Reliving the Depression

These days I am periodically asked to compare this economic bust with the 1930s. In the thirties I was a child. What happened then was filtered through the vision of childhood. I was lucky because we didn’t starve or weren’t made homeless. That was primarily because we were part of an extended family of German socialists. For a 12 year old, people banding together to help and support each other had a fun aspect to it. Everybody making due with less seemed like a fun game. What did scare the day lights out of me was the people living in cardboard shacks in the City Parks. Papa assured us this would never happen to us. That was the scary part of that time that I thought by now I would have forgotten.

As the present crisis unfolded I did not feel particularly emotional about the losses that many average souls were going through. Now as I experience the present crisis, both through media as well as hearing first hand stories of what is happening to people, I find myself becoming increasingly emotionally troubled. People are losing their jobs, losing health insurance and suicides are increasing. I want to go and tell every single person who feels like a failure because they got laid off, IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT! IT’S THE SYSTEM THAT’S ROTTEN, NOT YOU!!!

In the radical world of lefties I grew up in, not one single person that I ever heard of considered suicide. On the contrary, it just made all those folks more determined to change the society. They really understood the Reinhold Niebour prayer, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” Man, they sure knew the difference,

We participated in almost daily marches and protests. People organized food banks and regular trips to farmers to purchase food wholesale for the benefit of all the participants. People who owned cars would volunteer to go to the Bronx wholesale market to buy potatoes, beans and beets by the sackful. The despair of suicide was never in the air as these people were determined not to fall victim to the “capitalist machine.”

We knew that we were not the problem, It was the capitalist system that needed to change. That change became known as “The New Deal.” In many parts of the world, present day radicals are taking to the streets to create some social unrest that well surely begin to scare the ruling class into action. Yes, I am still using the phrase “ruling class,” because that’s what it is. Americans have been duped into believing that any talk of “class” will create some kind of warfare. Well what exactly do we think is happening right now? Unfortunately we don’t have the labor movement or the radical organizations of the thirties to harness the rage people are feeling about the bonuses, the private planes, the office decorations into an organized protest movement.

I am still hopeful that the Obama movement will use that great internet network to get people out and raise some hell in the streets so the folks in Washington will get the message that things really do have to change. I am not talking about from Republicans to Democrats. I am talking about a redistribution of wealth that Sarah Palin accused Obama of proposing. Now what we need is to see him begin leading the fight to do it. That means he needs to get all those great people who elected him busy in actively working for change rather than just mouthing it. And finally, please tell anyone you know who is feeling desperate about what is happening to them, “It is not your fault. It’s the system that is letting you down. That is where to focus your rage, not on yourself.”
Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y.