Houston Police Trample Protesting Janitors With Horses….
We sat down in the intersection and the horses came immediately. It was really violent. They arrested us, and when we got to jail, we were pretty beat up. Not all of us got the medical attention we needed. The worst was a protester named Julia, who is severely diabetic. We kept telling the guards about her condition but they only gave her a piece of candy. During roll call, she started to complain about light-headedness. Finally she just collapsed unconscious on the floor. It was like she just dropped dead. The guard saw it but just kept going through the roll. Susan ran over there and took her pulse while the other inmates were yelling for help, saying we need to call somebody. The medical team strolled over, taking their own sweet time. She was unconscious for like 4 or 5 minutes.
It’s not exactly news that janitors in Houston have been on strike for the past four weeks. What IS news is the way in which the protesters have been treated by Houston police. Interestingly enough, little news of the treatment of protestors has made it onto the local news or into our beloved Houston Chronicle. Of course, no media outlet wants to piss off their advertisers, and who really gives a damn about Brown People making minimum wage? Hey, as long the trash at my desk is emptied every night, what else really matters?
It would be nice to think that in this day and age, even janitors could make a living wage. Or are we really willing to exploit them because so many of them clean our offices at night? And if we don’t see them, do they really even exist?
