A former child detention center worker who quit this week is sounding the alarm about the horrors of the Trump administration’s policy of separating families: “These kids are very traumatized…it’s a recipe for disaster.”
One part of this interview I find important to emphasize
He was the ONLY staff member who spoke Portuguese. Before he got there, there were children from Brazil who the staff literally could not speak to. They were trying to give trauma care but literally could not talk to them.
I worked with toddlers and pre schoolers for three years. Sometimes I accidentally slip and tell a friend to say bye to an inanimate object (“say bye bus!”) & occasionally they unthinkingly just do it.
I’m glad there’s a teacher version of “accidentally called teacher ‘mom’”
when I worked at Medieval Times occasionally I would slip in real life and call people “my lord”
One time during family prayer, dad began: “our father who art in heaven, American Airlines, how can I help you?”
One time my dad went to the White Castle drive-thru and the lady (who was supposed to say ‘Welcome to White Castle, what’s your crave?’) asked, “Welcome to White Castle, what’s your problem?”
She apologized profusely while my dad proceeded to lose his shit laughing.
Yesterday I went to Wendy’s and the girl said “Welcome to McDonalds” and then just sighed
Somebody in the elevator asked me what floor I lived on, and I answered “please open your books to page eight”, and we just kind of stared at each other, blinking.
i work retail full time and my script gets frequently messy – ill ask the same question twice, or say “$2.60 is your total” while handing back their change, or say “how are you doing today?” instead of “have a good day!” like name it ive bungled it
but anyway, this lady came thru my line buying a book and the review on the front said: “few books are well written, fewer still are important, and this book manages to be both”
as i handed her the bag i was trying to say “thanks, youre all set” and instead my brain mashed up the review and i said “thanks, youre important”
there was this short pause in which i tried to figure out what the fuck id just said. she blinked and then said “oh thank you! youre important too!”
the real kicker was one of my coworkers. when i was relating this story later his response was “at least you said something NICE. last week i accidentally combined ‘youre welcome’ and ‘no problem’ into ‘youre a problem’”
one time, since I used to work as a daycare teacher with preschoolers, i was on my college campus in my gym, and someone was running in the weight room and tripped over a machine and fell, and instead of offering to help, I just stared and said, “This is why we use our walking feet.”
we both sat there for a while until the guy nodded and said, “yeah, okay, i should’ve done that.”
I’ve spent a good chunk of time working in kitchens, so I still will reflexively say shit like “behind” and “coming around” as I maneuver through spaces and around people.
Which, actually, not such a bad thing; I’m a big guy and can come across as imposing pretty easily. The position calls can help defuse that, and also help avoid collisions.
Less good is the time my brain was half functional and I let slip a “coming with a knife” while grocery shopping. THAT took some explaining.
I work in an office and send tens of emails to customers every day. Once my mum asked me to send her a train ticket I had bought for her. I emailed her “Hello mum, as agreed, please find attached the ticked you requested. Thanks, Alex”
i worked as a camp counselor, and i would have the kids tap somewhere on my legs if they needed something because im a pretty tall dude. today asked my cat if he needed something.
I have woken up in a cold sweat saying “is that for here or to go?”
Every time a friend thanks me, and I respond with “gladly” or “my pleasure”, I die completely 1000% inside
I work at a plasma donation center. When processing donors, we call them by name, they walk up to the counter, and then we ask for their name and donor number. One time, instead of saying “Robert” I hollered “Name and donor number!?” into a full waiting room. Three people started announcing their names and donor numbers before we all realized that I fucked up.
In college, I was a barista at Borders (remember Borders, you guys?!) I once drove through Taco Bell on my way home after a shift. When the cashier said, “okay, that’ll be $5.46!” I cheerfully responded, “Do you have a Borders rewards card?”
I have dealt with so many difficult customers over the years that I used to angrily call my dog “Sir” when I was mad at him.
