Where in the World is Leran?

I hope everyone got the allusion in my title. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? is one of my favorite games from my childhood as I know from talking to people my age, it was among their favorites too.

Tough competition from Oregon Trail, but a few weeks ago while avoiding studying for exams and packing up my apartment I downloaded and played one of the older Carmen Sandiego games. Really this is becoming a long rambling justification for why I titled my blog entry the way I did, I thought it'd be interest in witty, but I'll just cut to the chase:

Where in the world am I? North Carolina. Yes, you heard (read is more like it) that right. I'm smack in the Middle of Nowhere, North Carolina... otherwise called Siler City, North Carolina.

As the school year started, I had the dreams and goals of traveling abroad OR being in Washington D.C. this summer and sadly neither of those plans worked out. First, I decided to hold off on going to London for a Maymester in social justice issues through the lens of social work. Part of my decision was financial and the other part was the uncertainty of doing such a program through the point of view of social work majors.

I know many social work majors and they are great people that do amazing work. I just wasn't positive that the point of view they have on social justice was one that would be truly beneficial to my future career plans. The experience would have still been positive and very beneficial, but I thought it would be best to save money and do either the Normandy Scholar's program or another travel abroad opportunity in 2008.

So then I began to explore the Washington D.C. option. I thought early in the Spring semester was too late for paying gigs in D.C., but the Liberal Arts Career Center at UT told me I still had time. Between my internship at the Texas Capitol, White Rose Society, school work and my typical disorganization, the time ran out and I did not hear back from anyone and did not make much of an effort to get a paying D.C. gig.

So that left me with one final option... going to Israel. While this was a "final" option, it was certainly not that way in my heart. With only two grandparents left (the two grandfathers) and one of them having just recently turned 94, I really wanted to visit him. Additionally as my last entry pointed out, my brother and my sister-in-law are there for about another six months. All in all a great time for me to go back to a country I love.

Being a poor college student I looked for some of the trips directed at students and found a really cheap, but also extremely excited opportunity. Livnot is an Israeli organization that does the typical Israel tour coupled with a handful of work days helping rebuild the country's most devastated areas after the war last summer. Having completed an alternative spring break in New Orleans in March, I was really excited for this opportunity to help and visit all my relatives. This time I did not make the personal decision to not go as I did with London, but I simply was rejected from the program on the basis of giving other people an opportunity to revisit Israel for a 2nd time rather than a 10th or 11th time.

I was sad, but not much I could do. The question lingering in my mind was: what am I going to do this summer?! With it already being May and none of the exciting plans coming to fruition I was preparing to suck it up and just work at whatever well-paying desk job I could receive in Dallas for the summer. The only comfort was being able to spend time with my mom, having relaxing weekends, catching up on reading and being able to help the Dallas community with their Darfur advocacy efforts.

I'm as far as you can be from religious as they come and I don't believe in fate...but something seriously just fell in my lap. I guess I do believe in friendship and I have come to be a believer in the beauty of networking. My friend Hannah, an incredible person in her one right, forwarded me an e-mail from her professor about a job in North Carolina.

Here we are... the point of this long entry. I gave all that background to prove one point, I never imagined myself working in North Carolina. I'm careful not to say visit because I truly believe everywhere has its beauty and I would love to visit every state and many of the nations/regions across the world. North Carolina definitely qualifies as beautiful in the nature department. Hills, green trees and ponds EVERYWHERE. I've been told there is so some good rock climbing around and if you travel to the east, there's the Atlantic Ocean!

Yet, I never imagined spending my summer here. Disbelief aside, I was finally convinced to board a plane on May 17th (2 days after my last exam) at 6:10 a.m. (5 minutes before take-off!) and make my way to North Carolina to take a job that was still mostly unclear at that time.

So a bit about the job. What I've told people who have asked: I'm doing data management (data entry) for union organizers who are trying help immigrant workers at poultry plants to unionize in order to improve their working conditions. That's a mouthful, but it only gives you a general idea of what I'm doing.

What I do: I input data and help locate data within a database for the organizers I'm helping. In the next few days I will also be running reports and producing new house call sheets for the organizers. Glamorous data entry, but at least it is for a good cause and the pay is good. I'm missing being lazy in Dallas (never thought I'd say that), but I'm exploring the unknown... or at least the southern part of the east coast.

Why the organizers are here: My brother stumbled across a good article about the situation here. The basic rundown is that the plant here is run by mostly immigrant workers. I don't know the breakdown, but yes some are illegal, while others have legal status. Regardless of their legal status these workers have been exposed to a number of unfair conditions including:

• Low pay-the pay is actually pretty good considering it is above minimum wage, but the employer has been proven to tamper with time clocks in order to extend hours and decrease the amount of pay. Additionally simple safety supplies that are necessary for workers to do their job safely are not being provided to workers, but instead are subtracted from their paycheck. Not surprising that the employer has also found any excuse to nickel and dime employee pay so that while the work stays the same or increases, pay stays the same or decreases.
• Unsafe conditions-While the company continues to claim otherwise the people I work with have collected many accounts and autopsies of death and serious injuries due to the work at the plant. Additionally things like line speed are increased with the bottom dollar sign line in mind while ignoring the increased workers at the line.
• Lack of medical care-When injuries happen at the plant only confirmed legal employees receive assistance from the company due to the fear of lawsuit. Illegal workers and legal workers with unconfirmed status on the other hand are left injured, without medical care and the plant either fires them or puts them back on similar or worse job than before.
  
• Lack of bathroom breaks-Through my studies of international development I could imagine such scenarios in many places across the world not receiving bathroom breaks. I could even imagine a work place with purely illegal workers within the United States being deprived of this simple right. In any situation (legal, illegal or third world) the simple allowance of a person to urinate during the work day should be accepted as an obvious right that a worker should receive. It is a gross abuse of a person's dignity to be forced to work to the point of urinated and even defecate on themselves. Here in Siler City, North Carolina and the neighboring poultry plants in Sanford and Pittsboro this basic abuse of dignity is occurring on a regular basis.
  

Spending my summer in North Carolina is not what I dreamed of doing. Data entry is as far as what I would like to be doing as possible. I didn't even consider the option of union organizing despite my interest in social justice. Yet all these unexpected factors combined have lead me to Siler City to meet an amazing group of organizers and to an opportunity to do my part in ending injustice.

I've been here about a week and we'll see if the work continues to be something I can manage. I am given a few days off about every 2 weeks and I also receive a plane ticket back so those days off can be spent in Dallas with my mom and my friends. The first break is May 31st to about June 3rd. Look forward to seeing you then!