I wrote this quite some time ago but failed to post it as I sincerely believed that interest, even at Daily Kos, would be limited if not outright hostile. In light of the excellent post
"Today in Labor History: They Died For Us; Let's Not Forget Them" by Mole333 and with the ever growing impact of Corporate theft, fraud, and abdication of responsibility, I am encouraged that my piece might resonate with a few reader's. I would love to hear personal experiences from the Kos community.
One of the clearest memories I have of my father is the week of Christmas 1968.
Pop was climbing into a ridiculously oversized Santa Claus outfit in an employee locker room of Western Union International in mid-town Manhattan grinning from ear to ear as any father with a Christmas secret might.
I'm sure most of you have seen that goofy conspiratorial smirk. The kind of smile Dad gets when he's gotten you the exact Christmas present that he always wanted as a kid, but never received, as he ruffles your hair and knowingly winks in your direction.
The dozen or so men with us in the locker room passed around a bottle of booze, for medicinal purposes, as my father wrapped the ties of the nylon white whiskers behind his head and completed the effect by donning the traditional white fur trimmed and pom-pommed red conical floppy hat.
Parting the beard with one hand Pop took a final swig on the bottle, swallowed, and yelled, "W.U.I. killed Santa Claus!" as we rose in unison and exited the back door into an alley bordering 5th Avenue.
If you've ever spent anytime in NYC around Christmas you know that the city's homeless are literally transformed into an army of Santa's. Every corner, every storefront, has a semi-sober Santa autisticaly rattling a bell in one hand, a half pint cupped in the other, guarding a red Salvation Army kettle.
So the sight of one more Santa exiting the alley onto 5th Ave. certainly didn't raise an eyebrow. Even when Santa was joined by dozens, and then hundreds, of burly longshoremen types they did not draw so much as a prolonged glance. But when Santa climbed into a makeshift black draped coffin even inured and calloused New Yorkers paused.
Children pointed with eyes welling and parents drew them closer as a half dozen "pall bearers" hoisted the coffin and my father (Santa) to their shoulders, protest signs pumping, yelling in unison, "W.U.I. killed Santa Claus". They circled the front of the building time and again as onlookers grew, mothers clucked reprovingly and my father got his picture on the front page of several local papers, again. To me on that day my father was larger and more important to me then Santa Claus could have ever been.
I was 8 1/2 years old, the 1/2 only being important when you're eight, and that was the first time Dad brought me to work. See my Dad was a union organizer, and not just any union but the Teamsters and Western Union International had breeched the time honored code of postponing lay-offs until after the holiday season. There had to be a reaction to their callous disregard of union brothers and sisters.
"Cause and effect", my father announced hours later, not necessarily the physics of equal and opposite reactions, for companies had unfair advantages. Laws, money, power all favored the large companies my father fought his entire life against. "They slap your face, you poke 'em in the eye. They knock out a tooth, you bite off their nose. It's the only way they understand," my father explained as a couple of dozen sling shot wielding men shot out the windows of W.U.I. from a Teamster friendly building across the street.
We didn't see my father for the next three days as he eschewed holiday overtime at his own job, and a bigger turkey or one more present for us, to walk a picket line for people he had never even met. Western Union International ultimately capitulated to the negative press and agreed to a severance package for those disenfranchised families that made the holidays possible for them and, more importantly, their survival beyond.
This is surely a convoluted and ultimately long personal way in which to begin a diary that ultimately has to do with the current raping by corporate America of the workers that made these companies what they are, but I think and feel it is appropriate to frame this discussion in a personal light. Most of you that have journeyed this far with me probably have a similar story, a "Norma Rae" moment so to speak.
As most children I received two educations, one from school and one from my family, and the two couldn't have been more disparate. The villains in my childhood stories had names like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller. My heroes had names like Mary Harris, Pete Seeger, and Jimmy Hoffa.
In secondary school, where you begin to study American history in earnest, my perception was turned upside down. All the heroes in these history books had names like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller. I never once even heard mention of my heroes and when I broached the subject my queries were greeted with a vacuous stare if not outright dismissal. It was early in the 7th grade that I learned the meaning of "revisionist history".
