Letter #131
Dear Mr. President:
They say that we are often
shaped by our earliest memories, and that we only have strong memories of the
things that were either very happy or conversely, very sad or unhappy.
 |
| What being left out looks like. |
My earliest memory is when I was
not quite 4 years old and I was standing on the front porch of our home in
Alameda looking through the front window at my sister opening her birthday
presents. I was locked out of the house because my sister only wanted her school
friends at her party, not her little sister. I recently asked my sister if she
remembered that or was I just imagining it? She said she did remember and has
often wondered why our mother let her do such a cruel thing.
The simple answer to that is, because
she wanted my sisters birthday to be special and my sister was only 7 years old
and wanted a birthday without her ‘baby’ sister interrupting. My mother, on the
other hand, should have known better, she should have explained that while I
was younger, and may be pesky at times, I was still her sister, a member of the
family and would not be ‘locked’ out.
So that simple memory of being
shut out of an event, is probably why I have always been such a fierce
supporter of the ‘underdog’… I simply cannot stand to see anyone ‘left out’ or
treated as somehow unworthy, undeserving, or unequal in any way. And that is
why I reacted so strongly to the CA Capitol Christmas tree lighting ceremony on
December 7th when the children and their parents were fenced off from
the festivities. It’s bad enough that the tax paying public was denied equal
access, but watching the kids treated like wretched little animals, held back
by fences, as if they were dirty, cur dogs… was just too much… a disgusting
example of ‘class warfare’ at its
worst.
The same kind of class warfare
is being played out in Alabama… having passed one of the most stringent
immigration laws making it illegal for an immigrant to fail to carry
registration documents. What seemed like a good idea, and a good way to get rid
of the ‘immigrants’ they don’t want in their state… ‘Hispanics’… and after making
fools of themselves by arresting not one, but two foreign executives of the
Honda and Mercedes plants… Robert Bentley, the brilliant Governor, who was eager
to sign the legislation into law, is now back-peddling because of the backlash
from big business.
Gov. Bentley is now contacting
foreign executives to tell them their companies are welcome in Alabama… “We are
not anti-foreign companies. We are very pro-foreign companies,“ he said. So now we get to the meat and potatoes…
he’s pro-foreign as long as it’s the ‘right’ kind of foreign… the kind of
foreign that brings big money to the state… not the kind of foreigners that are
there to pick the crops, clean the motel rooms, or wash dishes in restaurants,
but the ‘good’ kind of foreigners that build cars.
If that’s Alabama’s example of
“Southern Hospitality”… I think I’ll just stay home.
Most Respectfully,
Marcia Reimers, Your Gadfly
Granny
No comments:
Post a Comment