My first job was at my nearest Panera, and after coming home from a ten-hour Sunday morning shift, I was exhausted; but when my mom called me to come downstairs, instead of replying in the grumpy teenagerish tone I usually would, I said in my cheeriest, fakest voice, “Not a problem at all, let me just check with my manager!” before realizing my mistake.
my coworker went to back up the cash registers one time and she had been at customer service right before. when we finish with a customer we have to sometimes get the attention of the next person and will shout “i can get the next person in line!” but instead of saying that she yelled “HI WHAT CAN I HELP YOU WITH” to everyone in the general area
I have told my dog “no thank you” so many times after working at a preschool
a couple of times i’ve gotten stuck in a hello how are you good how are you good how are you loop with an equally tired Fred Meyer’s cashier after a long shift but the best time was after a 10 to 10 post-holidays after they told me my total, I asked if they would like a bag today and after a confused few seconds they were like, “no… I have the bags”
Worked in a gallery where we asked people to take off their backpacks in order not to accidentally damage paintings. So when I went to the shop later and saw a guy in the line in front of me, I told him he had to remove his backpack. He probably thought I was politely trying to rob him.
I work at architecture office and I send a lot of plans and images to our clients so my emails usually start with polish equivalent of “attached you can find”. recently I was sending sth to my dad by email and just couldn’t write a normal email bc I can only write like programmed machine I am. It went sth like “Hi Dad, attached you can find the image of Grandma. Please let me know what you think. Best regards.”
Working in Chick Fil A, we often shout “Nuggets” or “Filets” back to the breading people so that they know we’re getting low and they need to make a new drop, or yell “side salad” back to the prep person so that they know they need to make one. The proper response to somebody yelling something at you is to respond “HEARD” as loud as you possibly can. As you can guess, a lot of the time when my mom yells at me that I need to get out of bed, my response is to bellow “HEARD” without even thinking about it and promptly go back to sleep.
i have creeped out my fair share of total strangers by smiling at them and saying hi when i ran into them on dark streets as i walked home from the restaurant where i used to work at 1 in the morning
When people ask, “How can I tell if someone is disabled or just lazy?” I think about my parents.
My parents have known me my whole life. When they’re not actively contemptuous of me, they do seem to be somewhat aware of my general personality and character. In one of his nicer moments, my dad has called me “sweet-natured.” They can tell that when I make them a surprise breakfast or lunch that I enjoy being helpful and doing nice things for people.
They know from watching me grow up that I have always had trouble keeping my room clean, getting homework done, and keeping my desk tidy at school.
The longest I can push myself past my limits is about nine months. Then I collapse and end up less functional than I was before I pushed myself. This has been a pattern throughout my middle and high school years. I would go to public school for about a year, and then collapse and have to do the rest of my education at home. My work history follows this pattern, too.
I once sat in a therapy session with my dad to talk about the constant struggle we were having at home because he wanted me to help out more and do better in school. When he asked me why I didn’t do things, I broke down in tears, because I couldn’t explain it. “I just CAN’T. I want to, and I CAN’T.” Nobody listened.
My mom asked me why I don’t do things, and I said, “I just can’t. I sit there for hours trying to convince myself to do things, and I can’t. Move.”
And she said, “Don’t think about it, just do it,” completely missing the point.
When I got older I found words for the things I was dealing with. I got professionally diagnosed, and I’d look up information about my diagnosis and e-mail articles to my parents explaining what my disability is and why I can’t do things.
My parents have firsthand information about my character (helpful, likes doing things for others) and my history with disability (can’t consistently keep things clean, can’t manage a daily schedule). I’ve talked to them extensively about my diagnosis and given them information about it. They have known me my whole life, and I’ve always been this way. And they still, STILL choose to believe I’m just a bad person who doesn’t try and doesn’t care.
My disability isn’t invisible, people refuse to look at it.
People like problems they can yell at. They like having a target for their frustration. They don’t want to admit disability is real, because they want problems that they can either solve, or blame someone else for. And the disabled person themself is their scapegoat, someone who can’t ever opt out of their role because the disability is never going to go away.
