I grew up in a household that neatly displayed its affiliations in the bathroom magazine rack. There were copies of Ebony, Essence and Jet that my dad brought home from work so that we could be in touch with our blackness in magazine form, and the union newsletters that explained why his job was worth having.
He worked on the assembly line at a car plant in southern Wisconsin, work that regularly sent him to the hospital for surgeries to drain extra fluid from his knees. But those procedures were covered by union-negotiated medical insurance, and the time he had to miss work for them was handled by union-negotiated contractual provisions. Each time he healed, he could go right back to the job he loved in order to provide for our family.
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