Social Unrest

As we sail into the present economic mess, the one storm that can bring dramatic change is social unrest. We are beginning to see it in actions like the community organization Acorn deciding to bar the door to home evictors. That’s reminiscent for me of the the YCL, the “Young Communist League,” in the Bronx during the thirties returning evicted tenants to their homes. When the Marshals removed the tenants furniture to the street, a well disciplined YCL Flying Squad would put the furniture back in the apartment. Thousands of World War One veterans marched on Washington for their promised bonuses. Workers were joining unions by the thousands to protect their jobs. It was these actions that caused the powers that be or the “ruling class” as we called them to begin to think about how to cool the unrest. Hence the New Deal. (1)

Back then there was a powerful organized left that could give leadership and direction to the unrest, as the YCL did in the Bronx. At the same time we would agitate for a new socialist society. The presence of the Soviet Union back then also had a sobering impact on how the bourgeoisie thought of what social unrest might bring about. The Soviet Union and its “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” was the greatest disaster for the left. For in fact it never was a truly democratic socialist society. But still people confused it with what a true socialist society might look like. No matter, the ruling capitalist class still worries about social unrest because it destabilizes the capitalist system.

If the economy continues to go into the dumps, social unrest will grow. I believe that our national propensity for the right of the individual to defend their homes will take on some serious consequences. I am awaiting the day when a group of NRA folks decide to defend their homes by sitting on their porches, shot guns in hand, to defy the Sheriff from seizing it. Maybe you can sense the glint in this old geezers eye. Man would I love to organize those folks. Montana or Missouri would be my first places of choice. I can see the headlines, “People Take Guns to Defend Their Homes.”

I have a major concern that all that anger and rage against Wall Street is not being organized into meaningful objectives for change. I am not referring to Obama’s change. That mostly has to do with style, like reaching across the isle. (Yee Gods, how that went bust.) I am talking substantive change, for example a rule such as the State that is bailing out the banks gets to control them. If we were talking business wouldn’t we insist on that? We put up the money, so don’t we get something in return? I’m afraid Obama does not have the stomach for that. The least he needs to do is like the way the government bailed out the S&L banks--take them over, stabilize them, and give them back. In the present mess the Government needs to take over the failing banks in order to reorganize them and get them functioning again. And it needs to decide that some of them are not worth saving.

In my YCL days I spent a lot of time studying how capitalism works. As a result I still have some ideas why the present plan is not working. In my next blog I am going to dive into those waters and I am certain I won’t sound like the Sunday morning television pundits. (Pssst, they never had to study how the capitalist system works.)

Thanks Kate. N.H.W.Y.

Valentines Day

In the mid sixties I was working for the City of New York as Deputy Manpower Commissioner. My primary responsibility was youth employment and job training. Since these were the days of anger and rage, a major part of my job was, as John Lindsey said, was to “keep the kids from burning down the town.” To say this was an assignment full of “perfect storms” would be a gross understatement. At times my office at 50 Church Street seemed to be like the cuckoo ward at Bellevue. In order to escape the craziness I would periodically sneak out at lunch time and walk over to Trinity Church for a period of quiet thought.

Trinity Church dates back to when the Dutch ruled Manhattan. Sitting oh so quietly in the empty chapel I would find myself staring at the naked man up there on the cross and wondering, what made him this most beloved, most revered person in our history? Each time I made it to Trinity, there he was staring back at me, forcing me back to the same question. As I kept coming back, it seemed I was increasingly looking for an answer to my question, why him?

One day after a bad weekend of rioting in the Bedford Stuyvesent section of Brooklyn, I was back at Trinity. It was a rainy Monday. As I sat there for an extra long period of time, a light bulb went on! That man up there on the cross had made two phenomenal human achievements--how to love unconditionally and how to forgive. I realized then and there how difficult it was to love. To be able to truly love, we must be able to get ourselves and our needs out of the way so as to give yourself over to others. I thought, “well thats a pretty simple idea,” until I tried to put it into practice. Oh, it’s so easy to say “I love you,” but it is extremely difficult to live it. What I learned that day is that the challenge of living “unconditional love” is one tough, if not impossible, assignment. Think about it. No, better yet, try practicing it.

