In praise of our workers

This weekend we celebrate Labor Day. It’s supposed to honor the hard-working men and women who empower America, but mostly it’s a day that marks the end of summer. Meanwhile, a lot of our workers have to work on Labor Day.

Laborers are the unsung heroes of America. They clean our hotel rooms, serve us in restaurants, slaughter our hogs, pick our lettuce, tell us where to find the black olives in the grocery store, roof our homes, unclog our toilets, get the lights back on in the middle of a stormy night, pick up fallen limbs in our front yard after the storms, and fix our cars so we can get to work on time.

They go to all the meetings and write the newspaper stories that inform our community what our government is doing to us. Then they deliver these newspapers and packages to every home and business in America.

They take care of our children while we go to work, and care for our elderly friends and family when they are no longer able to work.

They pay most of the taxes that support everyone else.

Labor is the backbone of our economy. Workers earn and spend the money that keeps our country moving. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos may have most of the money, but their wealth is built on the backs of workers paid a fraction of what their bosses make. And when things go sour in a business, it’s not the swells making poor decisions in the executive suites who pay the price, but the workers down on the production floor who are laid off or have their pay reduced.

This Labor Day, to show our appreciation to hardworking laborers, we round them up in the street like dogs and ship them off to some hellhole prison halfway around the world. If Jesus Christ, a refugee who was raised in a carpenter’s home, were to come back today in America, would you expect to see him hobnobbing with high-rollers on Wall Street, or in the parking lot of a Home Depot offering hope to tradesmen named Jesus Martinez looking for work to support their families? “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

This Labor Day, God bless America, especially her laborers.