Yes there will be other diaries. This one is mine and it is personal. I grew up in Chicago. My entire family (including all the aunts and uncles and...) was " working class" in a very genuine way. Yet when I was first introduced to the history of the American worker, I did not see my family there anywhere. Even when I read The Jungle I had to work at realizing that Sinclair was writing about my mother's father. We lived with my mother's parents from 1st grade to mid second year of High School. Grandpa was illiterate. When they wanted to make him a foreman in the Chicago Stockyards he had to practice signing his name "Casimir Urbick" on the white edge of grandma's Lithuanian newspapers. She could read in Lithuanian. She spoke Lithuanian with my mom when I was not supposed to know what they were talking about. My mom made it through eighth grade. The initial "C" in my name is my middle name. It is Casimir. I am very proud of it. I want to scream when I hear people bashing immigrants! Come read beyond the break to see what this day means to me.
I detest having my name ridiculed by rednecks and crackers every day in the South. I don't really know what a redneck or a cracker is but it is an easy way to talk about people that ignorant. I don't use those terms in my thoughts or my speech but I wanted to emphasize the disdain I have for people who have no respect for the other immigrant lines in this country. I have this cartoon in my head. The Indians are standing watching the Colonial ships arrive at Jamestown and one says to the others:
Now we have to deal with this immigrant problem!
It would be funny if it weren't so real.
When my dad bought his first house it was in a "Working Class" suburb called Stickney. It had one edge bordering on Cicero of Al Capone fame. We moved to Stickney because taxes were low. Not only was I the first in my family to go to college, but also among the first in our Suburb. The way I got to go to college was funny. My dad wanted me to go very much so I was a super student and living in Stickney did not stop me from the pre college track at J. S. Morton High School in Cicero. What it did do was to make me miss out on all the tips and stuff from the guidance counsellors about college scholarships. Image my embarrassment when I had to ask my class mates who were comparing their scholarships (almost all of them below me in class standing) how they got them. The guidance counsellor. OK! Don troops off to the office for his first ever conversation with a guidance counsellor. I swear she was snickering throughout the conversation. The short version is that it was too late to apply. She called me back as I stormed out with rage and shame mixed in my tears. There was still a chance. Just sign up to be cannon fodder and you will probably get a juicy NROTC Regular Scholarship. So I did, they welcomed me with open arms, and I got to be a regular USMC Officer comissioned in 1957. I did my time and went to the university of Chicago after I got out and got a PhD in physiology nd taught in medical schools all my life including Harvard. I am now author of books and scientific writings of all sorts and an expert on Complexity Theory.
This year is really a meaningful one for me. I am a Democratic Socialist, a Charter Member of DSA. I have been a working class person all my life. I never fit in where I was. That's only part of it. I had to suffer something worse than rednecks making fun of immigrants. I had to learn that there are one hell of a lot of "educated" people in this country who look down their noses on working people. I had to try to figure out why some folk who are just a tad better off than others call themselves "Capitalists". I have to ask the question here today what we have gained since Haymarket? I have to wonder what this day means to anyone else? The American worker made a big gain, if only a symbolic one, by becoming an "owner" of Chrysler. I have a e-mail letter from Frank Llewellyn, National Director of DSA entitled:
FORMER ASSEMBLYMAN SAYS
"CAPITALISM HAS FAILED US"
Luster Urges Democrats to Work for a "New America"
In it he says this:
"Will we go beyond that and seek new and perhaps untried ways of creating and nurturing an economy and an economic system that fairly and democratically distributes its bounty to all who live here? Will we reject the accepted notion that our health, well-being and security will always be subject to cyclical forces beyond our control? Will we turn to a system that holds accountable those who plunder the wealth, which is the fruit of our common labor?"
Luster urged the Democratic rank and file to work for democracy in the marketplace and the workplace and to insist that the officials whom they have helped to put in office "put a premium on courage and a tax on timidity." He called for the Party to work for a "new America" that will reject the "greed and selfishness of the modern day robber-barons" and which will put aside "the old divisions of race and class and gender...by re-creating a nation built upon our common humanity and a vision of an America where the public good is put ahead of private profit."
Luster, 67, retired from the New York State Assembly in 2002 after serving 14 years. He also served as Ulysses Town Supervisor and Ithaca City Attorney. He is an active member of Democratic Socialists of America.
So that is where we are today. We have not come that far. In the Democratic Party and on this site we have vast numbers of people who could care less about workers and who see diaries like this one a threat to them because of some knee-jerk inbuilt fear of workers having any sort of power. The world, on the other hand, has used this day to revitalize their commitment to the struggle. I have enjoyed my sabbaticals in Europe because I was able to see how other peoples in this world respond to the word "worker". So I ask all of you to join me today in celebrating the life we live that was won for us by our working brothers and sisters over the years. We can never pay them back for what they sacrificed. We can carry on the struggle in their footsteps.