To the second lesson learned, forgiveness. In a way it is the proof for the first lesson. For if we are able to love unconditionally then forgiveness follows. It is in the loving that we can find the ability to forgive. Unconditional love by definition suggests that we are able to look past the sins of human beings (including ourselves) and find their humanness. What a powerful message that is. Just try to imagine what the world would look like if we could just begin to practice that philosophy. If this was easy to achieve Jesus would not have become the revered icon of Christianity. Ask yourself, is there someone I should love and someone else to forgive? Have a happy Valentines Day.

PS: Next week I promise to be back to our present mess in which there is no love and less forgiveness.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

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.

Looking Out at the Bay

I thought we would enjoy something away from the dreary weary analysis of our continuing crisis. That’ll sure hold for another day. Here is my continuing effort to write a poem.

Looking Out at the Bay

Winter

Kate and I live on a bay called Moriches.

Our theatre to the world outside,
A twenty foot glass wall.

Off in the distance lies Fire Island.

The name comes from fires set
To warn incoming square riggers to stay clear.

Now a barrier beach.
It keeps the Atlantic Ocean out of our backyard.

A little way east is Swan Island.

Home it seems to thousands of gulls,
Called Herring, Bonaparte’s, Laughing and Great Black-backed.

One summer day I sailed into their home,
Dive bombed and screamed at by flocks,
I learned what “intruder” meant,
With due apologies and inordinate haste
I was out of there.

Now I watch the Gulls in the morning
Making there fifteen mile flight to where?

The Town of Brookhavens dump
For a great feast of garbage.

It’s a gull war for the best of the dump.

A piece of chicken here, a piece of bread there.

No matter, this is their feast.

The trip home may be a stop at our beach
For a clam or crab and a high flight
And a drop to crack it open.

It’s not necessarily the droppers
As other Bonapate’s on their way home
Will scream and continue to fight for each morsel.

As a man of rationality I wonder about Gull efficiency?
Fifteen miles west fifteen miles east,
Just for some old garbage feast?

Don’t make much sense to me.

Oh you see the difference?

Gulls just do what they have to do.

While we humans concentrate and ruminate
On what we are doing and why?

Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y.

After the Ball is Over

A popular 1890’s song:
“After the ball is over, after the break of morn.
After the dancers’ leaving, after the stars are gone,
Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all-
Many the hopes have vanished after the ball."

That’s how I remember the 1945 Inauguration. It was considerably warmer in ‘45 than it was yesterday in Washington. Still, after the celebrating was over people didn’t seem to know what to do. We went from one hotel ballroom to another (or was it a bar) just to try to keep the spirit of the day going. But by the late wee hours of the morning fatigue took over and we knew it was time to give it up and get on with whatever each of us had to do.

Watching the Obama celebration yesterday I knew that a lot of those folks in DC wanted that party to go on forever. Unfortunately, wether it was Caesar coming home to Rome, or Napoleon returning to Paris where they built those beautiful Victory Arches, or Times Square at the end of WW 2, after a few days of partying life somehow has to return to our everyday existence. So it is today. Everybody back to our own little daily lives of our existence.

I see the euphoria of the Inauguration wing-ding as both a blessing and a curse. The blessing part gives Obama a head of steam going into his first 100 days. Watching Obama deliver his Inaugural Address, I said to Kate that he reminded me of a character out of Greek mythology. This handsome, brilliant orator, who in some ways seemed far above us, has hopefully come to save us. So much for the blessing.

I am frankly far more concerned about the curse of expectations that goes with Godliness. It is a common phenomena for people in need to believe that someone has come to save them. The roots of that idea are buried in scripture. Someone is coming to save us. Yes, I know that Obama keeps telling us that correcting all our overindulging is going to take time. But I also know that my fellow citizens have been infected with the notion that “we can have it all.” What has been lost during the years of the Miliken/Madoff style of the big steal has been the idea of delaying gratification until the day you can afford it. Now I wonder how long will the country put up with the economic crisis before they turn on our new savior and start throwing stones.