My disability isn’t invisible, people refuse to look at it.
Listen here, bub, Smilin Sid Hatfield did *not* get shot to death by company gun thugs on the steps of the Matawan courthouse just so your boot-lickin self could vote away the Social Security what that I pay good fuckin money into every fuckin week. Fuck your red hat and fuck your coal mine and fuck your flag and fuck your statues and most of all fuck you.
Well, I had my dates mixed up; Sidney Hatfield was actually murdered in McDowell County, not in Matewan.
So the Battle of Matewan was an incident that happened on May 19th, 1920 in Matewan, West Virginia, considered to mark the beginning of the West Virginia Coal War. The United Mine Workers of America had been trying to organize in West Virginia but faced considerable resistance from the mining companies, who hired a private security firm–the Baldwen-Felts Detective Agency–to harass and threaten union miners. The miners hated the Baldwen-Felts agents, whom they called “company gun thugs,” and the sympathetic mayor of Matewan appointed a union miner named Sidney Hatfield as chief of police in an effort to control them. Sidney was called “Smilin Sid” because he was also a blacksmith, and had repaired his own broken teeth with gold caps (!!!) which he was extremely proud of; the appointment came as a surprise to the more “respectable” citizens because, in addition to having literally no experience with law enforcement, Sid Hatfield also had a reputation for starting (and winning!) fights with anti-union miners. He looked like this:
So in the spring of 1920, the Stone Mountain Coal Corporation evicted all of the union miners from company housing, so the miners and their families moved into a shantytown on nearby abandoned land. In May, a gang of Baldwin-Felts enforcers armed with Thompson sub-machine guns came to drive the miners out of their tents as well, but were waylaid at the train station by Hatfield and a group of deputized miners. This led to an awkward situation where Sid Hatfield, as chief of police, served an arrest warrant on Albert Felts, and Albert Felts, who’d been deputized by the constable of Magnolia, served an arrest warrant on Hatfield. The two belligerent parties moved to the porch of the Chambers Hardware Store to await word from a judge, with the mayor acting as mediator. When the judge declared that Sid’s warrant was legal while Albert’s was bogus, Albert responded by drawing a gun and shooting the mayor, which led to a gunfight that tragically cost the lives of three miners and wonderfully cost the lives of thirteen gun thugs including Albert and Lee Felts themselves. This has gone down in history as the Battle of Matewan, the beginning of the West Virginia Coal War.
Sid and his friend Edward Chambers were charged with murder for the incident, but were acquitted on grounds of self-defense and defense of others on August 1st, 1921. As the two men, unarmed and accompanied by their wives, walked down the courthouse steps following their acquittal, a group of Baldwin-Felts gun thugs rushed out of the crowd and opened fire on them, killing them.
Sidney Hatfield and Edward Chambers were seen as martyrs for miners’ rights against corporate greed and tyranny, and their legend helped to greatly speed up the UMWA’s organizing push.
I did not know this. I knew unionizing was tough, but being bombed by your own government…
Oh man, the Coal War is just one story out of very, very many. The history of workers’ rights in this country is written in blood; it’s been the default position of the United States government and its autonomous wings to respond to labor organizing with violence, whether that’s strike-breaking, police brutality, outright murder, or, yes, bombs. So when you’re taking your lunch break or enjoying a weekend, don’t forget that people literally died for those things.
I was going to list some specific incidents, like the Ludlow Massacre, the Harlan County War, the Pullman strikes, the Brookside Strike, Joe Hill getting framed for murder and executed by the state of Utah … but it made me sad so here’s the Wikipedia article on on anti-union violence in North America
OH HEY LOOK MY FAVORITE HISTORY TOPIC
Incidentally, theres a little bit of misinformation on the Matewan Massacre, though the gist of it is overall right. No judge was involved in the review of the warrant; Mayor Testerman was the one who said “this warrant is bogus!” and prompted the gunfight. No one knows who actually started shooting first, and only 7 Baldwin-Felts were killed (13 was the number they started with). They had actually offered both Sid and Mayor Testerman like, really huge bribes to allow them to install machine guns on the roofs of buildings throughout the town. Shady as fuck. Sid and Testerman both refused, which is kinda why the Baldwin-Felts guys disliked them to start with.
