I grew up in Danville, a staunchly Republican town in Central Illinois. Our historical claim to fame was “Uncle Joe Cannon,” arguably one of the most powerful Speakers of the House of Representatives ever! But I had the privilege of growing up in a Democratic “Union” household in a family that was overwhelmingly Democrats. I remember my father’s characterization of “Uncle Joe” from his memories as a child. My father’s memories of Cannon after his return to Danville at the end of his career, was of an old fool who rode around in a touring car “waving at no one.”

Uncle Joe had used his powerful position as Speaker of the House of Representatives to halt growing opposition to corporate monopolies. He was the defender of the Robber Barons! He also was instrumental in halting progressive social programs he thought might hurt his rich corporate friends. He abused his power so much that eventually fellow Republicans turned against him, joining Democrats when they stripped him of his power. 

My father (right) and his best friend Carl

As I get older I’m learning that it’s impossible to understand who I am without first understanding my father. My father was the perfect example of the post war American Man. He returned to the United States with a sense that he had fought for the security and future of his family and his country. He returned with a sense of self-esteem that helped him to physically realize what was characterized at the time as “The American Dream.” It meant that working class people could achieve a standard of living that was relatively comfortable by simply working hard at whatever they do. Within the confines of the General Motors factory where my father worked, even the lines between races had already begun to slowly disappear. It was possible for men of different races to work side by side, making equal wages for equal work. This was the changing world I was born into in 1949!

As a child in the 1950’s, my memories of health care are very different from the health “industry” that exists today. Our family doctor often stopped by our house on his way home from the office, to personally check on members of our family when they were ill. Dr. Bill was a respected member of the community who was expected to do better than most financially, because of the importance of his chosen profession. For routine office visits, the bookkeeper at Dr. Bill’s neighborhood office kept a tally of our charges that my mother made payments toward once a month. The charges were very modest compared to today’s inflated health costs, but still provided an income for Dr. Bill, that allowed a standard of living most people back then agreed a doctor deserved. When President Obama made excuses for ignoring the call for a Public Option, I understood that his use of the term “disruption of the system” was code for protecting the middle men who steal insurance premiums, then deny coverage to sick people. I can’t help but see everything from my father’s perspective first, seeing the image of Uncle Joe in his touring car, proud that he spent his life protecting the Robber Barons at the expense of the working class.  

Back in the 50s it seemed, everybody got a piece of the pie! Even though some people got bigger pieces of the pie than others, it all seemed relatively fair. The space between the richest and the poorest in America was literally overflowing with families who were living well and feeling comfortable. They called it “The Middle Class.” Among the memories of my childhood, I find little that resembles envy or greed. I truly believed our life was good, especially when my mother would conjure images of starving children in Africa to persuade me to finish my dinner.

Growing up in a union household, I remember the occasional strike, the conversations about the good versus the bad aspects of unions. But what I mostly remember about those discussions are my father’s rants about how GM was always trying to get by with the least amount of safety in order to maximize profits. Dad’s joke was that he and the other Millwrights were holding Central Foundry together with duct tape and bailing wire. So my sense of decency and fairness grows out of an understanding of how my father and his friends (coworkers) had to fight constantly to keep a balance between the needs of the corporations and the needs of the workers. To me my father and his friends were like the little boy holding his finger in the hole in the dike, trying to keep the tide of greed from washing them all away. I also remember the first time I saw my father cry, when one of his fellow workers was killed in an accident at the factory. I remember my father thinking the death could have been avoided if more attention was paid to safety instead of profits.

My father (center) at General Motors, Central Foundry

As we get older, sometimes a familiar scent, a song on the radio or a particular mood can send us back in time to remember things we haven’t thought of in years or decades. That was how I felt in Berlin after The Wall came down. My partner Rob and I had sold all our belongings and moved to Berlin with the express purpose of experiencing first hand, one of the most important events of the twentieth century. If time travel is ever perfected, it will resemble my first stroll from Kreutzburg, across the Warschauer Brücke into East Berlin. For nearly forty years, the vortex of “No Man’s Land” had swallowed all the lies and illusions of “The Cold War” into it’s center. Most people saw the Wall as a symbol of physical separation of people, but standing there for the first time, I saw it as more of a separation of ideologies. As I stood on the once forbidden soil, I had the overwhelming feeling that it had existed more to protect lies and to stifle truth! 

