Upstate New York is poor and powerless. Those of us who live here have little money and no voice. Some days we don’t even have hope.
But this week we’ve been reminded that sometimes David can beat Goliath, that sometimes the little man can stand up and make the mighty tremble.
We learned that from some guys by a burn barrel.
Dozens of burn barrels, actually, across the road from some 30 New York prisons. Men with signs and heavy coats, waving at passing honking cars, bundled against the wind and temperatures in the teens.
Prison guards. Correctional officers.
Men and women, Americans, heroes who’ve gone where we won’t go and done what we won’t do. They protect our streets and guard our families, as assuredly as any cop on the beat. Every convict they keep behind bars is a convict who’s not going to be a threat to your family or a destroyer of your community.
That’s the service they render, and it comes at a price.
It burdens their families, it destroys their bodies, it haunts their dreams.
And for that, they get spit on, they get shit thrown at them, they get jumped and shivved and cussed, and for 25 years they work a job that has them walking point, awaiting attack, every moment they’re behind the fence.
And they do it for a state government that holds them in contempt and treats them like dirt. They are in the service of a governor who speaks to them like children and a legislature that endangers them with ridiculous laws freeing prisoners from the consequences of their actions.
Mandatory overtime, sometimes 16 hours and sometimes 24, as the state does everything it can to crash the prison system. Overcrowded, underfunded, some two thousand empty officer slots, months and years of ignored pleas for relief, a union that sounds an awful lot like the governor, and an injury rate hovering at some three times that of a police officer, the most dangerous and least appreciated job in the state.
They passed a no-confidence resolution on the commissioner, the governor’s pet, and he retaliated by increasing their work load.
And that was just about enough.
It turns out “fuck you” is a two-way street.
One day it was two, Collins and Elmira, and the next day it was 20 and the third day it was 30 and the fourth day the governor started to sweat.
It was hundreds and hundreds, a wildcat strike, across from the prisons, next to the burn barrels. Damn the governor and damn the union and damn the judge and damned if we’re going anywhere. She sent in the National Guard and dragooned the parole officers and first one meltdown and then another and her pissy little video didn’t do her any good and there they stand right now, unflinching and strong, about to break the governor and about to change the law.
They are the mouse that roared, the Hebrew boy who took down a Philistine giant, the sort of men who stood at Lexington and Concord, the ones who came out of the coal mines and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and said that workers deserve better, that safety matters, that they ought to be able to tuck their kids in at night.
They hauled off and kicked the dictatorial state government right in the crotch and asked it if it would like another.
And that’s where the hope comes in.
Because if they can do it, so can we. So can we all.
In Poland, it was dockyard workers. In New York, it is correctional officers.
If they can stand up, so can we.
If they matter, so do we.
If they can stand beside a country road in upstate and slap the face of the tyrants in Albany and Manhattan then maybe we’re not so voiceless and maybe we’re not so powerless.
For the first time in a generation, we are telling them what to do. For the first time in a generation, we the people have a say.
Today, we are all prison guards. Today, we are all beside the burn barrel.
Today, we are one.
And that scares the hell out of our masters.
First we will make it safe and sane for correctional officers, then we will make it better for us all. Because these strikers have reminded us that we are free and strong.
Even if we do live upstate.