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How the Personal Became Political for Me Growing Up Poor
Learning to fight City Hall took a lifetime.
Jul 03, 2023
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 clichéd, 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
Being a sensitive and curious child, I became a reader at a very early age. We had no books at home, so I went to the library as often as possible. Finding the children’s books then available less than interesting, I began reading ones from the adult section — and it was my good fortune that the librarian turned a blind eye, checking out whatever I chose without comment.
Books made me more deeply aware of the indignities all around me as well as in much of a world that was then beyond me. As I got older, I couldn’t help but see the hypocrisy of a country that loudly proclaimed its love of equality (as taught from the kindergarten pledge of allegiance on) and espoused everywhere values that turned out to be largely unrealized for millions of people. Why, I began to wonder, did so many of us accept the misery, why weren’t we fighting to change such unlivable conditions?
Of course, what I observed growing up wasn’t limited to the South Bronx. Today, such realities continue to be experienced in communities nationwide. Poor and working-class people often have to labor at two or more jobs just to make ends meet (if they’re “lucky” enough to have jobs at all). Many experience persistent anxiety about having enough food, paying the rent, purchasing clothing for their children, or — heaven forbid — getting sick. Such never-ending worries can rob you of the strength even to pay attention to anything more than the present moment. You fret instead about what’s to be on your plate for dinner, how to make it through the day, the week, the month, never mind the year. And add to all of this the energy-sapping systemic racism that people of color face.
During the Vietnam War years, I began organizing against poverty, racism, sexism, and that war in poor white working-class neighborhoods. I asked people then why living in such awful situations wasn’t creating more of a hue and cry for change. You can undoubtedly imagine some of the responses: “You can’t fight city hall!” “I’m too exhausted!” “What can one person do?” “It’s a waste of the time I don’t have.” “It is what it is.”
Many of those I talked to complained about how few politicians who promise change while running for office actually deliver. I did then and do now understand the difficulties of those who have little and struggle to get by. Yet there have been people from poor and working-class communities who refused to accept such situations, who felt compelled to struggle to change a distinctly unjust society.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, though not myself a student, I became a member of Students for a Democratic Society, better known in those years as SDS. I also got the opportunity to work with members of the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party who came together thanks to direct experiences of racism and poverty that had kept so many of them from worthwhile lives. The Panthers were set on doing whatever they could to change the system and were remarkably clear-eyed in their belief that only struggle could bring about such a development.
Mostly young, and mostly from poor backgrounds, their members defied what convention taught: that the leaders of movements usually come from the middle and upper-middle classes. Of course, many then did and still do. Many grew up well-fed, well-sheltered, and safe from hunger or future homelessness. Many also grew up in families where social-justice values were a part of everyday life.
However, there is also a long history of poor and working-class people becoming leaders of struggles against injustice. The Black Panthers were one such group. As I write this, many safety-net programs are under assault from reactionary Republicans who wish to slash away at food stamps and other programs that offer at least modest support for the poor. They have been eager to add work provisions to safety-net programs, reviving the old trope that the poor are lazy or shirkers living off the dole, which couldn’t be further from the truth. They insist on believing that people should lift themselves out of poverty by their own bootstraps, whether they have boots or not.
But poverty isn’t inevitable, as they would have us believe. Strengthening and expanding the safety net would help so many — like those I grew up with in the South Bronx — move into better situations. However, count on one thing: the reactionary Republicans now serving in government and their MAGA followers will never stop pushing to further weaken that net. They only grow more reactionary with every passing year, championing white nationalism, while attempting to ban books and stop the teaching of the real history of people of color. In short, they’re intent on denying people the power of knowledge. And as history has repeatedly shown, knowledge is indeed power.
Which Way This Country?
As the rich grow richer, they remain remarkably indifferent to suffering or any sort of sharing. Even allowing their increasingly staggering incomes to be taxed at a slightly higher rate is a complete no-no. Poor and working-class people who are Black, Latino, white, Asian, LGBTQ, or indigenous continue to battle discrimination, inflation, soaring rents, pitiless evictions, poor health, inadequate healthcare, and distinctly insecure futures.
Like my parents and many others I knew in the South Bronx, they scrabble to hang on and perhaps wonder if anyone sees or hears their distress. Is it a surprise, then, that so many people, when polled today, say they’re unhappy? However, an unhappy, divided, increasingly unequal society filling with hate is also the definition of a frightening society that’s failing its people.
Still, in just such a world, groups and organizations struggling for social justice have begun to take hold, as they work to change the inequities of the system. They should be considered harbingers of what’s still possible. National groups like Black Lives Matter or the Brotherhood Sister Sol in New York’s Harlem organize against inequities while training younger generations of social-justice activists. And those are but two of many civil-rights groups. Reproductive rights organizations are similarly proliferating, strengthened by women angry at the decisions of the Supreme Court and of state courts to overturn the right to an abortion. Climate change is here, and as more and more communities experience increasingly brutal temperatures and ever less containable wildfires (not to speak of the smoke they emit), groups are forming and the young, in particular, are beginning to demand a more green-centered society, an end to the use of fossil fuels and other detriments to the preservation of our planet. Newly empowered union organizing is also occurring and hopefully will spread across the country. All such activities make us hopeful, as they should.
