Raja Mishra

2 months at the Free Press

In our language, there are words you know and words you understand.
Knowing refers to being familiar with a word's definition and usage.
Understanding is much deeper. When you come to understand something, it
ceases to be an abstraction. It becomes part of you.
During this strike, there are several words I have come to understand:
Courage.
Sacrifice.
Solidarity.
I've always known what these words mean but never understood. I
understand them now because my teachers understand. My teachers are my
fellow strikers, and by teaching me to understand these words they have
given me a gift I will carry with me the rest of my days.
The teaching of these words has not come easily for them. On many days,
strike life turned ugly: people wavered and doubted, were dejected and
depressed. I myself experienced these downturns with intensity. But
these words - solidarity, courage, sacrifice - only have meaning if they
are accompanied by such frailty.
What will stay with me, long after this strike is over, is the moral
character of my fellow strikers. Sure, the economic and political issues
are consequential, but at the end of the day it's the people that stay
with me.
At least that's how I understand it.





Sandra Davis
7 years at the Free Press
Some days I can hardly control the bitterness that wells up. Especially
now. It has been a week of hustling to pay bills. The gas and the
electric will be spared. The cable won't be shut off, at least for now.
And the phone, well, I didn't make it in time and Ameritech has little
patience with me these days. So for two days I have suffered in silent
humiliation.
I am 38 years old. I am the first person in three generations to
graduate from college and pursue a profession. Already I have made more
money than my mother, sister and brother combined, will ever see. I am
the one my mother could always turn to when she needed a hand with her
house payments. I am the one with resources to baby-sit a crack-addicted
brother through another rehabilitation. I am the one who could send
money to help my sister escape the brutalities of an abusive boyfriend.
I never asked anyone for anything. I was the rock. Now I am a jumbled
mass of emotion. I am hurt that people I thought were friends turned
their backs on me when they crossed picket lines. A company I believed
in and encouraged others to believe in threw me into the streets. I
stayed late, ate at my desk, smiled and swallowed shit when I knew it
indeed was shit.   
At 18 months into the strike my life is a stark contrast to what it was
before. I hardly answer the phone anymore because I can't think of any
more ways to tell my creditors that I don't have money for them. And
though I can't afford to keep cable every month, I can't afford to not
have it. My sanity depends on some semblance of how life used to be.
They didn't have to hire goons to gas us or pay cops to harass us. All
they had to do was bargain in good faith. It could be over by now. I
could be back at the Detroit Free Press, editing copy for features and
business. It wasn't the best job I had ever had but it was my job.  
Most days you can look at me and not know how deep the scars are. I do
have some resiliency left. Just about enough to turn this bitter fruit
into marmalade. No matter how badly it hurts right now, I know this
poverty is temporary, and our victory will be a sweet, resounding
refrain.


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