Thanking Those Who Fill Our Plates

It always strikes me as morbidly ironic that every year this country celebrates a holiday that allegedly began when some indigenous people rescued a group of foreigners from the brink of death.

By today’s standards, these people who were rescued would probably be classified as being among first illegal aliens to land on the shores of what would become the United States. History calls them Pilgrims.

Now, the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock would certainly have not survived had it not been for the Native American people who lived in the area now known as Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Indeed, half of these newcomers did not survive the first winter.

Yet, Native Americans like Squanto, from the Patuxet tribe, helped these Englishmen who were living in squalid huts, hungry, sick and waiting for their impending deaths. They showed them how the local Native Americans cultivated the land, how to catch fish, and how to collect other seafood.

These Pilgrims survived, multiplied and spread themselves across the land. Squanto, however, and millions of Native Americans died of diseases introduced by the Europeans, were enslaved or placed in barren reservations. In other words, they nearly became extinct in what may well be one of history’s greatest instances of genocide.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I don’t mean to ruin your appetite or spoil your celebration. I plan on feasting with my wife and her family on what is called Thanksgiving Day like millions of other families across this country. Yet this year, I would ask you to be thankful for those people who work seven days a week to put food on your table.

I’m thankful for the millions of farmworkers who, while working for low wages and often no benefits, are planting seeds and picking and packing the fruits and vegetables that will land in our produce departments. These farmworkers are often separated from their families, are exposed to dangerous pesticides and chemicals and are prohibited by law from a forming a union that can fight for their rights.

I’m thankful for the thousands of workers who work in the meatpacking and poultry industry like those who have been struggling for dignity and respect at a company called Smithfield in North Carolina, the world's largest hog producer and pork processor. Workers at Smithfield slaughter 32,000 hogs every day. It’s dangerous and dirty work yet the company continues to harass, fire, threaten and intimidate the hundreds of mostly Latino and African American workers who are trying to secure the protection of a union contract.

I’m thankful for the thousands of underpaid, over worked, and usually invisible army of bakers, cooks, waiters, busboys and dishwashers who prepare and deliver wonderful meals to thousands of customers at eating establishments and stores across the country.

On this occasion I simply wish to give thanks to the millions of workers throughout this country and the world who are starving for dignity and justice while also making sure that we don’t starve. I hope you thank them too.