AP - "A Century After 'Jungle,' Dangers Remain"

[mconvente]

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060422/ap_on_re_us/meatpacking_a_new_jungle_1

OMAHA, Neb. - He works in a world of long knives and huge saws, blood and bone, arctic chill and sweltering heat. For Martin Cortez, this is life on the line as a meatpacker.

It's no place for the squeamish. Some workers can't stomach the gore — chopping up the meat and bones of hundreds of cattle, day after day. Cortez has been at it more than 30 years. It also can be very dangerous. Some workers have been slashed, burned or scarred. He has not.

Even so, Martin Cortez, a soft-spoken man with sad eyes, doesn't recommend the work. The thrashing animals, the heavy lifting ... all that goes into putting steak and hamburger on America's dinner tables, he says, makes for a backbreaking day on the killing floor.

"You know what I like to say to newcomers?" he says. "They don't kill cows. They kill people."

This, some would say, is The Jungle of 2006.

Snip...

Longtime workers such as Martin Cortez are stoic about all these ups and downs.

At 55, he's not about to shift jobs. This is what he knows. But he tells newcomers at the plant to get an education and do something else. He tells his two daughters (ages 16 and 20) to go to college.

"Everybody says there's an American dream. Some people get it. Some people don't," he says.

"I'm not complaining," he adds. "We survive here. I don't know how. But we do."

That line I bolded is the saddest thing I've seen in a while, but it's true... Immigrants come here for the "American Dream", and for many of them, it doesn't happen. We've questioned whether it even exists anymore since there's so many struggling middle class families... :cry:

[enlightenment]

1. Could you link this article, please? I'd like to read the

whole thing.

Thanks!

[mconvente]

2. ah, my apologies - a link is here!

I added a link to the original post.

[mconvente]

3. kick n/t