Monday, November 2, 2020

An Open Letter to Pennsylvanians

 Annamaria on Tenterhooks



I am spending hours over these final days of this election on the telephone with voters in Pennsylvania.  In these critical days, we are working to get out the vote. So to save time  today, I am sharing something I wrote months ago that encapsulates my plea to the descendants of my father's playmates when they were children in the coalfields, where times are still very tough. 


Hate Is Not the Answer

 

I am not the coal miner’s daughter. I’m the coal miner’s granddaughter.



 

 My father, Salvatore Francesco Puglisi, was born in Hollsopple, Pennsylvania, in what was then a mining village of eight double houses, four on each side of a dirt road near a mine entrance.  In each one was the family of a miner on one side and on the other, four of five men without families.  For the privilege of living in company housing, the wives of the married miners were required to cook, clean, and do laundry for the men who lived adjacent.  I try to imagine what it was like to keep up with the laundry of five or six coal miners with a washboard, a clothesline, and a bar of Octagon soap.  And no water heater.




 Almost all the miners in those days, in that area, were immigrants.  The women in the settlement were, largely like my grandmother unable to read and write or to speak English.  They were Italian, Welsh, Hungarian, Czech, Polish, and German.  Without a language in common, those women managed to help one another give birth, nurse the sick, and survive. My father described them like this: A bird flying overhead would know if there was a house with a new baby or sick person, by watching the women carry pots of soup and clean laundry to the house where help was needed.




 One of my father’s earliest memories was of a night of terror.  He and his siblings were huddled with their mother in the bedroom of the two-room dwelling.  My grandmother sat on the edge of the bed nursing his baby sister.  My grandfather was sitting in a chair just on the other side of the closed door, facing the front door with his loaded shotgun and hunting rifle across his lap.



 

My father, then between three and four years old, was just tall enough to see out the window.  What he saw was this: hooded men, all in white, on horseback, carrying weapons, circling the houses.  And on the hill beyond, burning crosses.





 Why? Because the families in that settlement were immigrants and mostly Catholics.  The KKK considered them vermin, to be despised, threatened, and sometimes killed.  This was their opinion of men who worked at a back-breaking and dangerous job.  And this was their opinion of the women who toiled all day, every day in starkly difficult conditions. Even their babies weren’t spared the hatred of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.




 When my father was nine years old, my grandfather died of black lung.  The coal company evicted my grandmother and her children, who ranged in age from 14 to 2.  They conveyed her and her meager possessions to edge of the settlement and left her there.  With the help of other people—also Italian immigrants—she made her way to New Jersey, where my 14-year-old uncle became the family breadwinner.





Over the years, I have been back to Johnstown and Seward with my father, to visit with his friends from childhood and to visit my grandfather’s grave in Holy Family cemetery.  I understood and empathized with the plight of those I met—the descendants of my grandfather’s workmates. So, four years ago, when Donald Trump promised to reopen the coal mines, I knew how appealing such an idea might be to people who felt forgotten. 

 

Having lived most of my adult life in New York City, now within two and half miles of Trump Tower, I also knew that Donald Trump’s sympathies really lay on the side of people more like the heartless mine bosses who threw my widowed grandmother and her children out of their home without a fare-thee-well and not with the hard-working miners and their families.  Then, and since I have seen how, as president—he has curried favor with the moral descendants of the Ku-Klux-Klan members who terrified the immigrant miners and their families two generations ago.



So today, I am asking you this: If—like mine—your ancestors were targets of such hate, please remember them now—your grandmothers and grandfathers—and what they would say about people motivated by hate.

 

Hate is not the answer.  Hate is the enemy.  Those who use hate and fear are not problem solvers.  They are problem makers.  Those who preach hate are not your friends.  And they shouldn’t be our leaders.



Anyone who uses your suffering to make you hate other people is never going to solve our country’s problems.  In the history of the world, hate has never solved anything.  

 

Think.  Think deeply about our grandparents and their generation.  Who would they admire.  Who would they trust? Who would they want to help? 



16 comments:

  1. Even is South Africa, we share the tension of the next few days...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. OH, Michael, I remember so vividly that first election in South Africa, the long lines of people. And our joy here in the US over the election of Nelson Mandela. How I hope we will get through this even a small fraction of the style and grace shown then.

      Delete
  2. And in the UK, we are anxiously awaiting the results...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Until this year, Zoe, it was inconceivable to me and almost every American that there could be any doubt about the peaceful transfer of power. That was the magic trick the United States taught the rest of the world to do. Now we have made a spectacle of ourselves. How many times, this year, have I typed these words: I wish I still believed in prayer.

