Yesterday when I arrived at the place where my husband works to pick him up I was met with this scene.
Five state troopers. Blue lights flashing everywhere. Four at the entrance on the left-hand side of the road and one on the right-hand side. The one on the right was gone by the time I took these photos. There were about 8 cars pulled over on the right side of the road and about that many more pulled off inside of the entrance to the plant making navigation tricky and creating a traffic jam. I wonder if they asked the plant owner if it was alright to block the entrance/exit to the plant?
I pulled into the turn lane and stopped because I wasn't sure if they were checking people going into the plant or not. I sat there a few minutes but no trooper came over to the car or waved me on. I finally decided to turn in. I figured if they had plans to demand my papers then they could come in and get me. Why make it easy on them?
As I sat and waited on my husband to come out I wondered if they had plans to check the workers about to get off for insurance as they left the plant. People at this plant work for very low wages and the vast majority of them work for health insurance coverage, like my husband, and take home very little every week. They can't afford car insurance. It simply isn't in their budgets. Now, some asshole is bound to say, "Well, they shouldn't be driving then." But that is a simpleton's view of the situation. If they aren't able to drive then they aren't able to work and if they aren't able to work then they wind up on the taxpayers tab. Which would you rather them do?
A few people came out of the plant, saw the nasty scene of intimidation that awaited them and went back in to warn others. My husband said the news spread like wildfire and that people were scared. These people work hard all week for next to nothing and when they get off work after a nine hour day the last thing they want to deal with is the Nazi paper checkers.
I wondered why the state troopers weren't sitting outside the entrance to
Stillwaters checking papers and it hit me that the people in Stillwaters would 1)Never put up with that kind of harassment and intimidation and 2) The people who live at Stillwaters have enough money to afford insurance so the troopers would be unable to make money off of them. Instead they staked out a place where poor people who can't afford insurance work. Doesn't that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?
When people started to leave there was a huge traffic jam because the troopers were checking workers as they left. Pretty soon it became evident that doing so was creating a traffic hazard and they began to let workers leave without demanding their papers. I know there were a lot of people who breathed a huge sigh of relief.
What has happened to us in America that we allow this kind of harassment and extortion of the working poor? When did it become OK for police to demand our papers? This isn't Russia or East Germany...it's America....but I no longer recognize it.
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