Heroes

I’ve always been inspired by heroes. From family members, to close friends, to major figures in books that I’ve read, these heroes have helped shaped my values, my politics, and the way I want to live my life. As I’ve grown older, my parents have become real heroes to me. As a young man, I admired several sports stars, especially Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, for their work ethic and their ability to make their teammates play to their highest level. With this in mind, I thought I’d write a list of my heroes who are either politicians or political activists, people who inspire me and who have shaped my political views.

I’ve met many people who do not believe in heroes. They see flaws in any hero and believe that it’s dangerous to have so much faith in a flawed human being to fight for good causes. It’s never bothered me to know that my heroes have flaws. What makes a hero special to me is that they have the courage to transcend their human weaknesses to do great things that benefit humanity.

So here is my list of my favorite political and activist heroes. Some are radicals. Some are reformers. They have all inspired me. Perhaps a few of them will inspire you. Please feel free to mention your own list of political and activist heroes.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Benjamin Franklin has always been my favorite Founding Father. A genial and good humored man, Franklin seemed like the kind of person that one could enjoy a fun conversation with. A few years ago I read Joseph Ellis’ book Founding Brothers about Franklin’s failed attempt to get Congress to pass legislation to abolish slavery. It reminded me of something that is often overlooked about Benjamin Franklin, his civic activism. Franklin organized the first fire company in America helped formed the first insurance company, which introduced fire insurance, crop insurance, and insurance for widows and orphans. In 1751, Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond established the Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in what was to become the United States of America. In the 1780s Ben Franklin was president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and worked to set up schools to educate free African Americans and give them employable skills and to try to pass for legislation to abolish slavery and end the slave trade. While many people become more conservative as they get older, Benjamin Franklin grew more radical as he aged. It’s one of the things I most admire about him.
Recommended books: Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph Ellis, Revolutionary Characters: What Made The Founders Different by Gordon Wood, Not Your Usual Founding Father: Selected Readings from Benjamin Franklin edited by Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin by Gordon Wood.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
I didn’t know much about John Quincy Adams until I read two wonderful books, Arguing about Slavery by William Lee Miller and Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade by Joseph Wheelan. I most admire Adams’ time as a representative in the House of Representatives, during which he would become the Congress’s most influential and outspoken critic of slavery, as well as a critic of the government’s policies for the removal of eastern Native American tribes, a defender of the right of women to petition for political rights, and a critic of the 1848 war to obtain land from Mexico. His path as a champion for human rights began by accident, when he found himself in a legislative fight to end the gag rule in the Congress. The gag rule was imposed by Southern congressmen to silence any debate on the issue of slavery. This debate changed Adams, as he showed a willingness to learn and change as he was exposed to the arguments of abolitionists, to the stories of suffering of Native Americans, to the crusading spirit of women petitioners. A highlight of his later life was his defense of the mutineer slaves of the Cuban ship Amistad in the Supreme Court in 1840.
Recommended books: Arguing about Slavery by William Lee Miller, Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade by Joseph Wheelan.

CHARLES DICKENS
Until a year ago, I really didn’t know very much about Charles Dickens or his books. Then my wife and I enjoyed watching a 1930s version of A Tale of Two Cities and it got me interested in learning more about Dickens. I began to learn that many people that I admire, like Howard Zinn, Dorothy Day, and George Orwell, were deeply influenced by Dickens’ books and the empathy they have for the poor. Charles Dickens was a great social critic of his time and he had many of the same criticisms of the capitalist system as Karl Marx. Unlike Marx though, Dickens criticized the capitalist system from a moralist point of view rather than a revolutionary point of view. This insight has had a profound impact on me. I agree with many of the criticisms that the Left has of the current economic system that we have. I’ve always been wary, though, of the revolutionary rhetoric that I read in some of radical parts of the Left. Charles Dickens’s books have taught me that a moral critique can be just as radical as a revolutionary critique, because both critiques point out that the flaws of the economic and political system lie somewhere at the root of the system. I like how Dickens was interested in saving the oppressor as well as the oppressed in many of his books. Dickens attacked the values of the economic system that influenced people to be selfish, greedy and lacking in any empathy for the poor and underprivileged. It gave me a new way to look at radicalism. I hope to emulate the example of Charles Dickens’ social criticism in my political cartoons.
Recommended books: The Annotated Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, A Tale Of Two Cities and Great Expectations: Two Novels (Oprah’s Book Club) by Charles Dickens, Hard Times by Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Frederick Douglass was one of the great champions of human rights in American history. A great abolitionist and a champion of African American rights, Douglass was also a strong supporter of women’s suffrage, a defender of immigrants’ rights, and a critic of the anti-Chinese laws that proliferated in the later 1800s. I admire his courage and his strong will, as he was born under the worst of circumstances as a slave. I know I wouldn’t have had the strength of will to overcome the beatings that Douglass went through. His intelligence, his perserverance, and his strong oratorical skills helped inspire the abolitionists and persuade the general public of the righteousness of the abolitionist cause. Douglass’s meetings with Abraham Lincoln helped Lincoln evolve into a greater respect for the equality of African Americans. To the very end, Douglass criticized the Jim Crow laws that were emerging as the Reconstruction era ended. Douglass spoke out for the rights of all marginalized and oppressed groups, regardless of the consequences.
Book recommendations: Frederick Douglass: In His Own Words edited by Milton Melzer, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass, Douglass and Lincoln: How a Revolutionary Black Leader & a Reluctant Liberator Struggled to End Slavery & Save the Union by Paul Kendrick and Stephen Kendrick, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics by James Oakes

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
There is not much left to say about Abraham Lincoln that hasn’t already been said by writers much better than me. The more I learn about Lincoln, the more I like him. The thing that I most like about Lincoln is his generosity of spirit and his capacity to grow as he gained new experieces and is exposed to different types of people. A primary example of his capacity to grow is in Lincoln’s evolving views on race. Though Lincoln had always been a strong opponent of slavery, his views on race before his presidency were similar to most of his white Americans. During the Civil War, however, those views changed. As Lincoln began to meet African Americans, especially in his meetings with Frederick Douglass, he began to shed his prejudices against the equality of African Americans. Lincoln was also deeply moved by the bravery of African American Union troops in battle during the war. By the end of the war, Lincoln was strongly advocating laws to insure the protection of the rights of the newly freed slaves. I personally think Lincoln is our greatest President,
Recommended books: The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman by William Lee MillerDouglass and Lincoln: How a Revolutionary Black Leader & a Reluctant Liberator Struggled to End Slavery & Save the Union by Paul Kendrick and Stephen Kendrick, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics by James Oakes

JANE ADDAMS
I admire Jane Addams for many of the same reasons as I admire Benjamin Franklin. They both have deeply instilled in them a strong sense of civic activism. Both of them are wealthy individuals who are deeply empathetic to the plight of the poor and the marginalized. I just admire the variety of causes that Jane Addams tackled and the various groups that she had a hand in organizing to deal with the problems of society. I am empathetic to this approach, as I tend to look to groups that have worked on issues for several years to get their insights on particular issues. Addams was one of the leaders of the Hull House movement in Chicago, where social workers lived in settlement houses in poor immigrant neighborhoods to bring education opportunities, child care, and artistic endeavors to help empower the poor. She helped found the NAACP in 1909 due to her opposition to racial prejudice. Jane Addams was also a strong women’s suffragist and a strong pacifist, joining the Women’s Peace Party in 1915. Addams became president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in the 1920s.
Recommended books: Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy, Jane Addams: Spirit In Action