      Delete
  3. Wonderful column, AmA. We're hanging on tenterhopes here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. EvKa, I will be watching the commentary streaming by the On the Media crowd from my local Public Radio station: WNYC. Among the notables on the show will be Alec Baldwin. I am hoping that will keep me from chewing my nails to my collarbones. Did we ever think we would feel so terrified of the aftermath of an election? This is stuff that happens in other places. How can it be that the USA is beginning to feel like a shithole country!

      Delete
  4. As a native Pittsburgher still with his finger somewhat on the political pulse of the commonwealth, permit me to say this, Sis. KEEP MAKING THOSE CALLS. And God Bless us all.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, my brother. I am done with my sfits today. LOTS of New Yorkers and californians have been pitching in. It's a tough fight. I want it to look OVERWHELMING in favor fo Biden. To stop any insanity of doubt and objection. I know it might not be the best thing for peace in the aftermath, but I have a guilty hope it will be humiliatingly bad for Agent Orange.

      Delete
  5. The situation today has a lot of us on tenterhooks. The USA today is a laughing stock round the world. No longer is it a leading world nation. Sad but true.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know. Isn't it awful. It was hubris for us to keep saying "This is the greatest country in the world." Now we are an object of pity!

      Delete
  6. Several friends in Philly are helping people vote in the light of voter intimidation. The right wing is frightening some voters away from the polling places in Pennsylvania, as told to me by Philly friends.
    So a lot of progressive people have volunteered to be at polling places to help voters.
    There was a MAGA mess on the Mario Cuomo Bridge in NY today, with blocking of traffic. They are organized around the country. But a lot of people are volunteering to support voters, especially Black voters who are targeted.
    I do not agree with much of Biden/Harris' program, but the thought of a white supremacist, misogynist, xenophobic, billionaire egomaniac in the Whise House for one more day winking at his neo-Nazi buddies is too much for me.
    So if Biden gets in, there will be protests if theh government isn't helping the unemployed, houseless, hungry, etc. That's inevitable because the pandemic and economic crisis won't fade away. But there won't be the insanity, the reactionary bigotry emanating from the White House, not to mention the misogyny.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Right! Now we will see. PA is still not predictable!
      I heard a man on the radio this AM talking about the mess we are in. He said this (not verbatim): The American people are attempting to form the first mass, multicultural, multiracial, democratic government on this planet. In no other place on earth is such a thing even being contemplated. If we succeed, it will be a major miracle.

      We New Yorkers, Kathy, live in a microcosm of such a country. I have often said that the rest of the country, and the world, for that matter, needs to be like us. Learn to get along. Oh, we have incidents of intolerance now and then, but by and large, we live together peacefully and we all benefit enormously from the resultant energy and creativity.

      Our country may look like a laughingstock at this moment. But if you look at Europe in 1776 and the ensuing two centuries, you will see chaos, internecine wars (even even between countries led by opposing blood relatives!) that make what's going on here now look like a spat on the playground. We may not look like it, even to ourselves at the moment, but from the original 13 states, we have have become and remain the UNITED States. In 2020, it IS a MESS, I agree. But that it has worked this long is remarkable. It is up to Americans today to see if we can take it forward for the next two hundred and twenty years. I do fear that the next twenty-five years will be an extreme test. But if we make it, the USA will once again teach the world how to live in a democracy.

      Delete
  7. This was such a powerful post. And thank you for good work calling out to PA

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Sujata. It is a story I wish I could have told in person. And I REALLY wish my Dad could have told the voters of Western Pennsylvania in his own voice. He brought me up to be compassionate. I am so grateful to have had such a father.

      Delete
  8. Good work with Pennsylvania. I do live in New York amid people from all over the world, many nationalities and religions and cultures. And I listen to them and learn and wish this pandemic would end so I can talk to people.
    I did wish "Happy Oxi Day" to some Greek people last week, and I thank the Latinx workers who deliver my groceries. But I'd love to be out and about.
    I think there are many cormospolitican cities around the globe where people co-exist and are from many countries and cultures. In London, where there was the racist Brexit campaign, there are also many good people who live together. And in many major Europoean cities, and others in Asia, Latin America. What about Brazil? People from all over the world live in Sao Paolo, and then there's Buenos Aires in Argentina.
    I just don't understand the cult mentality and the racism. And then there are the evangelicals. A friend said her sister who is in an evangelical church was told by her pastor last time and now to vote for the guy in the WH. The congregation all did it. I just don't get it.

    ReplyDelete
  9. And my question about the current situation is how will the 70 million who voted for the current "king" behave during the next administration? A lot of them believe lies and conspiracy theories. The GOP leadership needs to straighten them out. But will they? And several have weapons.
    This is a Tale of Two Countries, and we're living it.

    ReplyDelete