We Shall Overcome

I'm old. I thought I’d say that right off. With my background I know more about bogs (peat) than blogs but here goes:

I think I know a lot about (a) the Labor Movement (b) politics and (c) baseball, so that’s all I will ever blog about. Let’s stick to (a) today.

In my opinion, the main reason this country did not become a communist nation in the nineteen-thirties was the labor movement and Franklin Roosevelt’s recognition of its important role in our society. The Great Depression was the last time the unrestricted greed of the free enterprise system almost wrecked the American economy as I see it. Among other measures, President Roosevelt and the U.S. Congress permitted unions to grow and give workers the opportunity to release their frustrations through the collective bargaining process. Without that opportunity I believe American workers would have overthrown our government. Things were that bad. Millions were starving and hope was gone. Fear particularly, as FDR so eloquently put it, was pervasive among the vast majority of our citizens.

Today, without Obama, we’d be in the same mess. Yes, things today are different and not as bad. But just go outside the Beltway and they’re close to it. We are on the road back to normalcy, not where we were a year ago, but the light is visible at the end of the tunnel. We will survive. Or as someone much wiser than I once said about another issue "We shall overcome." Yes, I was there standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial when he said it. However, I remind us of the next words from the spiritual he quoted from are SOMEDAY and SOME WAY. Maybe not this week. Arrivederci