Immigrant father & July 4th

It was on a hot July 4th 1908. The ship was tied up at a pier in Brooklyn. Papa and his friend Bruno were working the ship as a way to get out of Germany. They were in their late teens and subject to draft into the Kaisers army. As anarchists, there was noway that was going to happen. To get into the US legally they would have to go through Ellis Island. That wouldn’t work as they had no “papers.” As they sat on the deck surveying the Brooklyn landscape they made a decision. One of the sailors had told them of a German community in Ridgewood Brooklyn where they might find work. That was it. They would wait until dark then shimmy down the rope to the dock and off to Ridgewood. The July 4th fireworks turned out to be their cover. With everybody's attention on the booming in the sky they grabbed the opportunity to make it to the dock.

They started to walk away from the water. With the help of strangers the two illegal immigrants made it to the German speaking community of Ridgewwod. Within a few days they would connect up with “Landsman,”people from the same home towns in Germany. My papa managed to get a job as a porter in the German Hospital. (During WW1 its name was changed to Wykoff Heights Hospital.)

Soon enough they would find in America the same kind of anarchist, socialist organizations that they had associated with in Germany, As papa told me this story he would repeatedly emphasize the importance of “learning the language of this new land he now lived in.’ That very first summer in the US, with the help of his new found radical friends, he would discover Coney Island. To hear papa tell it you would think he had died and went to heaven. “In Europe,” he said, “only the very rich or the aristocracy had access to beaches. Here in Coney Island are the masses of working men and women.” That first summer was just a love affair between my papa and Coney Island that was just a short subway ride away. “Besides” he would proudly proclaim, “they’re frankfurter worst is as good as you can get in Mannheim,” Coming from a German there was a real concession.

Which of course brings me to the present and Obama’s proposal to do something about the “Illegal immigrant problem.” My father and Bruno would eventually become citizens with the help of some Socialists on the New York City Board of Alderman. (That was a precursor to the City Council.) Of course as I think about it with the exception of the Native Americans we are all immigrants, legal and illegal.

We are now living through a period of looking for scapegoats to blame for our societies economic woes. Oh it is so much easier out there in Arizona to blame the foreclosures, the bank failures, drug problems, the 100 plus heat, the drought all of it is the illegals fault. “It’s those damm Mexicans who are messing up our very existence.” When it comes to the drug problem we seem to be incapable of acknowledging that it is the DEMAND in the US that is the culprit.

The Arizona Governor is in the “blame it on the illegals” routine. Just another example of how the lack of any organized left permits this fascist like campaigns against the illegals. What gets lost in this “Illegal immigrant shuffle” is the simple fact that those same illegals have been the source of cheap agricultural labor. That makes it possible for me to buy a beautiful box of strawberries at the Supermarket that a few days ago were growing in California.

It is far easier to demonize some minority group for societies failures than to understand that in fact it is a failing system that is to blame. That of course reminds me to say that the Bank Legislation making its way to the White House is a perfect example of removing the blame from the real culprits. That legislation will turn over to the same old regulators the job that they precisely failed to do that got us into this economic nightmare in the first place. We are putting the Weasels, that got us into this mess, back in charge of the hen house. Goodbye to us chickens.

Papa never gave up his love affair with Coney Island. He also never gave up his belief that a society based on equality for all became his guiding philosophy of life. That made him into an early union organizer. In whose footsteps his son so fondly traveled. Happy 4th of July.

PS. If this Administration was serious about getting control of the economic monster all they needed to do was put the Glass Sreagal Act back on the books. That law passed in response to the Great Depression said, “A bank cannot be in both the banking and the investment business.” One or the other. Never both. The bonus boys would go berserk if that happened because they could say goodbye to those Ferrari, Lanborginni, Masserati size bonuses.