Excerpt from 'In Excess of Playtime'

Updated
Black & Mild

A: Telling people not to travel if they can’t afford the ecological option is classist. Voting with your dollar is for people who have money. If the train is unaffordable? Guess what. I’m flying EasyJet.

B: May the poor witness the Earth burning from the window seat of a budget airline.

A: Did you know the Alabama coal miners have been striking for months?

B: There are unions in Alabama?

A: That’s what I said. The region is deeply anti-union, but they’re just at their limit, you know?

B: So what happened?

A: So the industry has been in decline for decades because everything is moving to renewable energy. And some years back the coal companies gave them an ultimatum: if they wanted to keep their jobs, they had to take a pay cut. Like these companies were ready to just shut down, but they offered to keep going if the miners would work for less and take less benefits and stuff.

B: Horrible.

A: I know. So these people who are like emblematic of the working class in a place as poor as Alabama, are working for nothing just to stay employed. And that travesty is propping up this incredibly dangerous and ecologically disastrous industry.

B: What a fucking mess. Solidarity with the Alabama coal miners.

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