Rob hoisting me up at the Wall in April 1991                            

This is what I wrote in April, 1991, after I physically touched the Berlin Wall for the first time:

“From my privileged vantage point I can see a future where we in the West will also sit at the ruins of our own Berlin Wall. One day the Capitalist part of the Cold War illusion will also come crashing down. Like the citizens of the former Soviet Union, we will realize that we were nothing more than pawns of a small elite class who steal from the labor and trust of the masses. The great illusion of our way of life and freedom will not spread across the world like wildfire. American workers and workers in the West will watch their pensions, their wages, their rights and their futures downsized to fit the needs of corporate interests. The Robber Barons are poised to return us to the nineteenth century as we enter the twenty-first century. The way they treat the East Germans is the way they will treat us all in the end. It is obvious they are interested in profits, not freedom or democracy!”

I didn’t pull this paragraph out of thin air. It was a product of my experiences as one of the last people to see the Wall before it’s truth was erased forever. In a small East German village I watched as a man handed out free packages of Marlboro cigarettes to very young boys. After more than thirty years of fighting big tobacco, this horrified me. I asked my German companion to be my spy. He questioned the Marlboro man at length in German, returning with a detailed description of the man’s job. He was specifically instructed to give free cigarettes to boys around the age of 12, in order to get them addicted to the Marlboro brand, because these boys would be the wage earners of the future, and loyal customers of Philip Morris for life. Then I spoke with an unemployed man from another East German village who had been forced to borrow money to pay for connecting his home to a water system that had been constructed by an American firm for profit. The man kept repeating that he and his family had always gotten their water from a well, for free! This man summed up what I heard and felt from numerous other East Germans. “We haven’t been waiting forty years to go shopping, to have more things. We were waiting to be free!”

During all of my time in East Germany and East Berlin, I felt an urgency to absorb as much of the moment as possible, before it was all taken away forever. As a card carrying member of the Capitalist West, I had the unforgivable, unspeakable idea that many things about the “East” were actually better than the “West.” I’m sure a major portion of this grew from the nostalgic feeling of being back in my 1950’s childhood, with picnics in the park, the simplicity of life, landscapes uncluttered with advertisements and neon signs. But all of that was overshadowed by the stark reality of the vultures who were circling overhead, waiting to turn millions of naive unsuspecting East German citizens into consumers. Waiting to privatize the few things East Germans actually liked, throwing everything into the “Free Market” basket to be sold for profit.  

On the cusp of the twenty-first anniversary of the fall of The Berlin Wall, all of my worst fears have come to pass. Instead of realizing that the Cold War was a mythical event that was built upon deceptions and fantasies to support two equally illegitimate ideologies, the West has perpetuated the idea that they won the Cold War. In the meantime, those in power have succeeded in destroying the middle class in America and other places around the world, while bringing the world economy to the brink of a second great depression. A small elite few, the mirrored images of their Communist counterparts, have pulled off the largest most successful Ponzi scheme in the history of the world, creating imaginary things to sell, like Credit Default Swaps. They have very cleverly turned their victims against each other while some victims have been convinced to advocate against their own best interests. And most of those who have stolen the wealth, the lives and the futures of their fellow citizens through outright fraud, go unpunished.

People like myself, who were taught to believe in the constitution, the rule of law, the power of the ballot box and the balance of power, sit back in disbelief at our sheer powerlessness. Everything that was good about America has been twisted and perverted into something unrecognizable, where dishonesty is seen as strength, ignorance a virtue and integrity is totally forgotten. I cannot help but see the parallel between us and those East Europeans who were asked to believe in a system that failed them day after day.      

Maybe it's our time to do something in spite of our so called leaders and in spite of our broken system! We need to bring our own wall down in order to take back our lives, our freedom and our country. If you have doubts about how it can be done, or if you have lost hope, please watch the following videos for inspiration. It can be done!!