Singing the Chick-fil-A Child Labor Blues

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Chick-fil-A is hosting a summer camp for kids — but with a disturbing corporate twist.

“Summertime, and the living is easy, fish are jumping, and …” Wait a minute, what the hell is this?

A summer camp for kids — but with a disturbing corporate twist. Some outlets of Chick-fil-A, the fast-food chicken chain, are promoting a summer camp where children as young as 5 can learn “how to be a Chick-fil-A worker.”

Isn’t this fun? The corporation says that while the chickadees won’t actually be doing the work of regular employees, they will learn how to “take orders, deliver orders, make drinks, and be a hostess.”

Of course, the little campers don’t get paid — indeed their families must pay to let the company give them an early dose of the good ol’ American work ethic and a “behind-the-scenes look” inside the hierarchal corporate order. You can’t start ’em too young on these life lessons! The kiddos do get compensated, sort of, with their very own Chick-fil-A name tag and T-shirt.

OK, this is not the Dickensian dystopia of 19th-century England — but is that our modern standard? There is nothing wrong with young kids working … but 5-year-olds? And — as was the case in the preteen tasks I had in my father’s small business and on my Aunt Eula’s farm — the objective ought not be indoctrination into the corporate culture of low-wage franchises. Rather, I was learning to help the family and how to contribute to the larger community. My reward was not merely a token stipend but a recognition that I belonged — that I had a role and was valued as part of that community. People didn’t need a corporate name tag to know who I was.

This is Jim Hightower saying … There’s so much more that an $11 billion nationwide giant like Chick-fil-A could do for the communities that provide its profits. Can’t they think of anything less selfish than promoting a fast-food future for children?

What If a Homeless Person Served on the Supreme Court?

What’s wrong with Neil Gorsuch? His soul, I mean.

As one of the domineering right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court, Gorsuch routinely supports enthroning plutocracy, autocracy and his own brand of Christian theocracy over people’s democratic rights. But he also uses his unelected, unchecked judicial position to take power and justice away from America’s least powerful, most vulnerable people — including the homeless.

For example, he ruled last month that an Oregon city’s ban on homeless residents sleeping outdoors was NOT cruel and unusual punishment. Never mind that the city provided nowhere else for homeless individuals and families to bed down, Gorsuch saw no problem with penalizing people who have to sleep or camp out in parks, on the street, etc. After all, he blithely explained, it was not a ban on homelessness but merely on sleeping outdoors.

“It makes no difference,” exclaimed His Supremeness, whether the violator is homeless or “a backpacker on vacation.” Or, I suppose he’d say, a Supreme Court justice sleeping under a bridge. To punctuate his cluelessness, Gorsuch actually asserted that the law applied equally to everyone. Except, of course, that the homeless can’t just go home after being kicked out from under the bridge.

This is Jim Hightower saying … It’s rank injustice for Gorsuch — a child of a politically powerful and rich family, product of Ivy League schools and high-dollar law firms, possessor of enormous personal wealth and multiple homes — to dictate “let-them-eat-cake” rules for homeless people he’ll never know or understand. Yes, homelessness is a complex social scourge, but cavalierly criminalizing its victims is itself a judicial crime that solves nothing. Neil is not morally fit to judge poor people — so how about replacing him with a homeless person who actually knows something about real life?

Jim Hightower
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