This is a pretty strange and extremely difficult post for me to right, especially given my political illiteracy and virtually lack of knowledge of American history.Little did I know when I first started watching RT (Russia Today) America that I would be questioning everything about American politics, the Occupy Wall Street offshoot in my city, not to mention the Tea Party.
This will anger a lot of people but since I've been watching RT and trying to figure out the Occupy movement...well, I find myself getting tearful listening to the Soviet National anthem (not the tepid Russian Federation one, even though it has the same melody). No Eastern European ancestry on my part. So why the emotion at the USSR national anthem aside from its musical superiority to just about every other national anthem?
The people and workers. I come from a working class family and neighborhood, and I am a worker myself. My father had to quit school in the 5th grade to support his family. He didn't stop working until he suffered a heart attack when I was in high school and a fatal heart attack when he was 68 and I was only 24. My dad was a truck driver. He would get up at 5 a.m. every morning and wouldn't come home until 10 p.m. He never missed a day of work, even when he was sick as a dog. The only time I recall him staying home from work was when he suffered severe hip pain that he couldn't get out of bed.
I will never forget how much he talked about the CCC and his time working in Wyoming in his twenties. We still have his "year book" of pictures from that time. He was so thin (too thin for his height, his CCC card lists his height and weight). These social programs that so many people would now condemn meant survival. It wasn't like it is today, people sucking the system dry, leeching off the all mighty Middle Class. There is a vast difference between the working class, the lower middle class that the Middle Cast just can't or won't grasp.
The operative word being WORK. As soon as economic situations improved we fought tooth and nail to survive and stand on our own. But to get back on topic, I grew up with the CCC always in my mind. It was in my brother's blood when he ran to a local hospital--literally ran for three blocks--when he was 16 to get a job washing dishes at a hospital. He bought a $100 car with his first paycheck, I did the same thing when I was 17, at the same hospital . I bought a 35 mm camera with my first paycheck. That was my dream to have a camera of my own, not have to use camera. I was in the photography club in high school and won an award, announced over the PA system for my picture of the American flag in front of LHS.
A very used cheap car and a camera seem such small actualized dreams but we knew one thing from these experiences--success came from work. For all of his hard work my father bought a house and actually lived long enough to pay it off and have a mortgage burning party. THAT was Independence! To finally own the land you lived on.
My brother burned his mortgage recently, too. He worked his butt off for that freedom. He worked as a gas station attentend, worked at Chevy but was layed off, and finally joined the military. At his retirement party two years ago a Lt. Col. gave him the greatest compliment you can give a man. These simple words: "He's a good man."
My mother had a slightly different story. Her family was desperate during the Great Depression and lived in poverty. TB destroyed much of her family. Her father had it, her 14-year old sister died of it at Perrysberg (a hospital set up by the government to help the poor suffering from it. Another liberal social program that the Tea Party set would probably despise today). My mother had TB also, when she was in her twenties. My sister had to have yearly TB tests. Me and my brother both received a vaccine called BCG to protect us from TB.
Whenever I am tested for TB, I have to remind nurses that I had a BCG vaccine and will test positive for it because of the BCG vaccine. Thanks to the government run Chest Clinic at City Hall...another of those leeching off the middle class.
Off topic again:(
Anyway, I grew up with CCC, Perrysberg, and TB always in the back of my mind and my mother's warning that the Republicans were "all for the rich." If you made more than $30,000 in the 1980s she would consider you rich. It was a warning I haven't forgotten and is starting scream in my mind as I witness the cruelty towards the working poor and poor by Republicans off and on line (more off line).
They utterly ignore the operative word WORK. Work for my parents and grandparents didn't mean a white collar job with lots of benefits. It meant working at all costs to survive and achieve some measure of independence. This is not the case for the generations of people who have been on welfare for decades when they are able bodied and capable of working several part-time jobs if no full-time work can be found.
The immigrants where I live now, also very much working, lower middle class, have the same spirit and values as my parents and grandparents. They bring their kids in to the newspaper as soon as the kids turn 11 and work as a paper boy. I won't go into detail, but let's just say their experiences in Russia were not good, poverty in the US would be a luxury for them.
But yes, they see that there kids become paperboys, they're first jobs. Not only to support the family no doubt, but to instill work values. We had two little Russian immigrant paperboys. When Alexei (sp) got a complaint for not delivering the paper as he should, his mother basically fired him, took the job away, and gave it to Vova (sp).
We actually have more than a few Russian paperboys, and other immigrant children. If a route isn't open they ask to be put on the list. Whether to instill work values, supplement the family income or a combination of the two, they do remind me of my family. I can see my relatives in them.
They also seem to share another common practice--a love for gardens. Not flower gardens but vegetable gardens. Immigrants it seems always feared starvation and lack and always had gardens of their own.
Memories again...long before camcorders, digital cameras with video, and DVD players we had old 8mm Brownie cameras. I still have the old Brownie projector my mother used. Every few months my mother would haul out the projector, film, and small movie screen and we'd watch home movies. No audio so we had to verbally re-tell the stories. The movies of my Italian relatives still stay in my mind. I can see my mother and her grandfather standing in a vegetable garden.
Immigrants...workers...farmers...sigh. I don't know much about how the Communist party was formed, or the sincerity of those workers and farmers, but I am more inclined to believe they were indeed sincere. How it veered into government control and abuse I don't know. But the themes of workers, pride, and brotherhood does resonate with me.
All of which has me confused and conflicted politically. I can see value and cruelty in the Republican party, and the same in the Occupy movement. Two extremes with people like stuck in the middle, not knowing which party to support. The Republican party isn't the answer, and the Democratic part isn't either. Communism? No way. So which way will the country go?
What an emotional post this is to write:(
All of these emotions from watching RT, watching the occupy movement from a distance, and listening to the Soviet national anthem. Here's the confusing thing about Occupy Buffalo: They're camped out in front of City Hall, our mayor has offered to let them stay indefinitely, and yet it is this same mayor and Common Council that is screwing the police and fire unions left and right. Occupy Buffalo? Praise the mayor and express solidarity with Buffalo PD and Fire.
They need to make up their minds.
I can't write off line what I would like to about City Hall or our corrupt system. But online is another matter. Last year I attended a union protest not far from City Hall. This is the extent of it--I posted a video slide show without audio, my protest against a mayoral administration that will not allow anyone but a NON police Public Information Officer to speak to the media.
Here's my little form of protest in this video:
It was re posted on the PBA web site. It got a decent number of views on You Tube but one comment:
"A government cannot kill a criminal without trial, without due process although he obviously committed crime, because America is a legal country. Where is Buffalo City's present address? A property we purchased in 2010 had some delinquent tax. But having delinquent tax doesn't mean Buffalo City can sell the property without due process. But that's what Buffalo is doing,Buffalo City sold our property without due process, without court order, without notification in 2010. What's Mayor's reaction?"
Everything is true. But note the way things are phrased. Sounds like an immigrant, doesn't it?
Well, that's about it. Politically perplexed.
Things are a complete mess here.
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