These protests resonate with me greatly even though my family has weathered the recession fairly well with our federal jobs. We have our concerns, such as the federal pay schedule freeze and the start of military downsizing, but they pale in comparison to the joblessness and lack of opportunity many of our citizens are facing. So I applaud their initiative and resilience, because we are both from humble backgrounds.
She came from near poverty and definitely never higher than lower middle class as a small farmer family. My parents struggled initially, but eventually achieved true middle class, perhaps even a bit higher for a few years. We left those small communities for better opportunities, but we can still remember living paycheck to paycheck, literally down to our last dollar in the checking account.
I think my first LES in basic training was for around $670 and we later thought we were doing pretty good, after a few promotions, and I was making just over $1k. She worked numerous small jobs as she followed me around in the military. Most of her jobs were pretty crappy, minimum wage, part-time, with no benefits. One was for a radio station (selling advertising), another was as a secretary for a trucking firm, yet another was at Piggly Wiggly. Even I worked part-time while I was serving, first at KFC, then Pizza Hut and finally as a part-time EMT. I remember spending around $140 to get my EMT-Intermediate certification so I could get a $0.25 raise to $6.75 an hour which I was pretty happy with in 1994/5 dollars!
We were fortunate enough to even find additional work after we PCSd to Germany. She got a pretty darn good job as a Hitachi rep, traveling to various PXs to sell TVs. I got a part-time job as a Weber grill rep, grilling turkey's on weekends (hey I got to keep the grill at the end of the year). However, we eventually realized we were going to have to make some sacrifices to get a leg up in life. I had a decent skill as a physical therapy technician and considered getting out to work as a PTA, but then fate struck and I stumbled across an ROTC brocure detailing a "Green-to-Gold" program.
Honestly, I didn't think I would get accepted, even though I had a 4.0 in a general studies AA I had earned in Germany. See, our school career counselor sucked, to say the least, and I just never really thought I could become an officer, what I viewed as more of a white-collar worker, because of what people thought we could ever achieve coming from small town Nebraska. Fortunately, I was allowed the opportunity to achieve more.
We got out, I went to school in Lincoln and she got a temp job with the state. This was when we started making some sacrifices to improve our economic outlook. She took another state job closer to home to get a promotion And permanent job. She commuted 200 miles to come to our home in Lincoln on weekends, but stayed locally during the week. This continued for about a year until she landed a temp federal job back in Lincoln. I was finishing my degree around that time and about to go to school in San Antonio. Amazingly, she got a transfer to another temp job down there within 2-weeks of me leaving.
So things were going pretty well KWIM? I was going to school for another two years while being on active duty and she was gainfully employed full time in a federal job. A few years later though, we again had to choose between staying together or progressing in our careers. I won't bore you much longer with all the details, but all told, the last 6-years involved many more transitions for her and I. When I add it all up, we've been geographically separated for approximately half of our 18-years of marriage and we still are, but now by only 150 miles.
I guess that was a pretty big intro, but I'm just saying, we're doing pretty good financially, but it hasn't been without making personal sacrifices, some luck and probably some things that many others might not have been able to do. So I get very angry with the fever for austerity, the lack of shared sacrifice by the richest among us, and the corporate money flowing to our politicians. I've felt powerless to influence it aside from voting and I'm really damn glad to see people out their protesting. We are having a meeting downtown tonight to get the word out about Occupy Lincoln Oct 15th and I'm getting excited just thinking about what kind of sign I'm going to make.
But what am I hoping to see more of?
Well, I haven't seen all the photos, so maybe I've missed seeing some of them, but I think it would help demonstrate our unity as the 99% if we saw more of them as a symbol of our solidarity.
I think I've diaried about this before, but I'll just never forget the most touching display of support in my life. Back in 2004, a friend from ROTC, 1LT Iwan was killed in Iraq. I found out about it by reading the paper-yea that was a shock. I read the release at one of our meetings-bad idea. I did it because I just wanted to raise awareness that, you know, our fellow Soldiers were dying over there. Anyway, yea I broke down toward the end of that reading. I wasn't ready to talk about that in public and in hindsight it probably wasn't a great first impression at my first duty assignment, occurring within a few months of getting there. Maybe it was the right thing to do though since it did bring tears to some of my peers and really brought the war closer to home, especially for me.
After that, my boss let me go home for the funeral. It was only the second I could ever recall that I'd been to, the first being my grandpa some decade or so earlier. The funeral was sort of a surreal experience. A lot of our ROTC classes that knew him was there. We all met at a bar the night before and drank Miller Lite's in Ed's honor, with one at the head of the table for him. As we finished up for the night, we debated what to do with Ed's beer and decided that Ed would want us to drink it, I got the honor.
I was fine, just fine, at the viewing, even though a lot of people were crying, even my big tanker friend who I'd never seen shed a tear in the 3-years I'd known him. I didn't look for long, but I just remember that wasn't the Ed I remembered, so waxy and artificial looking. It was a huge funeral, with Senator's and Congressmen attending, so many friends, family and classmates that there wasn't enough room in the church. I was standing outside the door during the service with one of Ed's classmates, a real hard core guy that became a Ranger, and we were just kind of stoic, numb I guess.
Then we got into our car for a miles long procession to the graveyard and the sight was like nothing I ever could have imagined, flags, tons of flags, flags of every size held by kids and adults, all along the route, thousands of them! I think my friend and I just kind of took one look at each other and we started crying like babies, it was just the most amazing and beautiful display of support for our fallen comrade. I'll never forget that and though it is burned in my memory, I could never find a photo anywhere afterward. I guess that makes sense, who wants to take pictures at a funeral? And who needed to when it was something so memorable? I guess I looked because it just seemed like something the world should see.
So, yea, flags, that's what I'd like to see more of...maybe if nothng else it would make people pause before criticizing the sincerity of our movement or abusing the rights of protesters. I mean how can people not rally around that?