CARLOS BULOSAN
Carlos Bulosan’s book America Is In The Heart really helped me to appreciate my Filipino heritage. I grew up in military bases most of my life, so I had little exposure to Filipino culture and never learned to speak Tagalog. During high school, I encountered many Filipinos who looked down on me because I didn’t know how to speak Tagalog and it made me very insecure about my Filipino heritage. Two things gave me more confidence in my Filipino heritage. The first thing was my first girlfriend, who was a Filipina. She was very kind to me and she accepted me for who I was. The second thing was taking an Asian American history course in college and learning about Carlos Bulosan for the first time. Carlos Bulosan was a poet and a union activist who entered the United States in 1930 and worked in the next 2 decades in various low-paying jobs: servicing hotels, harvesting in the fields, and working in Alaskan canneries. Carlos went to the public library and taught himself to read and write, eventually becoming a prolific writer determined to describe his struggles as a Filipino coming to America and the struggles of other people. I admire his leftist politics and his determination to bridge the gap between America’s high ideals and the discrimination that Filipinos and other immigrants faced while living in America.
Recommended books: America Is In The Heart by Carlos Bulosan, The American Radical by Mary Jo Buhle

DOROTHY DAY
Dorothy Day has been one of the biggest influences in my life. There have been times in my life that I’ve gotten into conflicts with other Christians who’ve accused me of not being a true Christian, and those conflicts have sometimes gotten me thinking of just leaving the Christian religion. My admiration of Dorothy Day is one of the things that kept me going as a Christian (the other thing is this fellow named Jesus). Dorothy Day is one of the most offbeat and interesting Christians that I know. As a young woman, she was an editor for the radical leftist magazine The Masses and she had as friends Anarchists, Socialists and Communists. She was jailed for participating in a protest for women’s suffrage. She had an abortion and eventually had a child out of wedlock. When her daughter was born, it inspired her to go to a Catholic Church and she eventually converted to Roman Catholicism when she found the same love of the poor in Catholic Social Teaching that she found in the radical politics of her friends. Day remained a radical activist, founding the Catholic Worker movement with Peter Maurin, a movement that had Catholic Worker houses to feed and shelter the poor and to protest war, discrimination of minorities and the excesses of the capitalist system. Dorothy Day’s Christian radicalism led her to deal with the poor directly in her Catholic Worker home, developing personal relationships with the homeless, the mentally ill, the marginalized. Religious activists like Dorothy Day are always reminding us that the least of us have value too, and I admire their courage in speaking out for people who cannot speak for themselves.
Recommended books: By Little and By Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day, Voices From The Catholic Worker edited by Rosalie Riegle Troester, The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day

FRANKLIN AND ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
I always think of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt as a unit. It’s sad that their marriage wasn’t more fulfilling to them both, but as a political team they were a powerful force for good. Franklin Roosevelt was the consummate politician, able to use his charm and political savy to ease the fears of a nation going through the Great Depression and to pass legislation that would help the unemployed, the aged, the laborer, and the uneducated. Eleanor was the determined civic activist, highlighting civil rights issues, women’s right issues, economic issues, and worker issues through her travels across the nation and through her daily newspaper articles. Together, they gave the average American the feeling that the First Couple cared for them.
FDR’s New Deal helped out its most vulnerable citizens from the worst effects of the calamitious economic collapse by such programs as the Works Progress Administration, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the United States Housing Authority. It empowered workers by putting the rights of collective bargaining into law through the Wagner Act. The elderly were given some measure of security through the Social Security Act.
Eleanor Roosevelt worked to include women in the New Deal programs. She spoke out against Southern segregation laws, organized a concert for African American singer Marian Anderson, and lobbied for anti-lynching laws in Congress. She made personal appearances to labor meetings to show her sympathy to workers. Eleanor held 348 press conferences during the Roosevelt administration, limiting attendence to female reporters and addressing issues like unemployment, poverty, education, rural life, and the role of women in society.
Recommended books: No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H.W. Brands, My Day: The Best of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Acclaimed Newspaper Columns, 1936-1962, Courage in a Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt

PAULI MURRAY
When I first attended the Episcopal Church I wanted to find an Episcopalian who has the same radical Christian vibe that Dorothy Day has. I found a few contenders. Sara Miles is the author of the book Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion and is a lesbian leftist journalist who covered poor communities in Latin America and the Philippines, and started a food pantry for the poor people who inhabit the neighborhood of her church in San Francisco. Jonathan Daniels was an Episcopal seminarian who was killed while participating in the Freedom Summer civil rights campaign to register African Americans in Alabama. The Episcopalian whom I am most attracted to is Pauli Murray, Pauli Murray was a historian, attorney, poet, activist, teacher and Episcopal priest, and she spoke out her entire life for economic and racial justice. 
A member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), Murray worked to end segregation on public transportation and she went to jail in March 1940 for refusing to sit at the back of a bus in Virginia. She helped found the Congress of Racial Equality in 1942, and she received a law degree in the University of California Boalt School of Law. In 1977 Murray became the first African American woman to become a Episcopal priest. The more I learned about Pauli Murray’s accomplishments, the greater my respect became. I also grew more baffled as to why such a woman of accomplishment isn’t better known.
Recommended books: Pauli Murray: The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest, and Poet

BAYARD RUSTIN
Bayard Rustin is one of the great forgotten heroes of the civil rights movement. I had not heard of him until a couple of years ago, when I wrote a blog about Grace Paley and Grace’s daughter commented that Bayard Rustin was the greatest influence in bringing Grace Paley over to nonviolence. Political cartoonist Jules Feiffer noted in his book Backing Into Forward: A Memoir that a lecture by Bayard Rustin taught Feiffer about the importance of the African American struggle for civil rights.
Rustin was a Quaker, a socialist and a gay man. His radical politics and his homosexuality were constant sources of problems Rustin, as mainstream civil rights leaders would try to minimize Rustin’s involvement on civil rights campaigns due to fear of a backlash of more conservative supporters who had problems with both socialism and homosexuality. Rustin briefly was a member of the American Communist Party in the late 1930s. He quit in 1941 because of its autocratic nature, but he learned a lot about organizing from the group. Bayard Rustin learned about nonviolent tactics from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a Christian pacifist organization, and he used those lessons with the group he helped found, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). In 1947, Rustin organized the Journey of Reconciliation, a percursor of the Freedom Rides, where 8 whites and 8 African Americans rode together on a bus in the South to protest segregation in interstate travel. Rustin taught the Reverand Martin Luther King Jr. about the tactics of nonviolence during the Montgomery Bus Boycotts and helped him organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), though the SCLC would eventually force Rustin to leave the group because of his homosexuality. Rustin’s most famous feat was to organize the March on Washington in 19, where Martin Luther King Jr. had his “I Have A Dream” speech. I am deeply influenced by an essay that Rustin wrote titled From Protest To Politics, which described how the civil rights movement must shift from protesting on the streets to creating coalitions with unions and liberal religious groups to fight the economic disparities were deeply embedded in the structure of the economic system.
Recommended books: Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin by John Demilio, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin by John D’ Emilio

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
I have always respected Martin Luther King Jr. because of his “I Have A Dream” speech. The PBS documentary series “Eyes On The Prize” showed me a King who was in the middle of a larger Civil Rights movement that was challenging society’s legal and economic oppression of the African American community. It showed me the activist Martin Luther King Jr., the courageous religious subversive who was willing to say the unpopular thing about economic injustice, about the Vietnam War. Martin Luther King Jr. is such an icon now that we forget just how radical and subversive he was in the later part of the 1960s. Like many religious activists that I admire, King combined a strong moral standard with compassion for human weakness. With this compassion, King was able to empathize with those who are most opposed to him, to seek the redemption of the oppressor as well as the oppressed. I think if a strong moral standard is not combined with compassion for human weakness, that strong moral standard can go to extremes and a person could wind up like Torquemada or Robespierre. King’s compassion helped him to avoid that fate, and his humility is one of the most appealing things to me.
Recommended books: I Have a Dream – 40th Anniversary Edition: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World, April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, JR.’s Death and How It Changed America by Michael Dyson, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 by Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65 by Branch Taylor, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 by Taylor Branch

THE KENNEDY BROTHERS
I’ve always been a fan of the Kennedys. I remember the documentaries and television specials that came out during the aniversary of Kennedy’s assasination, and I was deeply inspired by John F. Kennedy’s charisma, wit, and his clarion call for for all Americans to ask not what our country can do for us, but to ask what we could do for our country. And then his brother Bobby became a hero of mine, first from watching a chapter in the documentary “Eyes On The Prize” and then from checking out the book “RFK: The Collected Speeches”. And gradually I came around to Teddy Kennedy, after looking back at his career and seeing all of the great legislation that he passed that really helped ordinary Americans. At first I admired John F. Kennedy the most. As the years have passed, I’ve grown more partial to Bobby and Ted, as they both seemed more passionate about fighting social injustice, and more committed to speaking out for the voiceless in our society.

