03/24/2023
Hi, my name is John Paul Collier, and my friend, James Coleman and I have launched the first episode of our podcast, Chicken Fried Learning Time. In it we share information and our thoughts on historical and current events and trends with a particular focus on social, political and economic inequality and justice through the prism of our leftist, blue collar perspective. We are not professional communicators of any kind, James and I have high school educations, we work in blue collar jobs. We met and became friends while working together as meat cutters for one of the nation's biggest wholesale clubs, which is a subsidiary of the world’s largest retail company. We prefer not to name them if we can help it, because they get enough publicity and James still works there and can’t afford to lose his job at the moment.
In course of our workdays together we realized that we, and frankly most of our co-workers, had similar views on the topics listed previously, and a recurring element of those conversations has been the complaint that although people in positions of power and authority are constantly and theatrically singing the praises of ‘the working people’ or ‘hard working blue collar folks’ or some other folksy iteration to describe those of us who work for a paycheck (which is another phrase they use to signal their concern for us), their actions via legislation, business practices, down to the granular level of workplace conditions and policies are little more than jargon-veiled and often authoritarian (or at the least non-democratic) and have the effect of harming us collectively, and when that is not the point of these actions, it is a consequence of them. I would say unintended consequence, but that term implies that these things are done in good faith. We wondered why the voices we heard talking to us or about us were rarely ever those of people like us, and by that I mean working class people or people with working class backgrounds. Even amongst those who comment or discuss these issues who agree with us. Virtually every commentator on television or in media of any kind are professionals: attorneys, journalists, social workers, business people, career politicians or are paid spokespeople thereof. We are customers and consumers of other people’s ideas, and those ideas are, underneath the rhetoric, formulated and implemented with little, if any, direct input from people like us.
So we figured we could at least scream into the void and see if anyone would be willing to listen. We believe that there is a need for voices like ours, not that everyone will agree with us about everything we believe or the way we convey it, but people who work in jobs like ours, live in neighborhoods like ours, face struggles and problems like ours.
And yes, while we are straight white men born and raised in the South, we are not conservatives, and we are not religious (Christian or otherwise); conversely, neither are we liberals or Democrats. We describe ourselves as leftists and/or socialists because that is the closest to what we believe, but we are not partisans or activists. We are not members of any party or organization, and we are not interested in joining. We do have a perspective and that is wholly different from having an agenda. That said, we aren’t looking to create an echo chamber. We are comfortable living and functioning in places with people who do not agree with us. That doesn’t mean that we won’t say what we think, and one of us (John Paul) is more abrasive and combative than the other, but that is more a function of style than animus. Point being, we invite everyone to listen and engage with us, especially if you disagree with us. We will not promise that we are going to hold hands and sing hosannas,, but we welcome you to the table. Just know that we are sarcastic and we are enthusiastic in our use of profanity. We welcome everyone to reach out to us and have a conversation, let’s see if we can’t all learn something together. If you like, we sincerely appreciate you spreading the word. We don’t have an advertising department (or budget!), or a PR team. It is just us and whomever out there would like to walk the road awhile with us. And if you hate it, or aren’t interested, that’s cool as well. Whatever the case may be, we thank you for your time. We hope to talk to you again.
Listen to Chicken Fried Learning Time on Spotify.