Sid (plus 17 others) charged for murder, but all were acquitted. This trial was really in the national spotlight, and Sid was a bit of a celebrity because he posed for pictures and answered questions with a lot of people. but of course the Baldwin-Felts hated him and had a very personal vendetta.
Edward Chambers wasn’t involved in the Matewan Massacre; he and Sid were going to stand trial for an unrelated incident involving them allegedly exploding a coal tipple in Welch, WV. They didn’t even make it inside the courthouse. They were shot to death on the steps. Sid was hit 3 or 4 times in his chest and died instantly, but his friend Ed was initially hit non-fatally. A Baldwin-Felts detective shot him in the head was his wife tried to defend him. And heres the real kicker: None of the Baldwin-Felts detectives was ever convicted of Hatfield’s assassination. They claimed they were acting in “self-defense”.
Also, if you’ve never heard of the Battle of Blair Mountain: 10,000-13,000 armed coal miners marched into Logan County, West Virginia, against 3,000 armed policemen, strikebreakers, and Baldwin-Felts detectives. The miners gathered for days beforehand, with a group from Northern West Virginia actually commandeering a freight train and renaming it the Blue Steel Special to get themselves to the group.
Here’s the EXTRA fucked up part, which occurred about 2 days after the fighting had started and which im gonna copypaste from the wiki: “
After a long meeting in the town of Madison, the seat of Boone County, agreements were made convincing the miners to return home. However, the struggle was far from over. After spending days to assemble his private army, Chafin was not going to be denied his battle to end union attempts at organizing Logan County coal mines. Within hours of the Madison decision, rumors abounded that Sheriff Chafin’s men had shot union sympathizers in the town of Sharples, West Virginia, just north of Blair Mountain—and that families had been caught in crossfire during the skirmishes. Infuriated, the miners turned back towards Blair Mountain, many traveling in other stolen and commandeered trains.
“
They were gonna quit. The miners were gonna say “okay, you win, don’t kill any more of us.” and they fuckin killed em. So they turned their asses around and said “Actually fuck you”.
And hey the army wasn’t the ones dropping the bombs, the miners surrendered and retreated when the federal troops got there because they realized that if they didn’t that their own gov would slaughter them. Nah it was private planes that were hired to drop a combo of leftover gas and explosive bombs from WW1 plus a bunch of homemade bombs on the miners. Did those guys ever get arrested? no.
This went on for 8 FUCKIN DAYS MY DUDES before the army came in this was the LARGEST ARMED UPRISING IN US HISTORY OUTSIDE OF THE GOD DAMN CIVIL WAR AND ITS NOT EVEN A SHITTING FOOTNOTE IN 95% OF US HISTORY TEXTBOOKS
10,000 FUCKING COAL MINERS FOUGHT AN 8-DAY BATTLE AGAINST A 3,000-STRONG PRIVATE ARMED FORCE SUPPORTED FINANCIALLY BY THE OWNERS OF THE COAL MINES AND NO HISTORY BOOK YOU’LL FIND IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL WILL DEVOTE MORE THAN A SENTENCE TO IT WHAT THE FUCK
Also here’s a list of some more fucked up shit from US Labor History that never gets taught to kids that i had saved
1914, The Ludlow Massacre, where the Colorado National Guard and the guards from the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company attacked a camp of 1,200 striking coal miners, resulting in “the violent deaths of between 19 and 26 people; reported death tolls vary but include two women and eleven children, asphyxiated and burned to death under a single tent,” and sparking the Colorado Coal Field War
1917, Frank Little, a labor leader and member of the executive board of the Industrial Workers of the World, was beaten and abducted from his boardinghouse, dragged behind a car, and then hanged from the Milwaukee Bridge. No one was ever prosecuted for his murder.
