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It's reasonable to ask: What gets anyone involved in politics, American-style? What leads any of us to decide to protest anything? Today, TomDispatch regular (and my old friend) Beverly Gologorsky explores how a childhood in poverty prepared her to become "political" -- to become, that is, an "activist against injustice" (as well as a superb novelist).
In comparison, I grew up in what at least passed for a middle-class family in New York City's Manhattan in the "golden" 1950s. It's true that my parents were actually having quite a tough time then. I can still remember hearing them loudly arguing -- at a moment when I was supposed to be asleep -- about how they were going to pay "Tommy's bills." Still, I was lucky, relatively speaking, and I was certainly raised to be neither a political activist nor particularly critical of the American world I would find myself in.
Nonetheless, sometime in the 1960s, the distant nightmare of the war in Vietnam got under my skin. Something about what this country was doing in a particularly grim and bloody fashion in that distant land genuinely unnerved me. Why, I'm not quite sure, but -- perhaps because, in those years, long before the all-volunteer military, I expected to be drafted sooner or later -- I finally found myself in the streets protesting and, in the end, turned in my draft card as an act of resistance. That changed the way I looked at my own country, which led me, however tortuously and decades later, to TomDispatch.
And that, in turn, means, however I explain my personal path into the political, I was here and ready when Beverly offered me her own moving explanation. (And by the way, if you have a chance, I couldn't recommend more strongly her latest novel, Can You See the Wind?, which -- yes -- is set in those very years of the Vietnam War.) Tom
How the Personal Becomes Political
Or You Can Fight City HallBy Beverly Gologorsky
[TomDispatch and StatORec Literary Journal are sharing the publication of this article.]
Looking into the long reflecting pool of the past, I find myself wondering what it was that made me an activist against injustice. I was born in New York City's poor, rundown, and at times dangerous South Bronx, where blacks, whites, and Latinos (as well as recent immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe) lived side by side or, perhaps more accurately, crowded together.
I was the middle child of four siblings, not counting the foster children my mother often cared for. My father worked six days a week in a leather factory where the rat-tat-tatting of sewing machines never stopped and layoffs were a constant reality. I grew up after World War II in the basement of a six-story building at a time when jobs were still hard to find and scary to lose. Many young men (really boys) joined the military then for the same reason so many young men and women volunteer today, one that, however cliche'd, remains a reality of our moment: the promise of some kind of concrete future instead of a wavy unknown or the otherwise expectable dead-end jobs. Unfortunately, many of them, my brother included, returned home with little or nothing "concrete" to show for the turmoil they endured.
At the time, there was another path left open for girls, the one my parents anticipated for me: early marriage. And there was also the constant fear, until the introduction of the birth-control pill in the 1960s, of unplanned pregnancies with no chance of a legal abortion before Roe v. Wade. After all, dangerous "kitchen-table" abortions"-- whether or not they were actually performed on a kitchen table -- were all too commonplace then.
Poverty, Burned-out Buildings, Illness, and Crime
Yet growing up in the South Bronx wasn't an entirely negative experience. Being part of a neighborhood, a place where people knew you and you knew them, was reassuring. Not surprisingly, we understood each other's similar circumstances, which allowed for both empathy and a deep sense of community. Though poverty was anything but fun, I remain grateful that I had the opportunity to grow up among such a diversity of people. No formal education could ever give you the true power and depth of such an experience.
The borough of the Bronx was always divided by money. In its northern reaches, including Riverdale, there were plenty of people who had money, none of whom I knew. Those living in its eastern and western neighborhoods were generally aiming upward, even if they were mostly living paycheck to paycheck. (At least the checks were there!) However, the South Bronx was little more than an afterthought, a scenario of poverty, burned-out buildings, illness, and crime. Even today, people living there continue to struggle to eke out a decent living and pay the constantly rising rents on buildings that remain as dangerously uncared for as the broken sidewalks beneath them. Rumor has it that, in the last decade, there's been new construction and more investments made in the area. However, I recently watched an online photo exhibit of the South Bronx and it was startling to see just how recognizable it still was.
Poverty invites illness. Growing up, I saw all too many people afflicted by sicknesses that kept them homebound or only able to work between bouts of symptoms. All of us are somewhat powerless when sickness strikes or an accident occurs, but the poor and those working low-paying jobs suffer not just the illness itself but also its economic aftereffects. And in the South Bronx, preventive care remained a luxury, as did dental care, and missing teeth and/or dentures affected both nutrition and the comfort of eating. Doctor's visits were rare then, so in dire situations people went to the closest hospital emergency room.
Knowledge Is Power
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