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Work Won’t Love Us Back at The Forge

I chatted with Lena Eckert-Erdheim at The Forge to talk about what inspired her new book, the work of organizing, and the urgency of transforming the way that we think and feel about work. An excerpt:

There’s a difference between the dignity of work and the dignity of workers.

Right. Exactly. And also, there are a lot of people who can’t work. There are a lot of people who are unemployed right now because half of capitalism is shut down. There are a lot of people who have disabilities, who are ill, who are old, who are retired, who are children, who cannot, should not, do not need to work and are also still dignified human beings. This idea that you’re only worth something if you work, we’ve seen where that gets us. It gets us the lieutenant governor of Texas saying grandma would be happy to die to keep capitalism going. It gets us denying prisoners COVID vaccines because they’re not productive citizens. It leads to people justifying people dying of COVID because they already had a disability or an illness. I don’t think fetishizing work gets us anywhere good, and that’s stuff that I’ve learned from disability rights movements, elder’s rights movements, and prison abolitionists.

Read the rest at The Forge.

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