My favorite Kennedy is Bobby. Bobby always seemed to me this shy ackward man who felt ill-at-ease on the national stage, but forced himself to speak out to champion the ideas of his martyred brother. Bobby was the one who reached out to the African American community, he was the one who supported Cesar Chavez and the farm workers strike, he was the one who changed his mind about Vietnam and became a critic of the war. What I most admire about Bobby is his ability to inspire others to get involved in our democracy, to get people to believe that they can make a difference, that they are a part of this American society too.

It’s taken me a while to like Ted Kennedy. When I was young I felt more sorry for him than anything else. With Chappaquidik, with his marital problems and his alcohol problems, Ted seemed to me to be struggling with deep emotional problems stemming from the trauma of so many violent deaths in his family. As the years have passed, though, I grew to admire Ted as I saw the many legislative achievements that he had to helped the poor, the elderly and the marginalized. While John and Bobby had the ability to inspire us, Ted gave the Kennedy legacy its substance. Ted Kennedy authored over 2,500 bills, of which 500 became law. During the 1960s, Kennedy supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1968 Fair Housing Act, and the 1965 Immigration Act. Kennedy’s amendment to the Economic Opportunity Act of 1966 led to many community-based health clinics throughout the nation. Kennedy sponsored the 1975 Education for All Handicapped People Act, and the 1980 Civil Rights for Institutionalized Persons Act to protect the constitutional rights of the elderly, the mentally ill, the disabled, and the incarcerated. In 1990, Kennedy cosponsored with Orrin Hatch the Ryan White CARE Act to fund cities most hit by the AIDs epidemic. In 1990 Kennedy wrote the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 1993 Kennedy co-authored the Family and Medical Leave Act, requiring businesses to provide unpaid leave for emergencies or births. In 1996 he cosponsored with Kansas Republican Senator Nancy Kassebaum the Kennedy-Kassebaum Act, which allowed employees to keep health insurance for a time after losing job. He worked for passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to restore a fair rule for filing pay discrimination cases. He worked for the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, which gave public safety workers the right to form a union and bargain for wages, hours, and working conditions. Kennedy supported the Mathew Shephard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 which added violence against people due to sexual orientation to the federal hate crimes list.
Recommended books: RFK: The Collected Speeches, Let the Word Go Forth: The Speeches, Statements, and Writings of John F. Kennedy 1947 to 1963, The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America by Thurston Clarke, Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy by Peter Canellos

MURIEL RUKEYSER
I first encountered the name of Muriel Rukeyser from Grace Paley’s book “Just As I Thought”. I became interested in learning more about Rukeyser and was fascinated by what I discovered of the life of this very interesting woman. Muriel Rukeyser was a a poet, a journalist, a pilot and a political activist. She was determined to blaze her own path, and she took a lot of flack for her independence. She was a poet who was regularly criticized by literary critics for consistently commenting on political matters in her poetry. She was a leftist, but was regulary criticized by other radical leftists for not towing the party line. Her radical leftwing politics led her to be harassed during the McCarthy era during the 1950s, which caused her difficulty in finding work. She bore a child out of wedlock in the 1940s and chose to be a single parent, causing her to be shunned in many social circles. I most admire Rukeyser’s strength of will to live the life that she wanted to live and her willingness to pay the price for her artistic integrity when it would’ve been easier to conform.
I also deeply admire the many political causes that Muriel Rukeyser was involved in during her life. At the age of 19, Rukeyser reported on the second trial of the Scottsboro Boys in Decauter, Alabama in 1933, in which 9 black defendants were accused of rape, and were unable to have a fair trial due to racial prejudice. In 1936 Muriel reported on the antifascist Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, and reported on the Spanish Civil War, writing various articles supporting the Spanish Republicans. Rukeyser wrote poems of the industrial disaster in West Virginia, where African American and migrant workers died of silicosis poisoning due to inadequate precautions taken by Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation. In 1972, she traveled with Denise Levertov to South Vietnam to protest the Vietnam War. Muriel traveled to South Korea in her capacity as president of the PEN American Center to hold a vigil outside the prison cell of the South Korean poet Kim Chi Ha.
Recommended books: The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser, How Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet?: The Life and Writing of Muriel Rukeyser edited by Anne F. Herzog and Janet E. Kaufman

GRACE PALEY
I became interested in Grace Paley because of the unusual cover of her on her book “The Collected Stories”. In the back cover, Donald Barthelme described Paley as a wonderful writer and troublemaker and that our country was lucky to have her. That hooked me. I started reading all that I could of Grace Paley, her short stories, her poems, her essays. I admire her role as a writer/activist. In her books, there is this wonderful sense of humor and this great love of family and friends that makes her seem so human to me. I’ve met a few radicals who seem so angry and righteous, and Grace Paley seems to be a radical of a very different cloth. She seems like the kind of person I’d enjoy the company of.
A description of her political activity. In the early 1960s, Paley helped organize the Greenwich Village Peace Center. In 1969, Paley went to Hanoi to free prisoners of war. In 1973, Paley traveled to Moscow as a delegate of the World Peace Congress. During the Carter administration, Paley was arrested along with other peace activists for unfurling a peace banner on the White House grounds.
Recommended books: The Collected Stories by Grace Paley, New and Collected Poems by Grace Paley, Just As I Thought by Grace Paley

HOWARD ZINN
Howard Zinn has been a shining light for me for the past couple of years. His “People’s History” is a wonderful book of the struggles of African Americans, women, Native Americans, immigrants, workers and those Americans that you normally do not hear about in regular history books that focused only on great political leaders. I learned for the first time about the Wobblies, the Populists, and many grassroots movements by people fighting for a more just community. My favorite book of Zinn is his autobiography “You Can’t Be Neutral On A Moving Train”. In this book he chronicles his time as a teacher in the African American school Spellman College in the 1950s and how that led him to be involved in civil rights. He described his work in the anti-war movement in the 1960s. And he described his consequent activism against the Iraq War and against the power of corporations in our national life. What I like most about Zinn is his reverance for history, and for his faith in the power of people to join collectively and create social change. All protests, even the smallest public demonstrations of a handful of people holding picket signs, are meaningful to Zinn. While I met a lot of leftists who are disillusioned and pessimistic, I like Zinn’s optimism that with patience and persistence, the average people have to power through protest and civil disobedience to make great and positive changes in this country.
Recommended books: You Can’t Be Neutral On A Moving Train by Howard Zinn, The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy by Howard Zinn, Voices of a People’s History of the United States edited by Howard Zinn, Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics by Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present

