The Hamptons are a luxury seaside getaway in Long Island, where the rich and famous spend their summers on sprawling, pristinely manicured estates. These massive properties require a large workforce to maintain their flawless landscaping year-round. Behind the scenes, a hidden community of workers tends to the acres of hedges and lawns on some of the most expensive real estate in the world.
Years ago, these landscape workers from Guatemala and other Latin American countries were able to rent rooms and even send a little money home to their families. But as the wealth gap widened, their pay could no longer cover the cost of a crowded basement room, and many were forced to move into encampments in the woods. The threat of ICE raids has made their conditions more dire, as workers have dispersed from group encampments into single isolated tents.
Although the snow precludes the need for regular yard work during the winter, the property owners still require an absurd task to be completed when the temperatures drop below freezing. Once reserved for delicate fruit trees, it has now become a status symbol to have hand-tied cloth coverings custom-made to protect every individual hedge and tree across their estates.
The irony of a worker who has no shelter beyond a flimsy tent, hand-stitching a sweater for a shrub, is a bleak testament to the cruelties of our current social structure. Working people trying to support their families are literally dying in the snow to indulge the whims the ultra-wealthy.
This exploitation and grossly uneven distribution of resources is inherent to capitalism. In the Hamptons, it is especially striking given the proximity of hard-working people who are unable to meet their basic needs to lavish lifestyles built on excess. But this inequity is part of the system, and exists throughout our current society. In a country that just generated its first trillionaire, millions of people are on the brink of homelessness, and the number of people without shelter is at a record high.
It is clear that our current system is not serving us, but exists only to channel more wealth to those at the top. Examples like the conditions of the landscapers in the Hamptons, remind us of the need to fight for a society that respects the dignity of working people, and that distributes the world’s resources in a manner that provides for everyone’s needs.
