The American Dream

I just finished reading an article about Anquan  Bolden, a San Francisco 49er receiver.  It seems that Mr. Bolden is an example of the American Dream.

Like many poor people of color, Anquan is one a very few who was able to escape, partially, his poor sharecropper roots through football.

I can remember when I worked in the then Grant High School District and speaking to the quarterback of the Varsity.  He asked me sadly if there was any way OUT of Del Paso Heights.  He asked me how I had done it, escaping Redding California for Stanford.  He told me, "If I stay here I will be dead before I am 21".

Those words haunt me to this day.

I told he to study hard, don't count on football to get you anywhere, that only a fraction of a percent ever get college football scholarships, and way less get a chance in the NFL.  I told him the way out was through education and hard work.

But, if you talk to parents of kids anywhere, who are playing football, you will hear invariably, "He may get a shot at the NFL".

Anquan Bolden knows better.  He comes from a high school that has won a couple Florida state championships and a few NFL players have come from his area.  But he is working right now with the community on educational opportunity and economic opportunity; not how to get a shot at the NFL.

I have said before in this Blog that I am an example of the American Dream, even though for a long time I did not realize it.

My mother's family were poor dirt farmers; my father's were part Indian and poor.  Both went hungry during the Great Depression.

As a child of that union, I really had no chance of attending Stanford University or becoming a professional educator.  The odds were huge against that happening.

But I got lucky.  I  possessed exceptional speed and could carry a football better than many.  I also loved to read, and took advantage of what the New Deal had given Americans; a good public school system, a way for even the poor to buy a home and enter the middle class.

We were middle class.  We were not rich or upper middle class, but we were the post WWII middle class, whose children got a better opportunity than their depression era parents.

And I took advantage of it, just as millions of other "baby boomers" did.

The opportunities were everywhere.  Tuition at state colleges and universities was low or non-existent.

So an entire generation did much better economically than our parents.  And, except for people of color, we shared the American Dream.

Then in 1976, the year of American bi-centennial, America began to blink.

It started with the Prop 13 movement in California of all places.  A progressive and liberal state began saying no to taxes.  From that same state, a national leader emerged, Ronald Reagan who basically said the American Dream cost too much. He, and his Hollywood millionaires, were enraged by the income tax marginal tax rate that taxed them at a huge rate.  Of course they still were fabulously rich.  But he was able to convince the middle class that taxes were essentially the work of the devil.

And, the middle class baby boomer, who had burned his draft card in the 60s and dodged military service, switched from his New Deal roots and adopted the conservative anti-tax rant.

And the American Dream dimmed for millions, including the poor African American kids in Del Paso Heights.

No longer do we have tuition free schools. No longer do we have state Mental Health hospitals.  We now have student loans that are for a lifetime.  We now have homeless legions of young people, who literally have no chance.

And Mr. Bolden knows this.  And I know this.  My daughter is a college grad, her husband is a small businessman and they are barely making it.  My home town is one of the poorest in the state, with a huge homeless population, belabored by poverty and crime.

I have called this Potterville, a fictitious town from "Its A Wonderful Life" that is in the image of a rich selfish banker, who seeks to run everything at the expense of everyone save himself.  And we are seeing more Pottervilles all the time, middle class people carrying water for the rich few, in the fallacious belief that cutting the future for their grandchildren will somehow create a just society.

These people are fools, nothing more, nothing less!

The American Dream of opportunity for all; now is only for the well off, the affluent, the rich.  The middle class has shrunk the past ten years as much as it grew in the post WWII boom.

And still they vote Republican.  Still middle class people rant about immigrants and "those people" and close their minds to common sense.

The American Dream is why we are still here.  Young GIs in WWII fought fascism to a standstill and destroyed it, only to see their grandchildren adopt the same fascist mindset that they destroyed.  And, strangely, those who still are alive, sometimes through fear support  a conservative cause that for all intents and purposes is fascist.

I am typing this because the American Dream worked for me.  I worked with kids all of my adult life, trying to get them through education to get a shot at the American Dream.  Yes, I was one of the few, who got my chance through football.  But very early on, I realized there would be no NFL for me.

So I gave back.  I was forced to join the National Guard toward the end of the Vietnam War or get drafted.  But I did not run, I joined.

I am glad I did.  I learned the military was not evil, only the political leadership that abused its trust and loyalties  was.

I learned the value of national service both through my Guard experiences and through a lifetime of educating youngsters.

Today less that 1% of all Americans of working age have done ANY public service of any kind.  That is why the American Dream is dying.

And that is why our democracy is dying.

We all should remember where we came from; and how we got where we are, and the American Dream is the answer.

So, pay your damn taxes, pay more.  Demand good government and get involved.  Vote!    Do not listen to the fascists who tell you less is more.  Stop feeding the beast of ignorance and nihilism.

Your grand children's lives depend on it.