A beater—a gray Ford Fiesta, I think, with a chipped hood--turned onto Penn Street. As it rattled by, the passenger--a woman--yelled, "Get a job!"
Lady: that's why we were there, about 100 of us, outside the Wells Fargo Building on the corner of Sixth and Penn. http://readingeagle.com/...
Wells Fargo drew its blinds, but the truth was right outside: Reading is now the poorest city in the nation, with 41 percent of its residents living below the poverty line. http://www.nytimes.com/...
The Wells Fargo Building, at 600 Penn Street, used to be Pomeroy's Department store. Every year at Christmastime, my husband tells me, his parents took him and his siblings there to see Santa.
I'd bet that many folks at the rally either shopped at Pomeroy's or worked at one of the huge factories in and around Reading--KBI, the Parish frame division of Dana Corporation, Rockwell, Arrow International, AT&T. These plants, which employed as many as 4,000 people, made truck frames, metals, communications equipment, textiles. Real, actual stuff that kept America running. You could buy a house and raise families on the salaries they paid, and Pomeroy's anchored a vibrant shopping district that catered to a thriving working-class city and region.
Pomeroy's shut its doors in 1985; the plants moved or closed, beginning in the '80s. Today, downtown Penn Street is a wasteland—a fried chicken place, a pizza parlor, a cut-rate cigarette shop, a pawn shop, a CVS, a Rent-a-Center, a liquor store, and lots of vacant storefronts. Its businesses cater to the homeless, jobless, and hopeless--refugees of the profits-over-people ethos that played a part in closing those factories. In 2009, Reading filed for Pennsylvania's Act 47 protection, and was officially designated a "distressed city."
Yet Reading has its bright spots. We have the Goggleworks, http://www.goggleworks.org/ a community art/cultural center housed in the former Wilson Safety Products plant, which made industrial safety equipment (including goggles). That plant closed for the last time in 2002.
There's Penn Avenue in West Reading, which the West Reading Main Street Program transformed into a stylish shopping district just over a mile away from the Wells Fargo Building. http://www.westreadingmainstreet.org/
We have the Pagoda and Skyline Drive, which offers a panoramic view of a beleaguered but gritty little city. http://www.pagodaskyline.org/...
And we've got people who want to work. Are desperate for work.
So last Friday at noon, they waved their signs, which conveyed a straightforward demand. They wanted jobs, and they wanted them now. The message couldn't be clearer. Or so I thought, until that Fiesta rattled down Penn Street.
Lady: When you yelled, "Get a job!" did you mean jobs like this? From the Times, on Reading's plight:
Ms. Santiago recently took a temporary job at a candy factory where she had worked more than eight years ago, when she was still in her 20s, before she had completed her associate’s degree. At the time she was making $10.50 an hour. In her most recent stint, her hourly wage was $9.25.
“Eight years ago I said, ‘I don’t want to do this, I have to further my education,’ ” she said. “And now here I am, still packing candy, and making less.”
Fiesta lady, meet Ms. Santiago.
Fiesta lady, if you grew up in Reading, you learned a lot of things about success, and work, and failure. Not all of it was true.
First, you learned: Work hard, and you'll succeed.
Later, you learned: keep your mouth shut, keep your head down, don't make waves.
Then it was: work harder and longer to keep what little you have.
And at some point, you learned to yell: Get a job!
Poor? Your fault. Lost your job? Look in the mirror! Quit whining! Suffer better! How can I stand my suffering if I can't deny yours? How can I block out the truth—that we were lied to, bought off, and abandoned—if you keep shouting it out?
Reading knows about abandonment. Most of its big employers, in Reading City or the region, packed up and sought cheap labor overseas.
My husband tells me that when he graduated from Reading High, Class of 1981, he asked his friends about their plans. "My dad is getting me in at Parish," they said. Or: "My aunt works at Rockwell, and her supervisor said there are openings there."
Back then, you didn't need a college degree to earn a decent wage. Bearing his high-school diploma, my husband worked at Graco Children's Products in Elverson, about 30 minutes from Reading, for 20 years. In 2002 Graco was sold to Newell Rubbermaid, which ran it into the ground.
Newell closed the Elverson plant May 1, 2005, throwing him and 349 others out of work, and relocated to Macedonia, Ohio, where wages were cheaper. In 2010, Newell closed the Macedonia plant, http://www.ohio.com/... and now makes its baby swings and strollers, bearing the Graco name, in China. http://articles.latimes.com/... My husband made $72,000 a year at Graco; he now makes $52,000, but he loves his job and the health insurance is great. His "job creators" are some of the good guys.
My husband made it into the middle class without a college degree. Millions of others in Reading, and cities like it, are not so lucky.
In this economy, a college degree is a must; the unemployment rate for people with college degrees is 4.3 percent, compared to just under 10 percent for those with only a high-school degree. http://www.washingtonpost.com/... But most college grads are strapped with debt, and the salaries they earn still tend to be low, unless they're born into wealthy, well-connected families. Besides, how do the poor and working class pay for college, with tuition rates rising, and student loans scarce, or carrying usurious interest rates?
The people at the Reading rally didn't know what the ultimate solutions are, and neither do I. But they, and I, knew what the problems are.
With their outsourcing and privatizing and deregulation, their corporate tax cuts and putting Congress on their Visas, their amassing of unimaginable wealth and their drop-by-anytime access to the halls of power, the "job creators" essentially said: Making things, and providing service people actually need--investing in America--is so 1975. They can sell burgers and doughnuts and cell phones to each other, or help their "guests" at Target and Wal-Mart find the made-in-China stuff they need.
Lady, you can't put a down payment on a home making minimum wage, or even $9.25 an hour. You can't build your kid's college fund or save for retirement. You know this. But sometimes, to make the truth bearable, hurting people who drive beaters, a few paychecks away from poverty themselves, tell you to get a job.
We stood on the corner of Sixth and Penn for our city and our nation, lady. Wells Fargo refused to look, but we stood there anyway and roared for justice.
We roared for jobs that pay a living wage, and Wall Street perp walks, and the closing of the obscene wealth gap in this country, and an end to corporate welfare and tax loopholes for the ultra-wealthy, and the end of corporate money in politics, and more funding for health and education, rather than the absurd wars being waged in our name.
As we roared, perhaps that crowd felt its unity, its promise and dignity. Because Reading helped build America. Because the working and middle classes in this country powered a once-thriving economy. We matter.
There is nothing the "job creators," their accomplices in Congress, or their mouthpieces in the media can say that will hide the truth: Wall Street and K Street have done a drive-by on Main Street.
One more thing, sister. What you saw was a one-time, union-led rally. But every Friday at 4 p.m., Occupy Reading meets on the Penn Street Bridge. I don't know you, but it's high time we met. When you wake up, we'll be on the bridge. Meet us there.