American Dreams: My Father, Karl Marx and the Man who Sold the Rope 1/2

by Nomad

Let’s Begin With My Father

My father, born in 1929, grew up in the midst of the Great Depression, in what most people would consider extreme poverty. His father died one week after his birth leaving his widowed mother to raise her five children alone. Had it not been for a productive farmland, it is doubtful they would have survived. “We didn’t have two nickles to rub together,” he’d often tell me,”but we never even realized we were poor. Everybody we knew was in the same situation as we were.”

In 1951. he left the farm to join in the Korean War to fight the spread of the Communist threat. The Red Menace- China- was on the verge of expanding across the border into Korea. Following that, he received credit from a GI loan which allowed him to buy a very humble mobile home to start his married life.

In the economic boom of the 1950s, my father found employment as a precision sheet metal worker at a aircraft manufacturing plant. Along with thousands of other unskilled workers returning from Korea, the company trained my father with the idea of steady long term employment. In turn, my father worked at the company for thirty years. He did not particularly desire to rise up in the hierarchy of the company. He told me that he’d prefer not to have the stress that went with the responsibility. He preferred to spend more time at home at the end of his shift. There was also the goal that he knew that his children would, by his hard, boring and unsatisfying labor, have a better life than he did. It was an attainable goal. Through the use of collective bargaining of his union or the rare labor action, my father’s wage steadily increased.

Evangelical Candidates: Personal Faith vs. Public Policy

by Nomad

A Sin Against God

In the 2012 election year, the subject of a presidential candidate’s religious beliefs is once again becoming a matter of public discussion. Of course, this isn’t, by any measure, the first time. In fact, in modern American politics, the issue of personal faith has become a more or less common feature in American elections.

What has changed is to what degree this once personal issue has become a candidate's "selling point" to the politically powerful Christian Right Wing of the Republican party.

When this problem was brought up in the 1960 Kennedy vs. Nixon election the matter was mentioned because some people were concerned that Kennedy could not represent all people and that there might well be conflicts between the Catholic doctrine and the Constitution. How this problematic issue was dealt with, the answer Kennedy gave to critics, is an example of the kind of politics and politicians that have come and gone.

The Sudden Death of the Living Wage: ACORN 3/3

by Nomad

In the previous posts (Part One) (Part Two), we have looked into the meaning and importance of the living wage movement. We have also examined both the Conservative argument against and the history of the movement. In the final part of this three part series, we will examine at the more recent attempts at establishing a living wage and the organization that was destined to achieve some impressive results.  

The Rebirth of the Movement

One organization took up the cause of campaigning for a living wage and throughout the 1990s, won unprecedented successes. It was called “the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities" with the name the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known as ACORN.

Ilyse Hogue, writing for The Nation, gives this summary about the important role that ACORN played.

ACORN was unique as an organization that served our nation’s poor people. Wrangling with life’s common challenges like mortgages and housing forms, ACORN employees built trust by offering help person to person, neighborhood by neighborhood. They then leveraged that trust to lobby for federal legislation to address the root causes of the crises facing these people—predatory lending, lack of community investment and stagnant wages.