Expendable People
We know them because we avert our eyes every time we see them. Actually, scratch that. We don’t see them. We’ve spent enough time practicing the art of looking through some people so they become like the raised corners of the sidewalk, pushed up by tree roots over time. You must know that they’re there because they could cause you to roll your ankle if you missed them, but once you step over them, you can continue that fantastic story you were telling your friends as you walk home from brunch.
People’s hearts are tired of breaking. That’s the only explanation I have for the existence of expendable people. They’re our whipping boys, the slowest of the pack which get eaten so that we don’t. They live in places where roads are dusty and heaped with rubble. Where waters raise and muddy their floors. They are not indignant. They have long accepted their fates or perhaps they’ve never known that there was another way to live.
But they have phones. They’re not wearing rags tied with ragged pieces of rope. This is the new millenia. They even have fancy sneakers. Somehow when we see them on our screens, we cringe as we recognize the Adidas logo on their tee shirt, perhaps a vestige of a donation made once when we upgraded to Supreme or perhaps bought with pride from the market or the store. Do they have stores?
They are expendable people whose cause we can conveniently take up and lay down when they get too close. We’re incensed by the razor wire in the Rio Grande, but when they’ve come to live down the block, they’ve actually become more inconvenient than that raised corner of sidewalk. You want me to step over your legs because you want to lay on the street? Where do you think this is?
We stand with countries because it’s easier than standing with people. We hold up photos of broken bodies because these bodies were not expendable, but the ones that will pay for them are mere collateral. We debate and shake our heads, but secretly, we have all whispered a sigh of relief that the expendable people are them…not us.