RALPH FASANELLA
I discovered Ralph Fasanella from an article in Smithsonian magazine in the early 1990s. He has become a role model for me of what an artist activist should be. My two favorite artists, Thomas Hart Benton and Diego Rivera, were also leftwing artists, but Fasanella was more intimately tied to the working class of his time. At various times he was a garment worker, a truck driver, an ice delivery man, a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, and a union organizer. During the 1950s, he was blacklisted and harassed by the government for his progressive politics. He took part in a strike by Portuguese fishermen in 1986 and a strike by the Newspaper Guild in 1990.
These life experiences gave Fasanella a deep sympathy for the working man and he used his art to chronicle the history of the workers’ struggles for economic justice in America. From the 1950s to the early 1970s, Ralph worked by day at a gas station that he owned and at night he would work at his paintings. These are wonderful paintings of labor marches, protests, workers assemblies and union meetings. After he was discovered and became famous, Fasanella made paintings critical of the Reagan era of big business and decried the decline of union power. All the while, Fasanella remained a good family man who went to his favorite restaurants and enjoyed conversations with the workers who regularly dined there. He stayed in touch with his roots, something I deeply respect.
Recommended books: Ralph Fasanellas America by Paul S. D’ambrosio

Thinking About the Wealthy and “Occupy Wall Street”

One of my favorite Founding Fathers is Thomas Paine. The inspiration for this Everyday Citizen website, Paine was a strong foe of the aristocracy and the monarchy form of government. Despite his opposition to monarchy, Paine argued in the French National Convention during the Revolution against the execution of Louis XVI because of his opposition to revenge killings. Paine was able to separate his opposition to a particular system and his empathy to an individual within that system. I think of this often during the Occupy Wall Street protests against the 1% of the rich who own a disproportionate amount of the nation’s wealth.

I share a lot of the anger of the Occupation Wall Street protesters about the wealthy class who have benefitted from this economic system and own such a large percentage of the nation’s wealth. I want an economic system that more evenly distributes wealth towards a greater amount of people. My anger is more towards the economic system, though. I don’t want to see wealthy people become paupers. I just want to see a system where everyone benefits and not just a select few.

I’ve recently read Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” and I’m very conscious of one of the lessons of Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities” and George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. In fighting injustice, be careful not to become the thing we hate. In my facebook I read a blog that caught the idea that I had in my head but that I had a hard time articulating. United Methodist pastor Roger Wolsey wrote in his blog:

Show compassion to as many of the people caught up in this mess (all of us) as possible. Strive to love our enemies as Jesus taught. When we confront CEOs, bankers, politicians, pundits, police, or the media, let’s remember their humanity. They go home to families and pets that love them and they have wounds in their hearts that we’ll never know.
A particularly Christian thing to do might be for Church people to show up to the protests and serve water, coffee, and baked cookies to the protesters, the police, and the businesspeople walking by. It’s hard to be aggressive toward someone who is drinking hot cocoa and eating cookies with you.

That said, when he taught his followers how to love their enemies Jesus instructed them to not be doormats, but to employ tough love – even to the point of flipping the power dynamics and making the oppressors be publicly embarrassed.

Since the Kennedys and the Roosevelts were rich families that worked hard to help the poor and disadvantaged, I don’t think that all rich people are bad. I do think though that the rich have an obligation to help those who are less fortunate and to give back to their communities. It’s one of the great themes that Charles Dickens had in many of his books. In books like A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, and Little Dorrit, Dickens feels that power and wealth often are corrupting influences that make a person less compassionate of others and more selfish, disconnecting them from the wider community. A Tale of Two Cities shows the corrupting influence on wealth and power on an entire group of people, the aristocracy. The abuse of privilege and wealth makes the French aristocracy corrupt and arrogant, as they exploit the poor French peasants, overtaxing them, raping their women, jailing any dissent, giving the poor no legal recourse or means of economic mobility. The centuries of abuse by the aristocracy towards the poor made the Reign of Terror inevitable. I’m reading A Christmas Carol right now, and it shows the consequences of the pursuit of wealth on an individual, Mr. Scrooge. He becomes isolated from the community he lives in and becomes more selfish, with no friends.

In a Christmas Carol, Dickens wants the wealthy to reconnect with the larger community and to fulfill their responsibilities to help those who are marginalized and poor. I think it is in the rich class’s interests for there to be a fairer more equitable economic system that benefits all members of the community. An economic system that only benefits a few always leads to social unrest and problems in society. One of the things that has bothered me that also bothered Charles Dickens is the callousness of many of the rich towards the suffering of the poor. It seems that many in the financial industry do not see how their actions and mistakes have caused suffering on the middle class and the poor. In a recent New York Times article by Nelson Schwarz and Eric Dash, they note that many of the Wall Street bankers dismiss the concerns of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. They wrote:

As the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations have grown and spread to other cities, an open question is: Do the bankers get it? Their different worldview speaks volumes about the wide chasms that have opened over who is to blame for the continuing economic malaise and what is best for the country.

Some on Wall Street viewed the protesters with disdain, and a degree of caution, as hundreds marched through the financial district on Friday. Others say they feel their pain, but are befuddled about what they are supposed to do to ease it. A few even feel personally attacked, and say the Occupy Wall Street protesters who have been in Zuccotti Park for weeks are just bitter about their own economic fate and looking for an easy target. If anything, they say, people should show some gratitude.

“Who do you think pays the taxes?” said one longtime money manager. “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it. If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services. This is just disgruntled people.”

He added that he was disappointed that members of Congress from New York, especially Senator Charles E. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, had not come out swinging for an industry that donates heavily to their campaigns. “They need to understand who their constituency is,” he said.

Generally, bankers dismiss the protesters as gullible and unsophisticated. Not many are willing to say this out loud, for fear of drawing public ire — or the masses to their doorsteps. “Anybody who dismisses them publicly is putting a bull’s-eye on their back,” the hedge fund manager said.

Some of today’s wealthy see the unfairness of today’s economic system. In the same article, the authors noted:

A few outspoken members of the financial industry have broken ranks with their more skeptical brethren to say they understand a bit of the outrage of the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

“When I tell people I went down to research the protests, they’re shocked, they literally laugh,” said Michael Mayo, a veteran bank analyst at Crédit Agricole Securities. “It’s just not a location they frequent.”

Citigroup’s chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit, even said he would be happy to talk with the protesters any time they wanted to drop by. Mr. Pandit, onstage Wednesday at a Fortune magazine conference, said that the protesters’ “sentiments were completely understandable.”

“I would also corroborate that trust has been broken between financial institutions and the citizens of the U.S., and that it’s Wall Street’s job to reach out to Main Street and rebuild that trust,” Mr. Pandit said. The protesters should hold Citi and others “accountable for practicing responsible finance,” he said, “and keep asking us about how we’re doing.”

In an August 14, 2011 article for the New York Times, Warren Buffett wrote:

Our leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

…I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.

Many rich people have contributed to progressive causes and to helping the poor and the marginalized. Here is a list of a few of those individuals from the past and the present.

Benjamin Franklin is my favorite Founding Father. Franklin became a wealthy man due to his printing business and through his business partnership with David Hall. This freed Franklin to contribute to his community. As well as many of Franklin’s political activities, he was also a great philanthropist and civic activist. Franklin organized the Union Fire Company, the first fire company in America. In 1752, Franklin and seventy Philedelphians formed the first insurance company, which eventually include fire insurance, crop insurance, and insurance for widows and orphans. In 1751, Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond obtained a charter from the Pennsylvania legislature to establish the Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in what was to become the United States of America. In the 1780s Ben Franklin became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and worked hard to pressure legislation to end the slave trade and abolish slavery and to set up schools to educate free African Americans and give them employable skills.

