From Apathy to Militancy
Dalton Nolan
6/20/2024
One of the people who had the greatest impact on my life has always been my father, who shaped my work ethic, developed parts of my personality, and, ultimately, is one of my closest friends. Born in Harlan County in June 1974, my father was born into poverty, a story common in the region. Growing up poor, my father fought desperately to escape it. When he finally started working, he worked long hours and sacrificed much to ensure he and, later, his family would never experience what he had during his youth. As early as I can remember, I always saw my dad working. Eventually, my father “made it big” in upper management, securing a better life for himself and his family. “Finally,” he no doubt thought, “we would finally have a life where we didn’t have to view pizza as a luxury.” However, and perhaps he realized it but chose to hide his pain, the life he had secured us—on the back of his labor—wasn’t one he would ever get to enjoy. By the time I had reached high school, it was common for me not to speak or see my father for long stretches of time during the day. For 24 hours, seven days a week, my father constantly worked. It didn’t matter if it was his day off or if he had to sleep or even needed to use the bathroom: my father was always working.
The myth of the “American Dream” promises each of us that if we work hard enough and sacrifice our immediate “wants” and needs—our happiness, our health, our friends and family—we can secure a “middle-class life” for us down the road, where we would live comfortably and enjoy the fruits of our labor. This is a lie. My father followed this mantra for his entire life, and while it did bear fruit, the fruit was the profits he earned for his employers and the affluent lifestyles his family could happily indulge in—neither of these things he was allowed to enjoy. My father could never separate himself from his work, transforming him into a workaholic who could only work and nothing else. In essence, my father became an unfeeling cog in the continually churning corporate machine, being worn down until nothing is left, and he is replaced by the next “full of life” middle manager.
When I realized all of this in college in 2021, I was mortified. I pleaded with my father to find different employment, but he retorted, saying something along the lines of “I can’t quit; otherwise, we can’t afford our lifestyle.” My father wasn't wrong. So many families around the world are trapped in this situation, regardless if they are classified as poor or “middle-class.” If a person in either designation, especially if they are the “breadwinner,” stops working long hours or multiple jobs, they will feel the uncaring wrath of our current economic system as they and those dependent on them sink closer and closer to homelessness, only to be then viewed by society and the owning class with such revulsion and lambasted as lazy and entitled when they seek help.
For so many years, my father had labored to get us the lives we so gleefully took part in without me ever truly understanding the cost. In understanding the stress and suffering my father was going through, I changed my college degree track from business to undecided to avoid having my future self go through the hell he was going through; however, at the time, I was unaware that this suffering was standard under the societal status quo. Nonetheless, in doing this, something changed in me. I began to be more concerned about my future and the jobs I signed on to. Over the course of a few years, I became more defiant and combative in my workplace.
With my changing attitude at work came my political transformation. Before 2022, I was what I call an “apathetic progressive”—I had progressive ideas, such as being a feminist, but I never took these ideas and labored to have them become ingrained in society. My apathetic progressivism came from my disconnected lifestyle. Since I never encountered any hardships directly, never saw the real effects of things like racism or misogyny, and never had such a horrible experience with my jobs, I was allowed to live in an “ignorant” bliss of the realities of the world. This apathetic progressivism would shatter through my employment at UPS.
UPS is no different than any other company. Despite its words of praise and love for its workforce, UPS cares nothing for any of us except for our ability to generate profit for them—that’s it. I had already understood this before working at UPS, but it was through my employment that this principle gained substance and actual meaning to me. I only went to UPS in 2019 because of their Metropolitan College Program—a joint venture between UofL, JCTC, and UPS that allows students at UofL or JCTC to work the third shift at UPS Worldport in exchange for their tuition at one of these schools being covered by the company.
Though I’m thankful that I have been able to pursue my education without accruing loan debt, this doesn’t excuse the working conditions that UPS and companies worldwide force working people to endure day in and day out. The work conditions I experienced were back-breaking. For five hours a day, for five days a week, I was forced to load individual packages of differing weights and sizes into large containers to be loaded onto planes for transport. We had no effective air conditioning, we were always at risk of a package flying off the chute and harming or even killing us, we were given only a measly 10-minute break, and rarely ever got assistance with a particularly difficult chute. This was the daily life of a UPS loader, and it was an utter nightmare that infuriated me. For three years, from July 2019 to August 2022, I labored every day in these conditions, always angry but apathetic enough that I could “ignore” it. Yet, with every passing day, the working conditions at the company fueled a burning rage inside me. I couldn’t believe that in order to get a decent education that would be free in other countries, I had to literally put my body through severe manual labor, risking every bone and muscle. Eventually, I snapped: I needed answers. There was no way the richest country in the world needed to let its people suffer this way.
I began by reading books, watching videos, asking questions, and taking meticulous notes on all of them. I talked with like-minded people and learned so much, which helped me form a concrete understanding of the world and how it operates. By the end of 2022, it became clear that the world was not built for and governed by the working people who labor every day to make it all work; no, our society is built for the owning class, the people at the very tippy top of our society, who own everything and have the power to shape everything with their vast oceans of wealth that only grow larger by the hour. This realization, compounded by the memories of seeing my father worn down from work, unable to live as a person, sparked a sense of injustice and determination within me, a burning desire to challenge and change the society that perpetuates such suffering. To do this means uniting the working class against the owning class; it means standing in unequivocal solidarity with every section of the working masses in their struggle for empowerment and liberation, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because if we don’t, we all will suffer; the chains of intolerance and bigotry, the worsening living conditions, and the threat of climate change will persist.
However, this future is avoidable. All over the world, even here in Louisville, working people of all backgrounds and identities are organizing for change, demanding and fighting for a better world. Workers in Louisville, from Rainbow Blossom to TARC drivers to Starbucks, are fighting for better working conditions, against chauvinism, and for democracy in the workplace. Through such tenacious battles, these workers are being steeled and trained for battles down the road—battles that require the working class to stand united. The road toward a more equitable, democratic, and free world is arduous, with many twists and turns, many victories and defeats, but one thing is certain: united as a class, we workers can make that world a reality—a world all of us, my father included, deserve.