But here’s a truly worrisome thing: we’re also living in a moment in history when the clamor of reactionary organizing and the conspiratorial thinking that goes with it seem to be gathering strength in a step-by-step fashion, lending a growing power to the most reactionary forces in our society. Politicians like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, as well as anti-woke pundits, use all too many platforms to preach hatred while working to erase whatever progress has been made. Scary as well is the fantastical rightwing theory of white replacement which preaches (in a country that once enslaved so many) that whites are endangered by the proliferation of people of color.
This march toward a more reactionary society could be stemmed by a strong counteroffensive led by progressives in and out of government. In fact, what other choice is there if we wish to live in a society that holds a promise for peace, equality, and justice?
My political involvement taught me many lessons of victory and defeat but has never erased my faith in what is possible. Consider this sharing of my experiences a way to help others take heart that things don’t have to remain as they are.
I haven’t been back to the South Bronx since my parents died, but as a writer and novelist I still visit there often.
[TomDispatch and StatORec Literary Journal are sharing the publication of this article.]
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Political Revolutionists: Does an Inside-Outside Strategy Have a Chance?
May 01, 2016
As the 2016 presidential candidates go kicking and sliding toward the final primaries—and most especially into California—an increasing number of pundits with a knack for writing and rewriting history will offer their best guesses about Bernie's next steps. Many groups with thousands of Bernie volunteers will feel the pressure from those Bernie loyalists never to give up or give in. And many thousands more are also clamoring now about how they might be able to influence those next steps.
Though many Bernie supporters know it in their minds, few like to acknowledge that the people's movement Bernie has ignited will not be led by Bernie in the post-primary season, the general election campaign season, or even when the next president is inaugurated in January 2017. Even if Bernie is elected as our president, his role has changed too. The movement to bring about the kind of transformational change Bernie has adopted as his campaign platform is a "marathon not a sprint" to November. This people's movement requires a longer-term commitment to the slogging, uncomfortable, underfunded, and rarely appreciated work of getting and keeping people organized to fight the good fight.
Many of you know about the People's Summit planned for June 17-19 in Chicago at McCormick Place. My organization, Progressive Democrats of America, is one of the co-convening organizations. PDA is committed to this political revolution, to using our inside-outside strategy to move our agenda, and to being the continued insurgency in the Party when we are able to effectively play that role - but we are not an arm of the Party nor are we tied to the Party in any formal or official way. We were founded in 2004, and we have a rich history of activism. We have chapters throughout the country doing incredible work to push for progressive change.
We would love to have you join us in Chicago for the People's Summit to help raise the people's voice loud and clear. And if you want to do so as part of a group that has been pushing on the levers of power in many arenas, make sure to designate your affiliation with PDA.
In 2008, as the Democrats prepared for their Denver convention, Progressive Democrats of America set a different course. We engaged in a tough platform fight to help change the language of the Party platform around the issue of healthcare reform. No other group - not one - was with us on this mission. Many of our allies thought it was silly to even try. We were undaunted. That was part of our inside work, while our outside effort focused on pulling together progressives for strategizing, educating, and solidarity at our own convening called Progressive Central. We'll do that again in Philadelphia at the end of July this year, but our first stop is in Chicago to be a part of the People's Summit.
Oh, wait, say all who are averse to anything or any group that has the word Democrat in its name. Please, get over that. Bernie has and did. For many years, he served his home state's constituents and the rest of us in Congress, and he has been caucused with the Democrats. And most of you already know the rich history of PDA using a 2013 petition drive to encourage Bernie to run as a Democrat for the presidency. Revisionists may want to craft their own tales, and I've heard many, but PDA has work to do. We have excellent endorsed candidates, from Bernie at the top to several great Congressional candidates - we are proud that the first two Congressional members to endorse Bernie - Keith Ellison, MN, and Raul Grijalva, AZ, serve on our advisory board.
It is always difficult to know the right next steps if you are accustomed to following the pack. In this case, if we all wait for Bernie to tell us the next steps, we will not hear his core message very well at all. This is about movement. Will we have a more inclusive, informed, and receptive progressive in the White House if Bernie wins? Of course. Will he need a powerful people's movement to demand change? Of course. What if someone else is elected president? Will a powerful people's movement be able to push that person to be more inclusive, informed, and receptive to a people's agenda? Yes, a powerful movement can do that. And at the People's Summit in Chicago, we will all help chart the course ahead.
Keep working for Bernie. Keep working to get out the vote in the remaining primary states. Keep partnering with other progressives to keep this national conversation going strong. Whether you are an inside-the-Party progressive advocate or an outside-the-Party activist or even someone who only worked through this primary season because of Bernie's candidacy, you will find your position honored and lifted at the People's Summit. It is going to take all of us continuing and growing our influence to move this political moment from notations about "the Bern" to its rightful recording in history as the period when the tide truly turned from the pro-Wall Street, pro-greed, anti-progressive destruction of our government to a wave of insistent justice that crashes against the barriers to change.
The people are speaking. And we aim to be heard. Join us at the People's Summit.
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