Teri M.
I recently retired from a civil service career in a large West coast city. Most of our politicians are Democrats, but many civil service workers live in the suburbs, where they are less liberal. Though most City employees have good union paying jobs, many have become critical of anything they view as Communist, such as unions that help poor in home service workers. They used to talk in whispers on the job, about their personal politics. Then you would see MAGA hats.
Even people who used to help poor people through City programs began to deride them, talking about how many of them should just go back to their own countries, that they were just working the system. I watched one co-worker who was a caring Catholic become a staunch Trump supporter. She would work on designing programs for their poor and would insert their own personal bias, require documentation of paperwork based on the premise that poor brown and black people all game the system.
People began to complain, and she and a few others would have heated discussions. However, when the housing market fell in the late 2000’s, and White people fell into poverty, she would bend over backwards to help them as she said they were “true Americans”. She became so anti-immigrant they took work away from her. Was she ever chastised for her behavior? No, they promoted her.
Sad part was, she was an immigrant who worked her way up. But there are many like her in government. Those who benefitted from immigration policies, and now that they have good government jobs, look down on people who are striving just as they did. Good, hardworking people. I learned that while elected officials who are Democrat, set policies to help people, it is staff who implement the programs who treat people in poor areas like crooks and welfare bums. They go against program regulations and deny requests for essential items.
I couldn’t take it anymore so I retired. But they all listened to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. It was on the TV's at work. They believe everything that Trump says, and it divided the work place. It affected many white people as well, and I saw co workers who could not stand each other before Trump, socializing and talking about conspiracy theories. My father always taught me that behind slavery was money. That people will justify cruelty, and corporations will push ideologies so as not to provide employment benefits, which at one time, we’re commonplace.
As corporations moved jobs overseas, people began to look for other people to blame instead of what was so obvious. I think a lot of this anti-immigrant Trump and Fox News sponsored hatred is driven by profit. Years ago, I told management about a problem brewing in our workplace, and I was ignored. Now, they are issuing memos about this. But I don’t know if they realize, how Fox has taken over the municipal workplace.