Link
This link came from Stephen Koehler's blog. It is a plea asking Americans to behave as they did in WWII, when the people in Tillamook, Oregon built a wooden hanger for blimps that would serveill the coast for submarines....it was immense, but built in 90 days. When my father who was retired went back to work as a guard at Fort Mason under the Golden Gate Bridge, when we mashed cans, saved grease, grew "victory gardens" and volunteered at the Red Cross and shopped with ration books, while our brothers, husband and often fathers went to war. During the Depression when people near the railroad fed men traveling by hitching rides on freight trains to look for work, and if they had no money to hire them at least sent them on their way with a meal and good wishes. My mother was 4'11" and did not fear these men. Perhaps I lived in a different world those who lived in big cities and in the South where they feared black people, but most of the country really did pull together and feel a kinship with other Americans. When did this fear and hatred begin? I believe it was after the Civil Rights legislation was made law and schools were integrated, and the farm workers from Mexico that had been Braceros during the war began to settle as residents...the fear of "the other" became ingrained in the imaginations of the white middle-class. The racism that we have today was passed down to children, and then to grandchildren, and here we are, perhaps on the brink of real revolution because one of "the other" is President. This is a little disjointed and I haven't taken the time to edit it for grammar and coherence, but when I read the sign on Stehphen's blog, it produced this emotional rant.
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