Jane Addams was the daughter of John Addams, a wealthy landowner, miller, banker and state legislator. Jane’s father had a civic-mindedness that made a great impression on her and was a great influence on her interest in social reform. Addams was one of the leaders of the Hull House movement in Chicago, where social workers lived in settlement houses in poor immigrant neighborhoods where education opportunities, child care, and artistic endeavors to help empower the poor. Many women participated in the Hull House settlements and later became influential reformers in the progressive movement. Jane Addams was also a strong women’s suffragist and a strong pacifist, joining the Women’s Peace Party in 1915. Addams became president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in the 1920s.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the daughter of patricians Elliott Roosevelt and Anna Hall Roosevelt and the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt. Influenced by Teddy Roosevelt’s reform oriented Presidency, Eleanor participated in many of the social reform movements of the Progressive era. She worked as a teacher of the Settlement House on Rivington Street and a volunteer investigator in the New York City Consumer’s League, investigating sweatshops and overcrowded and unsanitary tenement apartments. During the 1920s, Eleanor Roosevelt participated in the Women’s Trade Union League, the Women’s City Club of New York, the Women’s Division of the New York State Democratic Committee, the League of Women Voters, and the World Peace Movement and Bok Peace Prize Committee, working on issues like government low-income housing, access to birth control information for married women, child labor regulation, worker’s compensation, and protective measures for working women.

As First Lady, Roosevelt worked on civil rights issues, women’s right issues, economic issues, and worker issues. She took many trips around the country to inspect conditions of the Americans in the area. She also worked to include women in the New Deal programs. She spoke out against Southern segregation laws, organized a concert for African American singer Marian Anderson, and lobbied for anti-lynching laws in Congress.

After she left the White House, Eleanor Roosevelt continued to speak out for civil rights and economic justice. One of her greatest accomplishments was her work as a member of the UN’s Commission on Human Rights in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Muriel Rukeyser was born in 1913 to a wealthy Republican Jewish couple in New York City. Despite being raised in a privileged environment, Rukeyser developed a deep sympathy for the plight of the underprivileged and the marginalized of society, becoming a well known poet and social activist. At the age of 19, Rukeyser reported on the second trial of the Scottsboro Boys in Decauter, Alabama in 1933 and was arrested during the trial. The Scottsboro trial involved 9 black defendants who were accused of rape, and were unable to have a fair trial due to the all white jury. In 1936 Muriel reported on the antifascist Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, that had been organized to protest the regular Olympics that took place in Nazi Germany. While there, the Spanish Civil War erupted and she wrote various articles supporting the Spanish Republicans. Rukeyser used her poems to highlight the industrial disaster in West Virginia, where migrant workers, many of them African Americans, died of silicosis poisoning due to inadequate precautions taken by Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation in the drilling of Hawk’s Nest Tunnel. In 1972, she traveled with Denise Levertov to South Vietnam to protest the Vietnam War. Muriel traveled to South Korea in her capacity as president of the PEN American Center to hold a vigil outside the prison cell of the South Korean poet Kim Chi Ha, who was in solitary confinement.

I’m a big fan of all the Kennedy brothers, but I’ll focus on Ted Kennedy because of his legislative achievements that have advanced the cause of economic and social justice. He authored over 2,500 bills, of which 500 became law. During the 1960s, Kennedy supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1968 Fair Housing Act, and was the floor manager for the 1965 Immigration Act. Ted Kennedy provided an amendment to the Economic Opportunity Act of 1966 which led to many community-based health clinics throughout the nation. Kennedy sponsored the 1975 Education for All Handicapped People Act, and the 1980 Civil Rights for Institutionalized Persons Act, which protected the constitutional rights of the elderly, the mentally ill, the disabled, and the incarcerated. In 1990, Kennedy cosponsored with Orrin Hatch the Ryan White CARE Act, which sped funds for cities most hit by the AIDs epidemic. In 1990 Kennedy wrote the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibiting disability discrimination. In 1993 Kennedy co-authored the Family and Medical Leave Act, requiring businesses to provide unpaid leave for emergencies or births. In 1996 he cosponsored with Kansas Republican Senator Nancy Kassebaum the Kennedy-Kassebaum Act, which allowed employees to keep health insurance for a time after losing job. He worked on equal pay for women workers by working for passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to restore a fair rule for filing pay discrimination cases. He worked for the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, bipartisan legislation that gave public safety workers the right to form and join a union and bargain with their employers over wages, hours, and working conditions under state law. Kennedy helped President George Bush with the No Child Left Behind Act. Kennedy supported the Mathew Shephard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 which added violence against people due to sexual orientation to the federal hate crimes list.

A youtube video with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates advocating giving a greater percentage of the tax for the rich

A youtube video of Walter Isaacson discussing his book on Benjamin Franklin

A youtube video of Jane Addams

A youtube video of Eleanor Roosevelt

A youtube video of Ted Kennedy

Ted Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Universal Health Care

“Turning now to the rest of the agenda for 1974, the time is at hand this year to bring comprehensive, high quality health care within the reach of every American. I shall propose a sweeping new program that will assure comprehensive health insurance protection to millions of Americans who cannot now obtain it or afford it, with vastly improved protection against catastrophic illnesses.”

Richard Nixon, January 30, 1974

 

 

Over 35 years ago, Senator Ted Kennedy tried to collaborate with President Richard Nixon to achieve a goal that both dearly desired:  universal health care insurance for all Americans.   It was an odd partnership, as Kennedy and Nixon were political rivals, and Nixon was fearful of running against Kennedy in the 1972 Presidential election.  After Nixon won the elections, Kennedy began secret negotiations with the White House that almost led to an agreement on a health care plan.  Nixon introduced his Comprehensive Health Insurance Act on Feb. 6, 1974.  It would’ve built upon existing employer-sponsored insurance plans and would’ve provided government subsidies to the self-employed and small businesses to ensure universal access to health insurance.  Sadly, the Watergate scandal derailed Nixon and Kennedy’s efforts at health care reform. 

 

Steve Pearlstein wrote an article in the August 28, 2009 edition of the Washington Post that detailed the regret that Kennedy had over not being able to make a deal with Nixon on health care.  Pearlstein wrote:

 

“Asked about his greatest regret as a legislator, Ted Kennedy would usually cite his refusal to cut a deal with Richard Nixon on health care.  

…At first, Kennedy rejected Nixon’s proposal as nothing more than a bonanza for the insurance industry that would create a two-class system of health care in America. But after Nixon won reelection, Kennedy began a series of secret negotiations with the White House that almost led to a public agreement. In the end, Nixon backed out after receiving pressure from small-business owners and the American Medical Association. And Kennedy himself decided to back off after receiving heavy pressure from labor leaders, who urged him to hold out for a single-payer system once Democrats recaptured the White House in the wake of the Watergate scandal.”

Thirty-five year later, the single-payer dream of Democratic liberals still remains politically out of reach. But it should tell you how far the country has moved to the right that the various proposals put forward by a Democratic president and Congress bear an eerie resemblance to the deal cooked up between Kennedy and Nixon, while Nixon’s political heirs vilify it as nothing less than a socialist plot.”

It would seem odd that Nixon and Kennedy would collaborate on health care reform, but that cause was something that was dear to both of their hearts.  Ted Kennedy is widely known as a champion of health care.  It is not as well known, however, that Nixon too was a strong lifelong supporter of health care.  Richard Nixon grew up poor and he lost two brothers to tuberculosis, and the illnesses devastated his family’s finances.     When Nixon first came to Congress in 1947, he proposed a national health insurance bill.  As President, Nixon introduced the National Health Insurance Partnership program in 1971, which had government support for private employer related health insurance, health insurance for low-income families, and health maintenance organizations (HMOs).   Kevin G. Hall wrote in a November 28, 2007 article for McClatchy Newspapers:

“Nixon first proposed national health insurance as a conservative California congressman in 1947. He grew up poor and lost two brothers to tuberculosis, which marked him for life. He frequently pointed to the cure for tuberculosis as a medical marvel that underscored the need for a public-private partnership on health care.

“It was something personal for him,” Price said of Nixon’s health-care push.”

