On 2010-07-25, at 11:06 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
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> On Jul 25, 2010, at 10:55 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
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>> Too bad my wife and I didn't have it as a guide before our recent two month road trip through the States which took us to and through some of the places in New Mexico, California, Utah, Colorado etc. you describe.
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> Welcome back, Marv. Excellent to meet you two on your stop in NYC. You going to write up any reports on your trip?
=================== Thanks, Doug. You and Liza are warm and engaging hosts, and Walker and I very much enjoyed the evening we spent in Brooklyn with yourselves, Julio and Mary, the kids and your dad. NYC now seems a stone's throw away from Ottawa. We logged about 15000 km, though it proved to be not as onerous as we feared when we set out. We had enough time to limit our daily driving, had extended layovers in the big cities and national parks, read to each other, and were constantly diverted by the changing topography across the plains, through the mountains and canyons, and up the Pacific coast, much of it breathtaking to Easterners like us. It was also a treat to travel and hike in the west's much less humid and bug-free climate.
We were able to take a tiny bit of the political pulse in casual encounters with folks we met en route, most notably tea party supporters at a garage in Hermiston, Oregon where we stopped to repair a tire and later again at a rest stop outside Kearney, Nebraska. I was mindful of the discussions about the TP movement we've had on this and other lists, particularly the notion that it is a possible pool of recruits for would-be left wing organizers. I'm less inclined than ever to think so. It wasn't difficult to persuade them that government spending was not in itself bad if directed at their jobless and foreclosed neighbours and relatives rather than at Wall Street, so it's probably true that their economic grievances can be redirected into progressive rather than right wing channels. But their deep-seated resentment against hispanic and other immigrants, who have been changing the social composition of these small towns and the workforce in these regions, as well as against blacks, unionists, "liberal intellectuals" and other faceless and frightening urban demons, was never far beneath the surface and I was wary of going there. Like most Americans we encountered, they were characteristically open and friendly, but mainly to older white males, as my wife reminded me when I overly enthused about it. Racism and xenophobia break down over generations on movement to larger cosmopolitan cities, and I'm afraid these folks, however dire their economic circumstances, are too trapped in and conditioned by their environments to transcend them. Better to deepen contact with the left's traditional urban constituencies than to dream of outflanking the Democrats by chasing greener pastures in the most unlikely places.
Equally noteworthy is how many people, on finding out we were from Canada, asked us about medicare, and revealed a shocking (well, not really) ignorance about what it covered and what it cost us in taxes or otherwise.
Chicago, where we visited friends - two of them former SWP'ers still longing to recreate the party and a third mutual friend active in the local chapter of Progressive Democrats of America - was an entirely different experience. They hosted a BBQ on a wonderfully balmy early summer evening where we met leaders of the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators which had been swept into power in the Chicago Teachers Union only a few days earlier to fight school closures, as well as a recently-retired physician who will be devoting herself full-time to Physicians for A National Health Program. Their energy and enthusiasm was inspiring in each case, but they are facing uphill battles and they know it. All the more power to them.