Here is another observation of the difference between the crisis of the thirties and FDR’s first 100 days and now. Back then the major media was the press. Radio was relatively new and FDR made full use of it with his fireside chats. I remember people coming to my Uncle Zeigfried’s house because he had a great old Atwater Kent radio that could be heard in the whole living room. In contrast, I believe that Obama is becoming overexposed by the media, and that contributes to the rising expectations. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, there was no safety net back in the thirties so FDR was able to propose all that legislation that become known as The New Deal.

Clearly I think that FDR had the advantage over Obama. He could come up with new legislation and he had much better control over the new media, the radio. Now as for the press, that’s another story. FDR had to deal with a basically hostile newspaper world, and that’s where the radio was able to save him. He also had a powerful left represented by a dynamic labor movement and an array of left wing organizations that could carry support of his programs into the streets. Unfortunately, unless the Obama folks can figure out how to turn that new internet base into an active political organization, he is headed for trouble. Or should I say big trouble. But we shall see.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

The Inauguration

I wasn’t at all sure when exactly I had been to a Presidential Inauguration. So I went foraging through old files and low and behold here it is--the F.D.R. Inauguration of 1945. Here was the setting. I was New York State President of the Machinists Union (the IAM). The International President of the IAM had appointed me to the Democratic National Labor Committee of which Dan Tobin, President of the Teamsters, was the head man.




While World War II was still going on, it was becoming increasingly clear that fascism was going to be defeated. The Allies were going to win. (As I write this, I am looking for similarities and differences between that inauguration and the one coming up.) The ‘45 one was post WW II and the major issues before the country were the transition from wartime to peace time production. FDR’s concerns were how world peace could be assured. With Eleanor leading the charge, the United Nations would become the vehicle to insure that the world would never again see anything the likes of the war that had such a devastating effect on civilization. It was becoming increasingly clear that we were nearing the end of the FDR era. That made the country fearful of what might be lurking around the corner; similar, I think, to the present Inauguration mood. As a result of the economic meltdown, the country is suffering a severe fear of what might be coming. That is the commonality of these two inaugurations. I hasten to add however, the differences are enormous.


The 1945 Inauguration was a sad experience for me. After the ceremony Tobin took me on the greeting line to “meet the President.” FDR was in a large chair with his legs under a blanket. As we approached I became alarmed by the sight of a very tired, sick-looking old man. Tobin introduced me as “the young man who helped us win Pennsylvania.” The President shook my hand and said to Tobin, “What’s this kid with all that black hair doing with the rest of you gray heads.” Then, with that great FDR smile, he said to me, “Be careful of those old guys, boy.” There was a lot of prescience in that last remark. The next day I met Tobin at the Mayflower. He said the “Great White Father,” that’s how he referred to FDR, had given Tobin a number of jobs he could give to deserving friends. One of them was the Administrator of Yellowstone National Park. Tobin thought it would be great for me. I laughed and said, “Do you really want to send me to Siberia?”

I must tell you that there had been a most vigorous effort to dump me out of the IAM. And so Tobin said, “Bub,” thats what he called me, “your life in the Labor Movement would be short. They have tagged you as a commie trouble maker. So far you have been successful in beating them back. But remember, they have a lot more money than you and the country is headed for a very reactionary time.” Tobin said the employers have been furious with what they saw as the unions gaining enormous advantages through the Wagner Act and the New Deal during the war. They were now going to get even. Four months after his inauguration FDR died in his favorite home in Warm Springs, Georgia. The country was in deep mourning.

With FDR’s passing, Harry Truman became President. He was an old time political hack from Missouri. With the defeat of Wallace at the convention, it became clear that the age of the New Deal was about to come to a close, and it sure did. In the 1948 election between Truman and Dewey, Truman, to prove his bona fides as a conservative, issued a Presidential order requiring all Federal employees to sign a loyalty oath. That would be the start of one of the biggest witch hunts in our history. I believe that was the trigger that set off the McCarthy witch hunt and a wave of anti-labor legislation, resulting in the passage of the Taft Hartley Law. Together with the daily newspaper headlines about the Reds in Hollywood the country was gripped in fear.

