Protest Spreads to Ohio

The Streets of Columbus

The Midwest seems to be rousing the American working-class from its long, winter's nap that has had it hypnotized by T-Party nonsense since the crash and banker bailout of 2008. As an anti-christ, agnostic I must say, Praise the lord and pass me a picket sign!

We have stood by passive and mute as the financiers of Wall Street rifled through our pockets, taking our homes, our jobs and chunks of our salaries. As a public-sector worker, I have undergone wage freezes, furlough days and pay cuts, all the while watching the anti-austerity protests in Greece, Ireland with awe wondering what it was going to take to get us out on the streets again.

Then came Iran which, although they were creamed, was an inspiring battle. Of late the people of Tunisia, Bahrain, Algeria and, of course Egypt have all entered the fray as well, spurred on by some of the same conditions we experience here, falling wages, rising prices and a general lowering of the quality of life. In Egypt the people actually drove out a dictator even though the kind of government they will build remains to be seen.

Now the Wisconsin struggle to hold onto the last vestige of unions, collective bargaining, has spread to the state where I was raised and the town of my old alma mater, Columbus Ohio. Will this be a watershed moment, a turning point for US politics or will this be the beginning of a clash between left and right wing Americans, with have-nots fighting each other in the streets? Civil rights or civil war? I am hoping for the former. That working-class T-party reactionaries will wake up to the fact that fighting against decent wages, benefits and health care is contrary to their own interests.

Socioeconomic Class and Identity

When I was about to head off to college at the largest university in my state, my mother gave me very specific advice regarding my new cronies. She said, "If anyone asks you what your class background is say upper-middle class."At that point in my life I didn't even realize that she was lying. After all, weren't there a lot of "rich kids" that I attended high school with?

At the university I followed her instructions to the letter. But the only thing I altered was the way I labeled my family. I didn't change my actual experiences which involved thrift-store shopping, having credit card confiscated by store workers, my parents perpetual arguments about money, or even the fact that, part of the reason I was in college at all had a bit to do with a more than gentle suggestion by a judge and a probation officer.

I was active in many aspects of political organizing but especially grateful for a women's consciousness raising group where I could analyze and debrief about every issue and incident. One day after a meeting, I was walking across the oval with my new friend Ronna. She said, " I know you describe yourself as upper-middle class but when you talk about your life, it doesn't sound that way. I think you might be interested in this book." And she handed me a very early draft of Lillian Rubin's "Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-Class Family." I opened it and read a few pages. Then came that click we used to talk about, the one that happens when everything finally falls into place. Needless to say, things have never been the same!

The War on Workers Escalates

The Streets of Madison

Wisconsin has declared war on public sector employees, more specifically on their unions. The voracious Republican beast won't be satisfied until we are all homeless and out on the streets. Scott Walker has become the Hosni Mubarak of Wisconsin leading the call to arms, trying to mobilize private and public sectors workers against each other.
He is even trying divide and conquer from within by offering to exempt police and firefighters (often the highest paid group) from his draconian proposals.

 This battle has been fermenting quite a while. In the last election the people of San Francisco defeated, by a large margin, proposition B, a proposal by public defender Jeff Adachi to charge workers more for health care and cut into the benefits of the most underpaid.

The Streets of Cairo

In Wisconsin Walker is trying to eliminate collective bargaining, the raison d'etre for unions, completely. Fortunately, the people of Wisconsin are fighting back. With 30,000 in the streets yesterday, Madison is beginning to look, not quite Cairo, but definitely a bit like Bahrain.Instead of pulling down everyone to the lowest possible level, we should be struggling to improve the quality of all our lives.

Identity Issues and Boomer Homophobia...

Lately my queer identity has overpowered the other ways I identify myself. My various identies seem to ebb and flow depending on the circumstances. Sometimes, especially when among reserved folks, I feel terminally abrasive and jewish, in very sex-role circumscribed situations where all faces are male, I feel extremely female and among the economically privileged I feel very working-class. Now, among almost everyone I am beginning to feel really old. Yet, at rare and wonderful moments I feel as though I represent a universal human being, connected in many ways to everyone. It's never a question of one identity trumping the others, it's a far more fluid situation.

Of course, I feel very queer when I am singled out for discrimination. For example, I belonged briefly to a writing group that was overwhelmingly heterosexual. They were, like me, older lefties who were serious about writing. The format of socializing was very different from what I'm used to. The women didn't  reach out to each other very much. The person I got the most support from was a man. It wasn't a come on thing (he was married with kids), he just liked my writing. But I wasn't there to make friends so I let it go. The real reason I wound up leaving the group was that queer issues were not taken seriously. Civil rights issues for other racial and ethnic groups were, rightfully, regarded as an important struggle. But when I wrote a memoir piece about homophobia on the job they viewed it as a story about individual indiosyncracies presenting problems in a specific workplace.

An acquaintance of mine wound up in a nursing home. She was suffering from dementia. Her close friend/ex-lover would visit her there. The staff assumed she was her sister until one day she explained that Nan, in better days, had been her lover. This admission was a terrible mistake. Once the other old women realized that Nan was a lesbian, they became aftaid of her. In her dementia, Nan believed that she was in her own home and would sometimes wander around naked. Her roommate and fellow patients now considered her nudity a sexual come on. Due of the lack of conciousness and support of the staff, Nan had to ultimately find another place to live.