Thirty five years after Nixon made his proposals for universal health care reform, President Obama is making similar proposals for reform on our health care system.  Like Nixon, Obama would build upon the present health care system to provide universal access to health care.  Obama would agree with Nixon statement on February 5, 1974, which Nixon stated that he did not want to see “other families of modest means… driven, basically to bankruptcy because of the inability to handle medical care problems of a catastrophic type.”  Nixon’s and Obama’s reform proposals are not radical changes to the current health care system, and neither are socialist.  As Steve Pearlstein notes, the past 30 years has seen the political center move to the right after the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, and proposals that would be moderate in Nixon’s time seem more radical today.   Obama and today’s progressives need to push the political center more to the left again, to be able to define the debate on progressive reforms on more fair terms.   I’m not a fan of Richard Nixon, but his advocacy of health care reform is something that many people can support.  If  someone like Nixon has advocated universal health care proposals that are similar to Obama’s, then it should show people that those proposals aren’t so radical.

In his 1992 book, “Seize the Moment,” Nixon wrote a passage that eerily echoes the arguments of Democrats today:

“We need to work out a system that includes a greater emphasis on preventive care, sufficient public funding for health insurance for those who cannot afford it in the private sector, competition among healthcare providers and health insurance providers to keep down the costs of both, and decoupling the cost of healthcare from the cost of adding workers to the payroll.”

The Collaboration of Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch

Ted Kennedy is remembered as one of the most effective Senators in the history of the Senate. He authored over 2,500 bills, of which 500 became law. Many of Kennedy’s most important bills came about after the 1980s, when the presidency was occupied by Republicans like Ronald Reagan and George Bush and the Congress was frequently had Republican majorities. Kennedy was able to be an effective Senator during those more conservative times because of his ability to collaborate with Republican colleagues on such items as health coverage, educations reform, and immigration reform. One of his greatest collaborators is his friend and political opposite, Orrin Hatch.

It was an unlikely friendship. Orrin Hatch came into the Senate specifically to fight everything that Kennedy stood for. They worked together often in the Senate Labor, Judiciary, and other committees, and they often clashed, as would be expected from any meeting between a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican. Hatch mentioned that one could tell how vehement an argument was by how much smoke Kennedy was blowing towards Hatch, who frequently got headaches from Kennedy’s cigars.

In spite of this, they eventually became good friends. Hatch wrote in an article in the August 27, 2009 edition of Newsweek magazine:

“We disagreed on nearly every issue, and continued to do so for all the years we served together in the Senate. But to our mutual surprise, during our service on the Senate Labor, Judiciary, and other committees, we soon realized that we could work well together. If the two of us—positioned as we were on opposite sides of the political spectrum—could find common ground, we had little trouble enlisting bipartisan support to pass critical legislation that benefited millions of Americans.

…Amid our constant fighting and occasional compromises, we also became close friends—a friendship that endeared us to some and enraged others who felt a conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat should not be friends. For our part, we checked our political differences and egos at the door when we socialized. We were good friends, plain and simple—and neither pettiness nor others’ opinions came between us.”

Over the years, Kennedy and Hatch worked on many bills that helped millions of Americans with their health coverage, helped AIDs victims receive needed care, and fought discrimination. Among the major bills that Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch collaborated on were these:

The Orphan Drug Act , which provided tax credits for encouraging the development of medicines for rare diseases.

The Ryan White Aids Act, which established a federally funded program for people living with HIV/AIDS, with an emphasis on providing funding to improve availability of care for low-income, uninsured, and under-insured victims of AIDS and their families.

The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which provided health insurance to thousands of the working poor across our country.

The Mammography Standards in 1992

The Americans with Disabilities Act, which provided individual protections from discrimination against individuals with disabilities.

The FDA Revitalization Act of 2007, which addressed many critical issues including the need to provide proper incentives and support for the development and review of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, and the need for heightened efforts to assure the safety of medications.

The PDUFA, a program that created drug user fees to help expedite the approval of new drugs. This legislation continues to be reauthorized.

The Health Centers Renewal Act of 2007, which reauthorized the health center program for five more years and provided people with essential health care services.

The FDAMA – FDA Modernization Act of 1997, which regulated prescription drug advertising, food safety, and codified the requirements for access to life saving medicines.

The Bioshield Legislation, which increased federal, state, and local infrastructure for bioterrorism preparedness.

The last collaboration between the two senators was the Serve America Act, which renewed America’s call for volunteer service to meet some of our country’s most challenging problems and needs. David Broder wrote an article in the April 13, 2009 edition of the Washington Post Weekly that chronicles this last collaboration. He wrote:

“Early last year, just as the partisan emotions of the presidential campaign began to rise, the two began talking to each other about their shared interest in national service. The topic was a natural for both. Kennedy’s brother, the late president, had made his Peace Corps proposal a centerpiece of his 1960 campaign and had signed the law making it a reality. Hatch, like many young Mormons, had spent two years as a volunteer missionary for his church.

They quickly agreed on a bill that would combine two quite different approaches to national services.

As Hatch said during the Senate debate, they decided to marry the expansion of traditional voluntary part-time community service, endorsed by generations of Republicans, with increases in government-subsidized, full-time service programs devised by Democratic presidents, beginning with the Peace Corps.”

This bill tripled the size of AmeriCorps, the full-time government-subsidized volunteer program, to 250,000 slots over the next eight years. It also has provigions to increase opportunities for helping local churches, schools, food banks, and community groups to recruit, train and deploy volunteers to organizations that need them.

Ted Kennedy’s effectiveness as a legislator should be examined in more detail. Kennedy had, by the consensus in Washington, the best staff in Capitol Hill. His staff numbers over 100, including interns and visiting fellows, and they came from the great universities of the country: Yale, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and Northwestern. His staff provides the research and the details to Kennedy’s major proposals. The book “Good Ted, Bad Ted” by Lester David, explains Kennedy’s strategy for passing important legislation.

“Kennedy is a superb legislator because he understands the inner workings of Congress the way a great football coach knows how and where to position his players and which plays are likely to succeed, which may fail.

Staff members explained his system: Before a single word of a contemplated measure is put on paper, Ted talks to legislators from both Houses, by phone or in person, and with other parties who have an interest in the issue, to obtain their views, pro and con. Then, after carefully noting where the thorny patches lie, Ted tailors the measures to sidestep them.

His goal is to win the backing of 70 percent of the members of both Houses. It is an important number since a two-thirds vote in the Senate and House can override a veto; the bill becomes immune to a presidential turndown. It also becomes filibuster-proof because two-thirds of the Senate and House can invoke the cloture rule which chokes off the endless speeches that can keep a measure from coming to a vote.

Discussing his legislative technique, Kennedy said, ‘If you’re interested in being effective, it’s important to build coalitions. You have to compromise to make progress.’”

We’ll miss Ted Kennedy’s political skills as important progressive goals are being brought to Congress. Expecially with a tough fight on Health Care, we will miss Ted Kennedy’s leadership and ability to get legislation through the Senate. I’m hoping that the President and the legislators are able to pass a good health care reform legislation with a public option to offer needed alternatives for people who cannot afford private health care insurance. Although I disagree with Orrin Hatch’s opinions on the current health care reform proposals, I am grateful for his collaborations with Ted Kennedy in so many important bills.

Remembering Ted Kennedy

In this past week, I’ve been feeling very sad at the death of Ted Kennedy. I share a sense of loss that many people feel over the death of this man who has been such a great progressive Senator for all these decades. But it’s more than that. For many, it’s not just Ted’s death, but the death of a generation of Kennedys that has played such a dominate role in our nations politics for such a long period of time. I am a liberal because of my admiration of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kennedys. In these past few days I’ve been reading a lot of blogs, post, and newspaper articles from writers saying how much Ted Kennedy has influenced their lives. It’ll be a while before we see his likes again.

