street. In fact, I don't see why he has to cross the street at all -- certainly everything one needs is accessible without walking out onto roads?
I keep going because I don't know how to end... I'm waiting for the snappy line, the bang of a finish that I so often spit out to close an entry. And yet I keep going over the last year, and all the blessings I have received. My Orange One, the end (mostly) of my anxiety, the campaigns I'm working on with all their nuttiness and business, the growth of my father's ministry, my mother and me being able to add MR to our little family, and be included in his family at the holiday, the development of my own spiritual life to a higher point than I've ever been at, the invention of the eggwhite fritatta. It's too much to be believed, and yet I do believe it because I may be a Gnostic but I don't suffer from much Gnostic rage. I do suffer from Gnostic inconvenience fairly frequently, but that's something else all together. That's like when you know the great truth is there, but a bus is parked in front of it. That's Gnostic inconvenience.
I know there are horrible things in the world. All day I have workers download their pain and the pain of those they care for onto me. Today one of my workers told me about an abused woman she sees over and over again in the hospital, but who won't leave. There are gunshots, drug addicts, orphaned children, war, and just the everyday madness of people prevented by economics or circumstances or chance from accomplishing their true wills. I do everything I think I can to fight it... and I'm not content to put up with suffering, death, or crap: not from the American health care system, not from my body, not from my wireless telephone company.
"Of those to whom much has been given, much is expected."
Those words have haunted me all my life. I've always felt compelled to do something... something to make things better. No doubt it's hideous arrogance to believe that I can, but hey, sometimes it works, and I don't have a better idea.
Thanks be to God.
Long live the tatta!
Posted by april at January 31, 2006 7:57 PM