1917, Bisbee Deportation, where 1,300 striking miners and union sympathizers in Bisbee, AZ were arrested, loaded into cattle cars, and “deported” 200 miles away into New Mexico by a 2,000-member deputized posse. The town mining company had provided a list of all citizens who were to be arrested, and closed down any outside communications with the town for several days to keep the incident from being reported.
1919, Fannie Sellins, a union organizer, shot to death by deputies when she tried to stop their beating of a picketing miner, who was also killed. She was shot 4 times and her skull was fractured by a cudgel; her death was ruled a justifiable homicide, and she was blamed for starting the riot which led to her death.
the coal company disregarded their union agreement, so in retaliation, striking union miners shot and killed 19 strikebreakers and mine guards. 3 union miners weer also killed in the fight.
1929, Loray Mill Strike, 1,800 mill workers from the Loray Mill walked off their jobs to protest intolerable working conditions, and demanded a forty-hour work week, a minimum $20 weekly wage, and union recognition; in response, management evicted families from mill-owned homes. Later, nearly 100 masked men destroyed the National Textile Worker’s Union’s headquarters, and the NTWU started a tent city on the outskirts of the town protected by armed strikers.
The traction, further information, and additional commentary that this little shitpost has gotten over 48 hours really gives me life y’all
Solidarity and all that
For people who absorb stuff better with audio/visual and like documentaries, podcasts, and movies (for all their limitations,) to pick up a feel for things/get their overviews:
PBS’s American Experience: The Mine Wars is a decent hour-long overview of the West Virginia Coal War. They also have an episode about The Triangle Fire, an event that says a lot about US/industrial worker safety not being a Thing.
The Salt of the Earth is a 1954 movie about a New Mexico mine strike, starring many actual miners and their families alongside a few pro actors. It’s free to find and view in several places besides the link I provided. This movie was banned during the whole McCarthy red scare and most of the pros working on it were blackballed.
I have a lot of love for the podcast, Stuff You Missed In History class, and here’s a few relevant episodes I remembered/thought of off the top of my head:
The Palmer Raides (pt1)– Maybe a little tangential other than IIRC it does involve attempts to unionize and the founding of the ACLU and targeted migrant industrial workers.
(And for a medical overview of how workers’ medical and dietary needs were fucked over/how they were viewed, Sawbones, while not a podcast for the weak of stomach, has some interesting connections to all this discussing Pellagra and Hookwormin particular. Because of how miners originally often couldn’t afford boots and so on. It’s just sort of more big picture. And they cover a bit of the mindset of the time that the sick workers were just being lazy, and how fixes only were made to up production.)
Thank God that West Virginia makes its students take a West Virginia Studies class, in order to actually get the history of our state, and these kinds of things that have not only affected our state, but the entirety of the country.
my lifes a lie why did I just know about this!??!?! everyone probably thought I’m so silly wearing a plastic behind my ear
Imma keep doing it tho cause those earring backs are small af
The plastic actually helps stabilize the earring and keep it from drooping, especially if you’re pierced low on your earlobe, the earring is heavy, or your piercing hole is too large.
Trump is notorious for his “filing system”: when he is finished with a
piece of paper, he tears it into tiny pieces and throws it away, which
is fine if you’re a CEO (maybe), but is radioactively illegal under the
Presidential Records Act, because the President works for the public,
and is required by law to archive their official papers and save them
for public scrutiny.
White House staffers gave up on trying to explain this to Trump, who
just kept on tearing up everything, from official letters from Senators
to letters from constituents to notes and other paperwork.
The staffers – paid nearly $70,000 year – ended up with full-time jobs
retrieving scraps of paper from Trump’s trash-can and piecing them back
together with clear tape so they can be filed in the National Archives.
Some of these staffers were eventually fired; they’ve spoken to
Politico about their year in the Trump administration as paper-tapers.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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