Independence Day Part 2

"Our Independence Day: Part 2" by v. johns

While I like to think of myself as an advocate for the poor, in a sense, I make no pretense in not liking all of my fellow downtrodden brethren. Thus, in composing this blog, I find myself fighting not only FOR the poor, but WITH the poor!

While I can certainly appreciate the actual circumstance of being poor (I AM poor!), I have failed to understand the lifestyle and social protocols that have emerged from the proliferation of the life of the less fortunate. The rich have gotten richer while the poor have not only gotten poorer, but have become more accepting of their fates. The poor no longer cheer each other on for making it out of the gutter and up into the ranks of the now nearly nonexistent middle class. Instead, they roll their eyes. Some even regard other’s fortunes as almost a betrayal of sorts.

I’ve learned through extensive reading of self-help books and from trial and error that adopting the language and vocabulary of the successful will eventually render some success of my own. I believe it whole heartedly. The problem comes when other poor people mistake my formulae for success as me somehow thinking that I’m better than them, when all I’m trying to do is to be better than myself. Jobs like mine, lowly though they be, require successful attitudes. Yet, I have been, at times, made out to be a fool for… doing my job? Speaking? Saying hello? Smiling?

My differences with other poor people have a great deal to do with the litmus tests I have failed time and again to pass. It’s no longer good enough to be poor. You’ve got to be poor… a certain way. You’ve got to subscribe to a certain mindset and actually look the part! Once differences emerge, especially differences in thought and outlook on life, be prepared to fend off gawkers and naysayers and those who simply just don’t want other people to have anything or be anything in life…

Month after month, year after year, the endless, mindless back-and-forth mental and physical posturing I have found myself having to engage in, with fellow poor people, to justify my own unique existence, and the constant focus on trivial things that have nothing to do with making things better for our country and our work and school environments, has left me with a bad taste in my mouth that won’t go away. It makes me want to be a snob about the things I believe in… Since others are so sure of what they believe in… So sure about what they believe about me…

This being America, however, I firmly believe that you can not like someone, at least initially, but still uphold their right, and yours, to a descent life in a civil society. Writing this blog is not only my way of participating in this democracy that we call America, its also my way of standing up for the middle class and the poor, not simply on emotionalist sentiment of shared circumstance, but of honor and pride and our duty to uphold the rule of law and of doing the right thing at all times. Even though other poor people have, at times, constantly harassed me, or have made fun of me for not following caste etiquette, with regard to speech, dress, demeanor and interests (In other words, they think I’m weird), I understand that by damning them all to hell, I’m not only damning myself, as well, but I’m also damning a lot of good, kind people, in between, who see character first, as I do.

I’m no Mother Theresa, for sure. I’ve tried working with kids, volunteering, giving change to bums and all the other stuff you can mention when people ask: “What are YOU doing to help the poor?” I’m just simply not good at serving people on that level. Especially, since I am one of those who are poor and in need. Also, I believe that people should operate according to their talents. Mine happen to be art and writing. So I choose to use my writing to advocate for things that are going to help the middle class and the poor on a massive scale, like mass transit, accessible education systems and government that works.

I may be wrong in my refusal to glorify and emotionalize the plight of the poor, but unlike politicians and media talking heads, I have great luxury in admitting that I don’t always like, or get along with, many of my fellow bottom dwellers. It is what it is. But considering how sure-footed some of these people seem in judging me, I think I’ll be resting quite well tonight. Yet, I’m more than wiling to fight for their right to exist, even though some of them apparently have a problem with me existing…

Though we poor and middle class folk like to sit back and blame the folks in power, in government and industry, for their mindless greed, our unwillingness to fully embrace education as a tool of the poor, and not a privilege of the rich, has cost us greatly. Our love of the exotic and trivial at the expense of overlooking the importance of the more mundane mechanics of democratic participation and civil maintenance has allowed the snakes to creep in through cracks that once were sealed… “by the people.”

Just because we are poor, or minority and poor, doesn’t mean that we are allowed to be derelict in our duty to participate in our democracy and actively plot its path. We are not absolved from envisioning the type of world we’d like our children and grandchildren and their children to live in, long after we are gone…

Where we are, right now, as a country, recovering from a party gone awfully wrong, isn’t the fault of one group of folks: bankers, politicians, company CEO’s…

The overall failure of the poor and the middle class in participating whole-heartedly in their democracy, even when things seem to be going smooth, in keeping close watch on our leaders, only when it’s crucial, our insistence on being able to “drink a beer” with our elected leaders or that they be “black enough” or “red” enough, our failure to fully embrace education or to even read the damn paper once in awhile, our incessant focus on “others” as the source of our problems, our petty obsessions with the lives of stars, celebrities and sports figures, our so-called “culture wars,” our insistence that everything be cheap, easy and free, our allowing the government to be run by ideologues, our willingness to look the other way when “one of our own” does wrong, etc., etc., etc., not to mention… the greed and corruption of the bankers, politicians and CEO’s… have all played a role in bringing this country to the brink of ruin…

The overall historical disengagement and lack of participation of the poor in shaping our true path, in recent times, has proven to be just as potentially lethal as the drunken greed and corruption of those who have slipped in to fill that vacuum of power that we have left open to them. Rather than fighting and striving together as “Americans” we’ve allowed our society, at the whim of the powerful and privileged, to fracture to the point where we define ourselves first by race, class and political beliefs.

On this day, the 4th of July, in the year 2010, let us all pause for a moment and think about all the blood that has been shed so that we can pop smack to our elected leaders and keep private power-hungry punks in their place. For as much as we’d like to believe that some “other” is running the show, if we keep on going the way we are going, letting those who use “other” to bait us into traps that steer us off of our American journey, we’re going to wake up find this worst of nightmares actually come true…