Clearing the Streets: Class Diary

My job provides a disgustingly blatant view into the the acts and effects of the current alignment of power structures in society. A small non-profit hospital in which a dozen of top administrators make well over a million dollar, 32% of the employees barley break the federal distinction for poverty level income, and strict anti-union policies are enforced, located in a deindustrialized hub city still finding itself in dealing with racial demographic changes. I work 32 hours a week, 4 evening shifts every week with one weekend on and one off. I worked last weekend, Friday-Monday. I've had quite a few days that have brandished themselves into my memory while working there, names I wont forget for better or worse. An emergency room can provide a time lapse image of all the best and worst of life in an eight hour shift. I've seen new lives come into the world, and others find their way out of the world to young and to often. However, class is ever present. I've worked there fore 5 years now, its weighed on me I can't hide that. Its not easy walking into work knowing that chances are you will be a part of the worst day in someone else's life. With all that's side about how nurses or doctors save lives, how they can ruin them is far more taboo. This weekend was especially graphic from a class perspective. this being the weekend before Thanksgiving the local police departments decided to start "clearing the streets" for visiting families, often coming back from Cape Cod or Cambridge. Clearing the streets fairly accurately denotes the mentality of the officers. They bring in the homeless, the addicts, the transient, the trouble makers, and they throw them in an ER cell complete with its own selection of drugs. Of course to the doctors and nurses, they are nothing but an unnecessary work load for the holidays. Many people I find are not aware of the legal ramifications of being poor or homelessness, that is unless they have had experiences as such or in medicine or law enforcement. Allow me to help, it is illegal to be homeless, it is illegal to need help, it is illegal to hurt yourself in desperation and beg for someone to help you. Not only is it illegal but it is also grounds for incarceration without a trail or without even being arrested. Its called a Section 12, the other pink slip. A Section 12 allows a doctor or police officer to hold someone against their will for an unlimited period of time based on the impression that they are at risk of harming themselves or others. Once sectioned into a hospital the staff have the legal ability to physically restrain a person, tie them in 4 point restraints to a stretcher and if necessary chemically restrain you. This weekend we wrote over 45 pink Section 12's for those brought in from the PD's street cleaning efforts. These were men and women with no families, berated over and over about the "joy" of the holidays, the thanksgiving feast, the season of giving. This as they sit in the bar with the only feast that they were ever welcomed to, on the street finding the only joy allotted to them through chemical euphoria, knowing damn well what society gives to those deemed unsuitable for one reason or another. As I went on break, back into the staff lounge the TV was on the local news channel, a report of how stop and shop was handing out free turkeys for the needy. I sat down, unable to really talk. Class isn't a new concept to me, class struggle isn't a four letter word in my mind, but this, this fucking endless tragedy of the privileged class torturing the have-nothings, mocking them, this is the lowest it gets. Ever year it hits me more and more around this time, the endless self satisfying rhetoric, the philanthropic masturbation of stop and shop and other who think a night in a soup kitchen makes the year long massacre a little more bearable, it brings me to a stand still every year. The doctors who "struggled" through Med School, the nurses whose current generation reap the benefits fought for by those who came before them for a fair wage and personal protection who spit on those brave women's graves by forsaking compassion for those they supposedly serve, they are only the actors of the final scene of a long and historic production: the rape of the lower classes from above. The personal attacks fly like linguistic trench warfare, "He's a loser" "How pathetic" "These fucking drunks fill up the ER" "Why can't I see real patients" "We should I waste my time, he cant even help himself, hes disgusting." Not an ounce of understanding of what lead to this, the family issues, the abuse, the addictions, the evictions, the unplanned children, the lack of employment opportunities, the devastating deaths, and strung throughout all of this is the almost total absence of a sincere and effect system of social support for those who suffer most in our society. By no means is this an analytic entry in a class diary, I understand this doesn't fully analyze the dynamics of class and its reproduction in the ER, but sometimes its so blatant that any analysis will most the raw and basic observation, it can't capture the suffering of the ones for whom the holidays mean being cleared from the streets like garbage and locked in a cell.

Clearing the Streets: Class Diary