Homophobia, by its very definition, means fear. Will folks of the boomer generation and older ever overcome the way they were raised? As an old dog, I have learned quite a few new tricks so perhaps there is hope that one day we will come together to fight for us all.

Beyond the Anatomy is Destiny Routine

Walking in Redwood Park yesterday I overheard two youngish, slightly hip women talking. One was going to get married and then have a baby and the oohs and aahs just kept coming ad infinitum. And this is the Bay Area for godsake! In spite of the women's movement and all of my generation's efforts for something more, little seems to have changed. I suppose this mindset is species-driven but for once I'd like to see an email sent by the HR department at work not only to announce a marriage, the birth of a child or the death of a parent but to announce an art gallery opening, a published poem or article, a musical cd or concert, some actual accomplishment. Of course, this would be sacrilege because it implies that we have roles in the world, lives beyond our paid work in a library. Fulfillment is supposed to come from your production and your reproduction not from . Hacking out your own trail through this wilderness is rarified and uncharted territory and the separation is a gaping abyss. Wide and unfathomable by those in the majority.

A few days ago I had to answer some security questions to secure an account in case I forget the password. My choices were literally all things like: What was the date of your wedding? Who did you go with to the senior prom? When was your first child born? Where did you go on your honeymoon? I'm really lucky that I had a cat as a first pet. Otherwise, I'd still be trying to fill out that form.

All of which brings me to another question. Is empathy truly possible? As a writer, I have to believe that it is. I have certainly seen evidence of it in a lot of people's work. Really fine fiction that expands the boundaries of what we know as individuals. I do think that real understanding of another's issues is indeed possible but quite unusual. For members of a majority group whether ethnic, racial, sexual, religious it is much more difficult to see the other because the minority view which is not represented in the mainstream media. Maybe the internet is altering this somewhat. If you've never had friends from this group to inform you of their experiences it can be just a guessing game. But a truly open mind can accomplish a lot. It reminds me of that joke, How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb? The response: Only one but the lightbulb has to really want to change.

"Family Values"--the New American Mantra

Childless folks, especially those of the queer persuasion have been cast in the role of pariah, the new American enemy. I'm not fond of the institution of marriage, the very same one that brought us domestic violence, incest, child abuse, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I am all for same-sex marriage, mind you, I believe that we queers are entitled to full civil rights and to be just as unhappy as straight people.  I understand that the right-wing and tea-party wingnuts roll out the family values wagon at every opportunity. What I object to is when the left takes up the cry as well, sometimes with queer breeders in their ranks.

Of late, my union, SEIU, has begun making all its references to "working families" instead of that old Marxist favorite, "workers." This nouveau McCarthyism that casts us all as family units is working my last nerve. I am not only proud to have a friendship group instead of a biological family, I am lucky as well. I actually get to select the folks I spend time with instead of being stuck with them. The friendship group (FG?) that I have does include my biological sister and my not-so-domestic partner, who I have been with for 12 years and no, we don't live together, but I'll get into that in another post.

I have often wanted a bumper sticker that says, "Nuke the Nuclear Family," but I'm opposed to nuclear weapons so it might be counter productive.

The Childfree Connection

The thing I have noticed about the type of straight folks that I count as friends is that they tend to be childless by choice whether singles or couples. I do think that if there is ever a time when homophobia disappears, the main connection between people will be whether or not you choose to raise up young'uns. Those who decide against it often are more interested in literature, art, science, politics...just about anything in the universe that has nothing to do with wiping tushies or runny noses.

So genetically the buck stops here. My genotype has arrived at a brick wall. Neither my sister, myself, my partner nor her brother have chosen the path of reproduction. Although I now have a friend who is a single mom, I definitely gravitate to those who have declined this line of work. It's a dirty job and I know someone has to do it, I would just rather let them. It could have something to do with the fact that my mother continually complained that having children wrecked her life. Or even that my sister and I were on our own throughout our childhoods, sometimes coming to school only half-dressed because, even though we had both a mother and a father, no-one was dressing us. My hair is the kinky, jewish kind and my mother couldn't get a comb through it so she only combed and washed it about once a month. Okay, you don't have to bring out the violins, I realize that things are tough all over. I'm just giving some background here.

If you are not a family-type person, living in a cosmopolitan, urban area seems to be necessary. Where else do writers, artists and general weirdos congregate? And what do folks without families pursue along with their varied and ecclectic interests to give their lives meaning and direction?

Friendships! Even older people, after they have found a romantic partner, or sometimes instead of one, along with the possible dog, cat, bird or rabbit, they still want to have real friends. I for one, am not willing to leave those college days of speculating on the nature of the universe and expressing genuine dreams and fears to the solo perview of the young. My mother, at 47 years of age, told me that she was too old to make "real friends." To her that whole area of life was off limits. She died of cancer at 48 and perhaps that was part of the reason. I'll never know that but I do know there is a better way to live...