BY DAVE CRAWFORD

With permission of the author, we share below the text of a message he sent to members of his AAUP chapter, the Fairfield University Faculty Welfare Committee / AAUP, on Labor Day.

Image from a poster by Ricardo Levins Morales (https://www.rlmartstudio.com/product/labor-movement/).

As most of us know, “Labor Day . . . constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.” These words—the very first lines from the US Department of Labor web page—seem particularly poignant this year. For me, they feel personal.

There are many reasons why. Fundamentally, this day inspires me to consider how my life and liberty have been facilitated by workers across the globe, most of whom I will never know and few of whom will enjoy the fruits of their labor the way I do. Because I teach anthropology, explaining this is a basic requirement of my job. There is no species more interdependent than we are. Our young are born unfinished, inchoate, and vulnerable. It is our collective responsibility to enculturate them, to imbue them with language, discernment, and values, to make possible lives they find meaningful, lives worthy of their full humanity. Every Labor Day reminds me of the people who invested their labor in me, who built me physically and psychically, from my parents and teachers to factory workers and farmhands. And it reminds me that it is my privilege to pay this forward, to invest my energy in others so that our community and our world can be as vital and free as possible.

This year our human interdependence has been painfully demonstrated. Ideologies of individualism and national exceptionalism have been savaged by a virus that cares little for political boundaries, and while COVID-19 attacks the vulnerable with particular cruelty, wealth and privilege are at best a temporary haven. It seems simple. My health depends on your mask. Your child’s school reopening depends on my child’s hand washing. Social distancing is just that: social distancing, working together to stay safe. The food on my table depends on frontline, “essential” workers who risked their lives to get it there. This is a lesson we must learn if we expect our civilization to thrive, or survive: all workers are essential. All of us matter. As my friends remind me, one finger cannot lift a pebble.

And this calls us to contemplate lives that have not mattered. Over the next two days, September 8 and 9, many colleagues on campus and across the nation will be supporting the Black Lives Matter movement through #ScholarStrike. Some are withholding their labor. Others will be devoting time to teaching and contemplation of racial injustice. For those looking for information or ways to contribute, some resources are below.

Speaking personally, this week I was astonished at the rush of pure joy I felt to be back in a classroom in front of real, three-dimensional students. I had forgotten how much I love my job. And at the same time I am terrified. I am frightened of the virus, and the risk of passing it to someone vulnerable, and I am scared that again, as so many times in my life, we will fail to make this a turning point in our national racial tragedy, fail to see Black Americans as fellow Americans once and for all.

https://www.scholarstrike.com/

https://academeblog.org/2020/09/02/scholar-strike/

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/09/04/scholarstrike-begin-tuesday

https://www.asanet.org/scholarstrike

https://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=2583

Guest blogger Dave Crawford is president of the Faculty Welfare Committee / AAUP at Fairfield University, where he is professor of anthropology.