I first heard of Ted Kennedy when I was in Junior High School, when he ran in the Democratic primaries against Jimmy Carter. Many people around me were very critical of Ted because of Chappaquidick and it seemed like Ted had the weight of the world on his shoulders whenever I saw him on t.v. I just felt sorry for him. During those years, I admired John and Bobby more than Ted, as he seemed to shrink in comparison to his two brothers. As the years went on, however, and Ted’s legislative achievements became better known to me, my estimation of Kennedy began to really grow.

I looked up the internet and found many legislative accomplishments. He authored over 2,500 bills, of which 500 became law. During the 1960s, Kennedy fought for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1968 Fair Housing Act, and was the floor manager for the 1965 Immigration Act. In 1971 he passed legislation quadrupling cancer funds. In 1975 Kennedy sponsored the 1975 Education for All Handicapped People Act, and in 1980 he introduced the Civil Rights for Institutionalized Persons Act, whiched protected the constitutional rights of the elderly, the mentally ill, the disabled, and the incarcerated. In 1990, Kennedy cosponsored with Orrin Hatch the Ryan White CARE Act, which speeded funds for cities most hit by the AIDs epidemic. In 1990 Kennedy wrote the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibiting disability discrimination. In 1993 Kennedy co-authored the Family and Medical Leave Act, requiring businesses to provide unpaid leave for emergencies or births. In 1996 he cosponsored with Kansas Republican Senator Nancy Kassebaum the Kennedy-Kassebaum Act, which allowed employees to keep health insurance for a time after losing job. Kennedy helped President George Bush with the No Child Left Behind Act.

A wonderful Public Radio International internet post chronicles Kennedy’s fight to end apartheid rule in South Africa. I remember this very well during the 1980s, and Kennedy’s fight influenced me to start seeing him in a different light. Kennedy introduced legislation to impose economic sanctions on South Africa. The Anti-Apartheid Act became law in 1986 after Congress overrode a veto by President Ronald Reagan. The Public Radio International post quoted Randal Robinson, a prominent anti-apartheid activist and now a professor of human rights law at the Dickinson School of Law at Penn State University:

“What we did that resulted in the overriding of Ronald Reagan’s veto — the first time in the 20th century that a foreign policy veto of a sitting president had been overridden by the Senate — that could not have happened without Ted Kennedy. He was not just a major force, he was the essential, he was the indispensable force.”

This may just seem like a list of bills, but it’s important that we see just what Kennedy did for the elderly, the poor, the working class, the mentally ill and the marginalize of this nation. Kennedy was a complex man with many flaws, but he was also one of the greatest progressive senators of our time. Detractors are right to bring up the tragedy of Chappaquidick, but I feel that this horrible tragedy must be put in the context of his entire life. I struggled a lot with trying to understand Kennedy’s personal failings and his accomplishments. As I’ve lived my life and struggled with my own failures and mistakes, it has made me empathize more with Ted Kennedy’s failures and the way in which he has had to struggle with it in the public eye. Melissa McEwan wrote a tough but fair post on the struggles she’s had in reconciling the man in the center of the Chappaquidick and William Kennedy Smith scandals and the man who passed so much legislation that benefitted so many average Americans. McEwan’s post encapsulates the mixed feelings I’ve had about this man during most of my life.

Teddy, as he was known, was privileged, in every sense of the word. And he made liberal use of his privilege, in ways I admired and ways I did not. The terrible bargain we all seem to have made with Teddy is that we overlooked the occasions when he invoked his privilege as a powerful and well-connected man from a prominent family, because of the career he made using that same privilege to try to make the world a better place for the people dealt a different lot.

….I can also not forget the myriad ways in which Teddy used his limitless privilege for the betterment of others, as Mustang Bobby so eloquently detailed. He quite genuinely cared about the poor, the sick, the needy, the dispossessed. He was an authentic progressive, who could acknowledge his own privilege and could stand in front of the Senate and talk about the privilege he had that people of color, LGBTQIs, and women lack. He was a great goddamn Senator—and would that the entire Senate, or even just the Democratic Caucus, was filled with people who were as passionate and progressive as he was.

One of the things I most admire about Ted Kennedy is his ability to make friends with those people he disagreed with. He was able to cross the aisle and collaborate with Republicans to pass bills. I end this post with a personal testimony from Orrin Hatch, conservative Republican from Utah and one of Ted Kennedy’s closest friends.

Debating with Conservative Friends

One could say that my life has been a series of debates.  This is not to say that I’m argumentative.  I’ve just been lucky in my life to have had friends with whom I could talk about issues and debate politics and religion.   Although I’m fairly liberal in my politics, I’ve had in my life a fair amount of conservative Republican friends with whom I used to be able to debate on points of disagreement and while still maintaining a sense of respect for each other.  Somehow, though, those type of talks have become less frequent in the past couple of years.  I’m not sure if people in the past few years have just become more polarized along certain positions and are no longer tolerant of differing opinions.  It’s become rare to meet that kind of friend, that friendship of opposites, and I miss those type of conversations. 

When I was a kid, I used to always argue with my friends about our favorite basketball players and teams.    People looking back to the 1980s always think of the Lakers and the Celtics, but in the playgrounds I played in, most people liked Doctor J and the Philedelphia 76ers.  My brothers and I were Celtics fans, so it was natural that we’d wind up getting into arguments with our friends about who was the better player:  Bird or the Doc.  Bird had a greater outside shot and was a great passer.  Doc drove better to the basket and was the greater leaper.  Bird was the rebounder, Dr. J was the greater individual defender.  We never convinced anyone to change their minds about anything, but it was fun to just argue things out and gab. 

This extended to politics.  One of my best friends was a guy named Eric.  He was a Reagn Republican, but he was not the typical Reaganite.  Eric was an agnostic who didn’t like the religious right, but he felt that anything was better than Carter.  We talked a lot about politics at that time, especially when Reagan decided to ship nuclear missiles to Europe.  Considering the vehemence of some of our debates, it’s ironic that years later, Eric went out of the closet and is now farther politically to the left than I am.  Whenever I see him, I always tell him that my arguments finally got through to him.  In reality, his experiences coming out as a gay man changed his perspective on politics and the way he saw the world. 

Three houses down from my parents house were our friends Rollie and Rick.  My brothers and I would hang out with them and play basketball every Friday, Saturday, and sometimes Sunday.  When I visited their house, I’d sometimes talk to their father about politics.  He knew I was a Democrat, so he’d talk about how we’re always taxing and spending with little regard on how that affects the working guy.   During the 1984 elections we’d talk about the merits of Mondale and Reagan, and it was nice that he talked to me even though I was not old enough at that time to vote.  When Reagan won in a landslide, I congratulated Rollie’s father and he was fairly gracious. 

I was lucky in my young life to be around people who respected differences of opinions and didn’t try to coerce me to agree with them.  During my college years, I didn’t really talk much politics as my college girlfriend and our circle of friends were relatively apolitical.   My classmates in the art building were more focused on improving their art than in talking much politics, although a few fine arts students that I knew were fairly radical, more so than I was at the time.   It was odd, but the best political conversations I had at the time were in the basketball courts.  I’d  just drop by a court for a pickup game, and after the game, we’d sometimes talk politics.  Most of those people were not that ideological, but they had definite opinions about  government doing too much to help the poor or government bureacracies running amok.     

Things began to change in the mid 1990s.  I had started attending an Asian American evangelical church and the first few friends that I made, I was able to be free in my opinions and engage in some fun conversations.  As I became more of a regular member and I started making emotional attachments to the community, things began to change.  The views of the people at that church are fairly diverse, but the vast majority of the evangelicals that I met tend to be conservatives, basing their politics on a literal interpretation of the Bible.  They were a different brand of conservatives than the ones I knew outside of the church:  while the nonchurchgoing conservative friends tended to be a bit more tolerant of differences of opinion and were able to enjoy the give and take of a fun debate, a lot of the conservative churchgoers were a lot more dogmatic and you could tell they didn’t approve of liberal positions like the right to choose an abortion and homosexuality.  The people in that church who were moderate or liberal tended to be quiet about their views, and I learned to be quiet in my opinions too.  They were nice people and I made many a lot of friends with them, and I just didn’t want to rock the boat.    I saw how they would often use peer pressure to get individuals to conform, or else ostracize those who didn’t conform, and I just slowly learned to keep any differences of opinion to myself. 

