General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Were your parents (or guardians) Democrats? [View all]Martin Eden
(12,885 posts)All four of my grandparents immigrated just before WWI, from Serbo-Croatia. Grandfathers worked in factories, and my family became involved in the labor movement when workers had to literally fight (and sometimes die) for so much we take for granted today.
Most of all my Aunt Kate (born 1907) who went to work in factories age 15 and put her heart and soul into battling the injustices. She became a district organizer for the Communist Party of America, eventually targeted by McCarthyism. She spent 10 months in jail while they tried to deport her to Yugoslavia but there were no birth records in the small village where she was born, so eventually had to release her.
Kate loved this country and sacrificed more in her efforts to help people than the self indulgent majority who cast stones from their glass houses. She was never allowed to become a US citizen, and lived in my home while my parents worked during my childhood. My Aunt Kate was full of wonderful stories (not political) and was the most caring and empathetic person I ever knew. I remember one morning in April 1968 when I found her sobbing, watching the news. MLK had been assassinated, a very sad day in our household. Not so much for my peers at school, whose parents were celebratory.
The year before she died, Kate and two other elderly women were featured in the Union Maids documentary film, which was nominated for an Oscar.
Kate was also in the book Rank and File, using the name Christine.
Like so many others who were swept up by The Romance of American Communism, they abandoned the Party before or soon after the horrible evils of the Stalin regime was made known in 1956 (I was born in 1957).
The rank and file were good people who really cared, struggling for a better and more equitable America. Now the terms communist/marxist/socialists are bogeyman pejoratives cast unfairly at anyone -- including mainstream Democrats -- struggling against corporatocracy and creeping fascism.
If "conservatives" are REALLY afraid of Socialism, the best way to avoid something truly radical in that direction is to get on board with good policies which help the vast majority of the American people. Universal health care, quality affordable education, equal rights, and a living wage are not radical. Most of this is embraced by other Western capitalist democracies, whose people are not victims of government "tyranny."
I wish I could tell my Aunt Kate that all she worked so hard for has been achieved, but we still have a long way to go.