Unfortunately, all five faces of oppression are present in modern America. Workers are exploited to the highest degree on a daily basis. Not only are hourly workers being underpaid, but they also face a housing and food insecurity as rates of inflation increase and we fall to the brink of a recession. For example, in 2021, Jeff Bezos made 1.7 Million dollars while the average Amazon employee barely scraped up $15 an hour. People of specific groups are regularly shut out from some of the general society. In the short 35 days we have shared in 2023, over 120 bills restricting LGBT plus rights have been introduced in our country. These bills range from targeting their freedom of expression to their access to gender dysphoria-related healthcare. That’s honestly ridiculous and I can only assume thousands of tax dollars are being spent to discuss and vote upon bills that strip people of their fundamental rights due to things out of their control. We saw a significant shift in people’s tolerance to powerlessness during the pandemic when workers would literally just quit their lower-skilled, low-paying jobs. Why continue forcing yourself to work for huge corporations that don’t value their employees, offer opportunities for advancement, or pay a living wage? Many people are living paycheck to paycheck so they don’t have the luxury of immediately quitting a job, leading to a feeling of being stuck and burnt out. Gentrification in New Orleans specifically has plagued the streets with bland, basic, and expensive restaurants, housing, and general businesses. There’s a long list of cultural imperialistic red flags that the mostly white influx of New Orleans residents has burdened the city with since the devastations of Hurricane Katrina. The most recent headlining act of senseless police brutality is the murder of Tyre Nicols, a 29-year-old black man brutally beaten to death. I still can’t bring myself to research the incident thoroughly and I definitely won’t be watching the body cam footage, my threshold for media surrounding the massacre of my people reached its limit years ago. Violence as a form of oppression is still alive and well in our current society.