This was during the Clinton years, and a lot of the conservatives hated Bill and Hillary with the same vehemence that progressive nowadays hate our current President.  I learned at that time to be free with my political opinions only with other like-minded liberals or moderates.  I’d meet young conservatives straight out of colleges and universities during the late 1990s and early 200s who were very dogmatic about the free markets being the cure to all our ills, and disdainful of any government aid to the poor.  I’d always be annoyed at them, until I reflected that I might have been that way coming out of college as well, only from the liberal view of things.  Eventually I was enmeshed in a few conflicts in the evangelical church that got me to start thinking for myself again, and I left the church in 2002.

I don’t know if the Clinton and Bush years just polarized the left and the right wings more, leaving less room for friendly debates.   I sometimes even got in trouble with liberal friends, as when I supported Joe Lieberman in his run for the presidency in 2004.  I don’t agree with Lieberman’s position in Iraq, but I do agree with his positions on the environment, on most social issues, and I admire his strong advocacy of labor rights.  On these issues he’s actually more progressive than Howard Dean and especially John Murtha.  And I thought his plan for a progressive tax structure was better for redistributing wealth than any candidate except Dennis Kucinich’s.  No one really listened to me though.

A few years ago, I decided to research friendships between people with opposite political opinions.  John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were best friends, even though Adams was a strong Federalist and Jefferson was a passionate Republican.  Their friendship was rocky at times, and they had a falling out in the 1790s, but their friendship was recovered in the 1800s with the assistance of their mutual friend Benjamin Rush, and they had a wonderful correspondence that lasted till the end of their lives.  Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart were best friends, even though Fonda was a New Deal liberal and Stewart was a conservative Republican.  They stayed friends all their lives, agreeing that their friendship was more important than their differences in political views.   Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill were friends, and O’Neil was at Reagan’s bedside offering support to Ronald and Nancy after the assasination attempt in 1981.  One of Ted Kennedy’s closest friends in the Senate is Orrin Hatch, and it was Hatch’s urgings in the 1990s that helped lead Kennedy to finally deal with his alcohol problem.

I don’t have as many conservative friends anymore as I once did.  One conservative friend that I do have though, is my brother-in-law, Erik.  Erik is a fiscal conservative, thought his views on social issues are rather liberal.  I enjoy visits with him, because he’s one of the few people nowadays that I can talk politics freely with.  Though he’s a social liberal, he feels it’s a mistake for the courts to rule for issues like homosexual and abortion rights to be imposed on the land, feeling instead that activists should do the hard work of changing the electorates’ opinions on these issues so that these issues are resolved the legislature.  We clash mostly on the free market and the role of government.  From Erik’s point of view, the government does more harm than good when it tries to put its reach on the economy and alleviating poverty, and that the unfettered free market would better alleviate many of society’s problems.  I, on the other hand, believe the free market has basic flaws that only the government can resolve. 

I enjoy these conversations, and I think it’s good for me that my progressive viewpoints get challenged.  It forces me to articulate why I believe the things that I believe, and it makes me see the strengths and weaknesses of my political beliefs.  In my many years of arguing with conservative friends, I’ve never been convinced of the rightness of their ideas.  But it’s helped me to see that they have a valid point of view, and hopefully it helps them see that my own left wing beliefs have some validity as well.  Instead of two monologues going passed each other, which has been my experience with a lot of more adverserial conversations have gone with more hostile conservatives, my talks with conservative friends have been actual dialogues.   And in this polarized political atmosphere, more dialogue is needed.

Possible Speakers for the Democratic Convention

As my choice for the best Democrat was Joe Biden, I can’t be as passionate as others are in the battle taking place right now between Clinton and Obama.  Though I support Hillary, I think both candidates are good.   So I’ve looked towards the oncoming Democratic convention.  The convention is the time to show off the Democrats best face, and I think it would be a good opportunity to show how large a tent the Democrats have as compared to the Republicans.  Here’s my own wish list of speakers.

 I think Joe Biden and Bill Richardson would be great speakers to enunciate the depth of the Democrats positions on foreign policy.   One of the things that most impressed me about Biden during his run for the Presidency is his vast experience as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his 35 years in Congress.    I especially liked his plan on partitioning Iraq.    And he is a good at attacking the Republicans supposed strength in foreign policy.  John Nichols wrote in the November 26 issue of the Nation: “Biden is best understood as a relatively rare political archetype:  a Democrat who pays less atention to internal party politics than to winning elections and governing.  This skill makes him the one Democrat Republicans feel compelled not merely to attack but to answer.  That’s because Biden has so far been the one Democrat who has consistently understood the importance of taking the fight to the other guys.”

Bill Richardson offers the same sort of experience to a strong critique of Iraq policy.  As a member of Congress, a UN ambassador, Energy Secretary and governor of New Mexico, he was able to canvas his broad experience to back up his positions on withdrawal from Iraq.  I was deeply impressed with his performance in the New Hampshire debates, and think the combination of Richardson and Biden speaking about Iraq and foreign policy in the convention would convince many of middle America of the Democrats readiness in foreign affairs.

Dennic Kucinich would be another effective speaker to highlight in the convention.  Kucinich represents a segment of the Democratic Party that often feels ignored because of it’s farther left views on a single payer health care system, a quicker withdrawal from Iraq, the flaws of the current free trade agreements and reigning in corporate power.  Many Democrats fear a Nader candidacy would siphon off votes from a Democratic candidate in the general elections, and I think the best way to lessen Nader’s impact is to show these potential Nader voters that there are voices within the Democratic Party that share their views, people like Kucinich and Barbara Lee, who are affecting change in Congress and local government.   It would be a more honest way to blunt Nader’s influence than to push lawsuits in states to prevent Nader from going on the ballot.

John Edwards would be an important speaker for the role that he played in bringing poverty into the forefront of the election season.    He has gained stature within the Democratic Party for his persistence in pushing issues of economic justice when it could easily have been ignored.  In the February 18 issues of the Nation, John Nichols wrote:  “Those words rang true because the steadiness of the speaker’s focus during this campaign had led even cynical Democrats to the conclusion reached by Martin Luther King III, who told Edwards, ‘You have almost singlehandedly made poverty an issue in this election.’ …  Edwards shaped the 2008 race, offering the first universal healthcare plan from a major contender, proposing the first economic stimulus package, making an issue of war profiteering.  And he was heard.  Obama’s rhetoric has grown more powerful and effective as he has borrowed Edward’s policies as well as his populist phrasing.  And when Clinton tells urban audiences she is campaigning to help Americans ‘lift yourself and your family out of poverty’ it is impossible to miss the Edwards echo…  Forget the empty speculation about him as a vice presidential prospect;  Edwards’s best role will be as the voice of conscience for a party that has yet to recognize that its historic commitment to economic justice must be renewed in a time of recession.”

 If Obama is the candidate, it would be nice to see Jesse Jackson speak.  Obama wouldn’t have been able to achieve what he has done without the Jackson campaigns of 1984 and 1988 to break the ground.  And Jackson is one of the greatest orators in the Democratic Party.   If Hillary is the candidate, her husband should be given a chance to speak.  He is also a great speaker.  Whoever is candidate, Ted Kennedy should be given a prime spot to speak, especially since the cries of change that have been a large part of this primary season have invoked the spirit of his brothers John and Bobby.