Titanic Post

Denise Lang writes here about her father’s influence on her formative years, which led to her becoming an inspiring peace and justice activist. It is my good fortune to be able to call her a friend, and that she is such a good writer.

My Father’s Daughter

by Denise Lang

About 40 years ago, El Paso’s Mayoral election gained national news coverage because there were two candidates with the same name: Ed Lang. My father was one of those two. As Fathers Day approaches, I find myself thinking of my dad. My father retired as navigator of B-52′s at Biggs Air Force Base in El Paso. After he retired, he coached ‘ Pop Warner’ football. While the rest of the country had Little Stevie Wonder, in the Eastwood/Scottsdale area we had Little Stevie Russell. Steve was the only boy who was as short as I was, but he really, really wanted to play football.

Recently, Dr. Stephen Russell sent me a book he’d published, Internal Management. In that book he tells the story of trying out for my dad’s team. He’d been knocked around by the bigger players, but when my dad asked if he still wanted to play football, he replied, ” Yes, sir.” My dad paused, but finally said, ” OK, you’re on the team … not only that, but we’re going to give you a new name: Dynamite.” When Steve questioned why Dynamite, my dad responded,”…because dynamite is incredibly powerful and it comes in small packages.” Steve talks about how capable, significant and responsible that made him feel. My dad believed that everybody gets a shot, that everyone deserves a chance. Just like in the movies, his teams did go on to play in championship games in California and Hawaii.

My dad believed strongly in the greatness of our nation and he taught us that the United States was established as a democratic government; its citizens elect representatives to represent the people. We were a people to whom justice and equality really meant something. My mom and dad taught us that democracy demands participation; I have been participating in our democratic process ever since; sometimes just by voting.

At our local health food store, I recently bought a pocket-sized copy of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. The index has this listing,” The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the strong. ” It reminded me of one of the oldest legal codes, the Hammurabi, which stated: “The first duty of government is to protect the most powerless from the most powerful.”

Our nation has matured in 228 years:

• Abolishing slavery; establishing civil rights
• Giving women the rights to keep their own wages, to receive an education, to vote, to learn about reproduction;
• Providing workers with the right to organize which led to safer working conditions, the 40 hour week, the minimum wage and overtime
• Abolishing child labor
• Establishing anti-trust legislation to protect consumers from too-powerful corporations, the kind of large corporations Benito Mussolini was thinking of as he said, “Modern fascism should be properly called corporatism, since it is the merger of state, military and corporate power.” Or as Theodore Roosevelt said, “The limitation of governmental power means the enslavement of the people by the great corporations.”
• Providing public libraries and parks
• Providing good public education including the extraordinarily successful GI Bill and Head Start
• Rural Electrification (OK, as a rural dweller, I am subjective on this!)
• Interstate highways, the space program, Air Controllers, fire departments
• In other words, Everybody should get a shot

When the Berlin wall fell and the Communist Soviet Union dissolved, many anticipated that since the world ‘ s only other superpower had fallen, the monies spent to fight communism would be freed up to provide better healthcare, better education, better roads and infrastructure, and move toward making our country totally self-sufficient in renewable energy sources within the decade. But there were a few industries that did not see bettering the lives of US citizens as a good thing: Industries that made their profit on war. Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, General Electric, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, Halliburton all preferred we continue to spend money on war efforts, not on our citizens.

In 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.” I see the influence of those defense contractors on the US policies. Now, too, large corporations are increasing their polluting and poisoning of our water and our air: increasing cancer, asthma, allergies, and many disease processes. The most profitable industries, the pharmaceutical, healthcare ‘ management,’ and the oil industries, would prefer that current policies remain as they are so that they can continue being the most profitable industries, at a cost of lives to many of our citizens, including the millions of us who have can’ t afford health insurance.

The regulations our nation had fought for to increase workers’ and consumers’ safety are being dismantled to increase profits and to provide for the CEOs of those large corporations, who make on average 500 times what the workers earn. What do they contribute that could honestly justify earning so much, or is it that they are part of the spoiled, bullying, selfish, entitled, connected, corrupt, greedy elite?

The US grew to greatness as a democratic government; electing representatives to represent the people, but today large corporate campaign donors are now dictating their greedy, poisonous policies. I want Congress to represent me, my family, my neighbors … not the CEOs and huge multi-national corporations. These powerful people resent the programs that I believe the majority of my neighbors and I appreciate. These same greedy and corrupt elite have created the myth of the ‘welfare queen’ so that we resent anyone who needs a hand up instead of resenting the very wealthy who are getting richer off of the working people. Programs they want to see destroyed that I want to see continued or begun include the following:

• Social Security;
• Head Start;
• Universal access to healthcare;
• Affordable housing for all our citizens;
• Lifelong access to learning opportunities;
• A restructuring of payroll taxes so that the poor pay less and the very wealthy pay more;
• Putting people to work by rebuilding the nation ‘ s infrastructure-schools, roads, bridges;
• Starting a crash program with solid federal backing to find and develop renewable energy sources to free us from our dependence on oil, a limited-and-running-out (at least of easily obtainable) fossil fuel;
• Working to help small businesses employ more people (small businesses don’t move their labor base to India. In fact, small business are our primary source of new jobs);
• Truth and accountability by all of our representatives;
• A focused effort to find Osama bin Laden;
• Better care of our Veterans, heroes who have already served our nation;
• Repairing our relationships with the rest of the world;
• Enforce current laws/regulations or make new ones so we and generations to come can eat fish that isn’t full of mercury and other poisons;
• Enforce current laws/regulations or make new ones so we and generations to come our creeks and streams continue to run instead of being purchased by urban areas.
• I believe that is what 95% of us really want: for everyone to get a shot.

Some people’s fathers collected coins or stamps; my dad collected quotations. I guess that’s why I am still collecting quotations. Here are some of my favorites, ones that remind me of what my parents taught me:

• “We are not allowed to be silent while killing goes on in our name.” Father John Dear
• “Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander ” Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC
• “The love for justice that is in us is not only the best part of our being, but it is also the most true to our nature.” Cesar Chavez
• “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public ” Theodore Roosevelt

Today, the world cries out for the moral example of our people’s commitment to justice and equality, not military might. While both political parties are guilty of accepting corporate financing, the current party in power seems to adhere to policies that benefit the wealthy few while leaving the working people to drift into poverty and putting the children of the working in harm ‘ s way as they fight an unjustified war in Iraq. They say, “Stay the course,” but I am thinking. “If we have a driver who is telling us THIS is the way to get there, but we have others saying that if we go that way we will end up in a ditch, maybe go over the cliff. Then if that driver drives along, going into that ditch and we find ourselves with one wheel over the cliff, I know I want to change drivers.” Today, my father’s belief in the best of the United States, that everyone gets a shot, lives on in me and I am reclaiming hope in our future.