I was raised in a household where the answer to the oft misused question from Cain to God - Genesis IV. 9. "And the Lord said unto Cain, where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?" - was not a conundrum but a resounding, emphatic, YES!
I was raised in a household that understood just how many women died in sweatshops before OSHA was created. How many children grew old before their time, or died in the coalmines of West Virginia before a child labor law was enacted. How many men lost a hand, a limb, or their lives on an assembly line until the Fair Labor Standards Act and the 40 hour work week and mandatory breaks became law.
I was raised in a household that understood just how many men and women died or had their lives destroyed walking the Union picket lines to guarantee these basic rights for all Americans that all too many Americans now take for granted.
The argument for unions in this country has been co-opted by a corporate spin machine that has deluded the majority of Americans into believing that they in fact will be the next Bill Gates or Donald Trump. Having bought into this corporate fantasy version of Powerball there are almost no positive arguments for unions in the lexicon of American discourse. Not unlike regressive hypnosis, where everyone was Cleopatra or Marc Antony and never the village idiot, most Americans are living a delusional fantasy, only two paychecks away from homelessness, where a $6.00 pumpkin double shot latte with extra foam is somehow a necessity. They live above and beyond their abilities or means to the detriment of our "brothers" our "sisters" and ultimately themselves.
While the SCOTUS granted "personhood" protection under the 14th Amendment to corporations long ago, today more and more companies scramble for more and more government intervention to protect them from the evil public and greedy employees. Through the unprecedented efforts of this administration and Congress personal bankruptcy is now a nostalgic little novelty as corporation after corporation files for bankruptcy protection and for no other reason then to shirk their fiduciary obligations to their employees.
Which finally brings me back to my original point: Not so long ago the American Dream was a simple equation - get a decent education, work hard, dedicate the best and most productive years of your life to one corporation and your golden years would be taken care of. That simple pact, of personal and corporate responsibility, has been usurped and broken by the very corporations that originally promoted these benefits as the motivation for Americans to give up the best 30, or 40, or 50 years of their lives for the company's benefit.
Most disturbing to me, and why I'm writing this rant, has been sitting down with fellow self-proclaimed liberals over a cocktail or three to only have them parrot back to me pure corporate spin. Times have changed globalization has narrowed the markets and increased competition, corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders to maximize profits.
I am not a naïve person and realize that the only reason you put an INC. behind your name is to make as much money as possible but where is the outcry, the outrage from the left when the only thing that has truly changed, in the equation of the American Dream has been corporate responsibility.
It is an unfortnate and disturbing reality that the majority of liberals I meet simply shrug their shoulders abdicating any responsibility for the direction this country is heading in (after all they really, really, really hate Bush 43) so long as their mutual fund is kicking back at least 8%. I expect no less from conservatives but when liberals forget what the word liberal even means or has stood for I become angry, then frustrated, and finally scared for all our futures.
I do not question their hearts, at their core the majority of Americans are good people. What I do question is their; disdain, isolation, reasoning, narcissism, and apathy. "What can one person do?" You would have to ask Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Mary Harris (Mother Jones), Pete Seeger, or Jimmy Hoffa for a qualified answer.
As the first round of "baby boomers" begins planning for retirement and corporate America converts their earned pensions to 401k's, or relies on Federal bailout at pennies on the dollar, which in most instances will not provide for the life of the retiree, is our future relegated to an army of disenfranchised and destitute "brothers" and "sisters"? Our "brothers" and "sisters" who's only sin was to believe, to have faith in the corporations that they toiled most of their lives for.
Who will pick up the tab of our "brothers" and "sisters" future needs for our callous and shortsighted laziness today? Where will we warehouse the millions of our unwanted, un-needed, and discarded "brothers" and "sisters"? Is this the fate we accept, are content with, for what has been called our Greatest Generation?
It is a harsh reality but if we allow corporations to steal our "brothers" and "sisters" future today what can we realistically expect our future retirement to hold for us? A handful of Vicodon, a bottle of Vodka, and a plastic bag?