With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.

And It’s Getting Harder and Harder to Breath.

The tears choking up my throat, halting my breath and streaming in halted gulps. I reach for my phone (skype) and call the one person who can calm me down and bring faith back into my worldview, Holly Dranginis.

It all started with my friend from Lijiang from a few years back. Currently working at Pfizer, we shared a lovely and insightful drink last Monday and discussed corporate responsibility, my work, and ways to make small changes on a large corporate scale. I walked away renewed, hopeful and excited for the changes our generation can make. From calculating global carbon footprints and sponsoring office contests to see who can make theirs a little less wide, to donating part of ones per diem food arrangement to a local charity in the country they are staying. That conversation inspired my “thank you” post from earlier this week. The events of last night inspired the full 180.

This morning, as I walked out to my taxi to work. I brought a bag of garbage full of watermelon rinds, eggplant scraps and popsicle sticks just as the man who was collecting the trash, putting everyone’s remains into the open back of a large container behind the bicycle he pulled in front. The man called to me, in English, “good morning! Please leave your trash in the back!”. He smiled widely, revealing that most of his teeth were missing and his shirt and pants, both many sizes too large, were covered with stains of splashes of the garbage he collects. I told him his English was good, “I practice every day!” he exclaimed through the smile. “So that I can get better and better.”

Last week, I met a taxi driver who I helped go over English phrases from his textbook in the car. On my way back from Harbin, a train attendant asked me to check (ok well actually to do) her homework assignment for a class. Everyone, it seems, wants to learn. It’s as if there is a cultural gold rush and English is the attainable material that will bring riches if one can only focus hard enough to attain it. And what is possible for them to achieve?

Well, if you make your way to a top American company, a hell of a lot.

I will admit that I was partially relieved to be out of New York this summer. 2L summer year means that most of the people I go to law school with are working at large firms, some finally embarking on paths full of the legal research they truly love. Most of which will be lavished with goods, four course dinners at five star restaurants, bottle service at the hottest night clubs, baseball tickets and all expense paid vacations. I am excited for those who are receiving pay off for their hard work, I get a $300 travel expense account for the summer which makes my upcoming trips much more feasible, but I wonder how much excess is being wasted and if it is truly acknowledged.

I met up with the friend mentioned above last night and a few of his friends who work for the same pharmaceutical company, at a bar in Beijing. Surrounded by foreigners we made our way out to the roof deck where, on one side lights flashed exclaiming Beijing’s newfound riches and, on the other, a dirtied, tightly packed apartment building overlooked our rooftop terrace. A man stood taking pictures of the structure. A friend of my friends, wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“Uh, who would ever want to take a picture of THAT ugly building.”

As the conversation lead on that evening we talked about donating drugs to third world countries.

“Like, it’s sad that people are dying, but you can’t just expect a country to give drugs when there are no copywrite laws and they could just be manufactured everywhere without giving any profit to the company. Like, we make a lot of money but what people don’t realize is it COSTS a lot of money, and someone’s gotta pay for it.”

Someone also has to pay for the five star hotel in which corporate people are living,

“Thank god we just moved, we were at the Sheraton and maybe it was a five star hotel years ago but not so much anymore.”

Someone also has to pay for the sixty dollar per diem expense account each person receives. Which is half of what I live off of in an entire week in New York City and a fifth of what some Chinese villagers make in a YEAR of work.

I’m not arguing that people shouldn’t be rewarded for the work they do. My coworker in Beijing tells me I have to accept that people won’t come to China and do this work unless they are allowed to live in luxury.

My response? Fine, don’t come to China. Or do and live in luxury but live in it in moderation. Or appreciate it and don’t go whining to others about how your masseuse wans’t perfect or the shots that your hotel gives out for free aren’t up to your New York standard.

Later that night, they revealed how they had spent the night in Hooters, because they “wanted wings”. Hooters in China has had issues because the women aren’t culturally trained to stand up for themselves as much and to resist the advances of groping foreigners living out their fetishes in a legal way when they can say it was just for the food. I talked about exploitation and, another friend of mine, states, disgusted,

“Oh please, those girls know exactly what they are doing? You don’t think that they know? They’re using us just as much as we are using them. Come on, I’d love to live half as well as those girls.”

Notice how he uses girls to talk about women in the twenties. Notice how this is a man who is all-expenses paid to fly around the world, stay in five star hotels and, as he put it, “basically party every night of the week, put in a few hours on Thursday or Friday, make sure everyone is doing what they are supposed to be and head back out to the bar.”

Yes, you’re life sounds so much worse than the women who have to be groped to make a living. Small disclaimer, I am all for having the “female empowerment” conversation about Hooters, Stripping, prostitution, what have you. Just not with this guy who throws the words around to justify staring at Chinese women with larger breasts.

As I walked back to my apartment after having to remove myself from the conversation, trash was littered all around the waste receptacles and I thought of the man who would have to pick them up the next day. The man who wants to learn English so he can be more like us and talk to the foreigners in his country. The people, all the world over, who are working and striving for a better life, who believe it can happen and see it as attainable. And I wonder if it is when the group I met above are the people controlling the world’s companies, the world’s resources, medicine supplies, food and clothing. I think they would laugh at this man’s smile and the gap between his teeth.

Holly, my one comfort as I sat crying on my floor, wracked with guilt and uncertainty, afraid I was one of them too for my drinks and hamburgers and cab rides, tells me that things will be different in the future. That our generation has been screwed over by eight years of Bush and cynicism, of disrespect and American self-righteousness. That people will begin to wake up and corporations will have to be more civically responsible. I hope so. It all seems so easy, little choices in your daily life that can make a difference. Donating five of your per diem dollars to buy an alarm clock to tell a child living with HIV/AIDS when to take her medication, using frequent flier miles accrued while traveling the world for free to help war victims visit their homes. And it doesn’t have to be all about charity either, companies can publish these actions they take and I’ll be more likely to buy their products. I know I have a lot more respect, and say so often, for the firms that donate to Public Interest law school events. (Special thanks to Skadden who, again and again, impress me with their giving skills!)

I cry knowing that I am part of the problem, I cry more knowing that others don’t see a problem where they clearly exist. I wonder if those are the self-imposed blinders that make them able to lead the life they do. Someone once called me “extraordinarily sensitive.” I am incredibly grateful that I am still able to feel.

Holly says that it will be better, if not for our kids than their kids. Maybe American economy falling won’t be such a bad thing, if it teaches us all a little more about moderation, humility, and how to live in a world where you’re not always handed everything on a silver plate.

Maybe it will teach us to work just as hard as the man who collected my garbage, on bettering ourselves, and the world.