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Comment by worker767424 | Hacker News Reader

I get that employees have the right to organize, but this guy was recently out of prison, living in a shelter, and his last job was a transitional job cleaning up trash by the freeway. You have to understand that when you organize, you're painting a target on your back. The guy just finished a prison sentence for robbery. Shut up and keep your head down. Let the middle class kids without police records do the organizing. Not saying this is OK or right, but it's the reality of the situation.

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Are you hoping that he'll read this and somehow see the light or are you trying to paint the picture that he has fewer rights than someone without a beat up past?

He has the same rights on paper, but that's not how it works. Say "it's not fair" all you want, but if you screw over society, society isn't going to trust you the same way as someone with a clear record, and you're going to have to prove yourself. I obviously know he's not going to read this, but he doesn't strike me as a reliable source of information either, so I'm just not too concerned with what happened.

Think he did more than say “It’s not fair.” The law was on his side and he had it enforced. May we all be so brave.

I understand that people sometimes look at situations like this and say, "this is the reality of the world." And truthfully, you're correct that people have fewer safety nets to take advantage of their rights sometimes, and that is reality.

But I think the pushback comes from the response/followup to that statement. We're on a forum of relatively privileged tech people, and I think it's good for us to talk about the fact that others don't always get to take advantage of the rights they have on paper, and it's good for us to advocate that they should be able to.

There's pushback to these kinds of comments in the same exact way that there's pushback to comments that, for example, say that Google is tracking everything, and people just need to understand that. Okay, you've identified something about the current world that people don't like, but that is still happening. Now what?

The average privileged person in tech doesn't need to learn how to keep their head down, they need to learn how to get very angry when underprivileged people's rights are taken away, and they need to learn how to make a bigger, more public fuss about vindictive social policies towards people with criminal records. It's one thing to acknowledge that society is cruel towards people with a criminal record, but the followup should always be, "and that is unjust and we should change it".

There is some value in recognizing reality, but there is also value in being outraged over outrageous things even in situations where they are common.

This is victim blaming.

I'll even go a step further and say that if you've made a number of objectively bad major decisions in your life, I think it's worth spending a long while reflecting on your decision making process, rather than just keep taking swings like this guy seems to be doing.

An alternative view is that a guy recently out of prison still found Amazon's working conditions bad enough to become an activist.

I think he would have found something to be upset about regardless of what he did.

It's really hard to say because the article limited it to this:

> During his second week at Amazon, Smith was approached by workers involved in organizing the Amazon Labor Union. Although Smith loved his job, he thought there were things that could be improved. In particular, he said, he was concerned about the warehouse’s extremely rapid pace of work and lack of breaks.

The article I linked to has lots more detail and direct quotes from Smith.

https://www.nysfocus.com/2021/11/23/a-homeless-amazon-worker...

Not many others from him on his issues with work conditions (there were others from other people about Amazon). He actually contradicts himself. This is him describing alleged intimidation after he because active in the union (emphasis added):

> Everyone else working around me was working at their own pace and he was just on me sending me more carts to sort and telling me to work faster

One reason he gave for joining the union was "the warehouse’s extremely rapid pace of work."

What have all those other good decision makers done to improve this man’s lot? What exactly should he be waiting for?

Reasonable people acting reasonably is how we got to where we are, and there are a lot of people who aren’t happy with the results. I’m sure you would like those people to remain calm, but I don’t know that it’s wise to expect that they will continue doing so forever.

I don’t want anyone to remain calm or wait, I’ve read MLK too much to think that’s a good idea, but I do I want this specific convicted felon to reflect on his decision making for a while before continuing to react as he does, because he’s clearly not getting the outcomes he wants for himself.

Yes, exactly, People need to know their place in society. Who knows what would happen if we give everyone a voice and allow all these freedoms to roam around. This guy should be kissing Bezos's feet for giving him the OPPORTUNITY to work. Tired of reading about all these 'bad major decisions' people getting involved in activism. Please let me know when the lacoste prep school bros organize, none of this deplorables bullshit.

Nowhere did I say this was a major bad decision in his life, I was, of course, referring to the robbery he was convicted of...

> Nowhere did I say this was a major bad decision in his life

Wait, are you saying he should take a step back and make fewer good decisions? You don't think this was a major bad decision, but you also don't think he should have made it?

I'm trying to follow the line of logic that says that people who make mistakes should stop doing anything else even if they're not making a new mistake. I mean, that sounds a lot like saying that he made a bad choice and therefore he just shouldn't participate in society now regardless of the role or appropriateness of his actions, even after serving his sentence. And if that's the implication, I'd push back against that sentiment pretty hard.

It could have been a minor bad decision, and it definitely had a major bad outcome for him.

I'm saying he should not trust his own decision making process right now, considering how often those decisions have led him to a negative outcome.

It sounds like he was stuck between a rock and a hard place on some level. Choosing not to try and organize or improve working conditions is also a decision; it would be a decision to stay where he was, even though there was a focused effort from multiple people to improve working conditions that he could take part in.

"Wait and see" is very tricky advice to give to someone who was working at Amazon out of a homeless shelter. How confident are you that staying homeless and not taking steps to try and improve his working conditions would have had a better outcome for him?

I am skeptical that "this had costs" is a good enough reason to say that this was a bad decision. A big part of coming out of rock bottom for people is the active decision not to stay at rock bottom, so if you don't think it was a major bad decision and you're just pointing out that it was risky... that's not a good enough criticism for me to be sympathetic to. From what I can tell, pretty much every life decision is risky when you're homeless.

There's also something of a chicken and egg problem here. Bad jobs are sustainable because they hire desperate people. If you're advocating that people who have made mistakes and ended up in desperate places shouldn't do bold things or make major life changes, then that is essentially saying that they should stay in those positions (even though I know that's not what you mean to imply). Who is going to challenge the status quo around desperate jobs if we say that the people working those jobs aren't supposed to advocate for themselves?

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