As I contrast that ’48 Inauguration period with the upcoming Obama one, I am struck by the similarities and even more so the differences. The primary similarity in the two periods is dealing with fear, especially economic uncertainty. The primary difference is that once WW II was over, the economy began to roar. There was pent-up demand for everything--housing, automobiles, appliances, services, etc. All manufacturing had been devoted to materials necessary to win the war. The economy blossomed. Our current fate is as yet unknown, but no one suggests that our issues will be resolved quickly. What will get our economy going? How long will it take? Can we as individuals make it? We do not have pent-up demand.

Most unfortunate for Obama is the fact that we do not have a powerful labor movement or an organized left, like we had back in the thirties, that can take advantage of the economic crisis to advance the interests of the working masses (now called the middle class). I believe Obama would like to do that, but he needs the kind of political left backup that FDR had in the thirties. I hope I am wrong, but I see Obama underestimating the kind of fierce opposition he is about to encounter as he tries to fulfill his campaign promises. I do wish him the best of luck. But I would rather he had a powerful labor movement and left wing organizations to carry the banners of change in the streets. At any rate, as our first Black President I wish him well. But let us not underestimate what he will be up against.


Thank you Kate. N.H.W Y.

Tremont & Prospect

What with the economic crisis that the country and the world are confronting, people often ask me how it was back in the great depression of the thirties. I have many memories of those times and here is one that I decided to write as a piece of prose poetry. Enjoy. RS

A time confused nonagenarian am I.

It was around nineteen thirty three,

The golden age of Burma Shave and Moxie.

Referring to the whole friggin’ country as “we,”

We were deeply, I mean deeply mired

In a very severe depression.

So were the people around Tremont & Prospect.

Locals called it “Four Corners College of the Streets.”

Communists, Trotskyites, DeLeonists, Evangelists,

Single Taxers, Townsendites and Anybodies.

Absolute salvation was to be found in

Dictatorship of the Proletariat, World Revolution,

General Strike, Jesus is our leader.

One tax for all and $200 for all over 60,

Free gas for GM cars, stuff like that.

Fervently we believed in our messages of deliverance.

All had the answers to what was ailing us.

Each hollered it from one corner to the next

Right there on four corners in the Bronx.

The Young Communist League was singing

“Hold The Fort,” “Arise Ye Prisoners of Starvation.”

Then one fateful night Esther said,

“It’s your turn to speak.” I said “You’re crazy.”

Somehow I was pushed up there.

A crowd of puzzled faces stared back at me.

From whence it came I shall never know,

But speak I did.

Capitalism will solve its problems

On the backs of the working class.

Fascism is the way it does it.

Big round of applause. My audience grew,

Causing consternation on three corners.

Attacks came from all three,

“He’s a liar! Communist Traitor! Anti Christ!”

Wow, that last one was scary.

“Esther, what am I to do?”

“Just keep going. You’ve got them listening.”

And keep going I did.

Shouted, “You want jobs?”

The crowd responded, “Yes.”

“Join us Friday in Union Square.

The power of the working class will stop fascism.

Yes, we’re on the road to socialism.

Unemployment, bread lines, evictions, poverty,

All will be quaint memories from the past.”

Now me a seasoned “Soap Boxer,”

A regular on Tremont & Prospect.

On fire this night, damming capitalism

Seemed to have me in its grip.

“It’s the Robber Barons, Ford, Dupont, the Fricks

Who have stolen your lives.”

Suddenly the garbage, the rotten eggs came flying.

Splattered, I here Esther say “keep going.”

Defiant fist in the air, “Socialism is the way.”

Pushing through the crowd came

A little old shiny faced lady. “I’m a Nun you know.”

“Yes, the glow told me so.”

Her arms outstretched with a St. Christopher Pendant.

“Remember to always wear this.

He will protect and keep you from harm.”

I really did want to thank her.

Quietly as she came, so she slipped away.

And me always wondering

Where did that soap box voice come from?



Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.