Families will no doubt huddle around the Thanksgiving table together a little more tightly this year
There’s so much to give thanks for this Thanksgiving – just the ability to gather around with family in the warmth and light, with a bountiful table. There is an extra helping of appreciation after the storm that took away so many of the basics that we have come to take for granted.
Many are not so fortunate – they unable to return to their homes, their lives still upended. Local entities like Island Harvest and Panera among others are doing what they can to make life a little better. But the aftermath of the storm – the matter of rebuilding structures and lives – are issues that must be addressed long after the good will of this holiday season passes.
Thanksgiving is an American holiday which raises so many themes and messages – of individual thanks, of community thanks, of national thanks.
Many regard Thanksgiving in a religious context, reminding one and all that the Puritans who were the first settlers came for their own religious freedom, though were intolerant of others, and look to Thanksgiving as an endorsement of a nation founded upon Christian principles. And yet, it was the native Americans who had their own tradition of Thanksgiving feasts.
Others point to the ecumenical message of Thanksgiving – that the first feast brought together the European settlers with the native Americans, though in the American myth, it was the Europeans who invited the Indians and shared their food; the reality is that the Indians outnumbered the Europeans 93 to 50, and brought most of the feast themselves. In just two generations, the descendents of those Indians severely regretted the hospitality and the help they gave those first settlers who would not have survived without them.
In last year’s Thanksgiving message, President Obama spoke of that first feast, believed to have taken place in autumn of 1621, saying, “The feast honored the Wampanoag for generously extending their knowledge of local game and agriculture to the Pilgrims, and today we renew our gratitude to all American Indians and Alaska Natives. We take this time to remember the ways that the first Americans have enriched our Nation’s heritage, from their generosity centuries ago to the everyday contributions they make to all facets of American life.
The holiday should remind us though, that we are a nation of immigrants, settled over the centuries by wave after wave. This theme was the vogue at the turn of the 20th century, with the demands of an Industrialized and expanding America that needed immigrant labor and wanted those immigrants to assimilate into American culture.
Interestingly, it was two years ago, during the lame duck session, that Congressman Gary Ackerman who will retire from the Congress at the end of this term, advocated so strenuously for the Dream Act. The Dream Act would have created a path to citizenship for a million undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children and who have only known the United States as their country.
Big surprise, it was defeated by the Know Nothing Republicans who, reinforced by the Tea Party Republicans spent the next year in state houses they controlled pushing through the most draconian, anti-American, unconstitutional laws aimed at terrorizing 19 million undocumented immigrants including nearly 5 million children who are actually American citizens, the worst in Arizona, Alabama, and Georgia. (It turns out that of the five states that passed the most restrictive anti-immigration laws, they’ve also passed some of the most onerous anti-choice bills, too.)
What a difference a year – or rather a presidential election – makes. All of a sudden, Republicans who had blocked immigration reform and a candidate who vowed to repeal the Dream Act, whose “immigration reform” policy consisted of making the lives of the undocumented so miserable, they would self-deport, are finding their own “religion” in advocating for comprehensive immigration reform, lest the GOP lose any hope of drawing votes from a growing bloc of new citizens and first-generation Americans.
Thanksgiving is also the kick-off to the “giving” season – the crass shopping frenzy that won’t even wait for Black Friday but now consumes Thanksgiving Day as well. This activity has the larger impact on the economy, but the underlying issues of workers’ wages and the dignity of workers and to a great degree the matter of just how much disposable income families have to spend this holiday season, are also in the realm of political issues.
This week, Chris Hayes on his program, “Up” highlighted the plight of workers at Walmart – the largest private employer in the country, which is owned by the richest family in the world. The workers are actually striking for a living wage (Hostess chose bankruptcy over increasing the wages of its workers).
Heather C. McGhee, Demos Vice President of Policy and Outreach, said that Demos was releasing a study this week, Retail’s Hidden Potential: How Raising Wages Would Benefit Workers, the Industry and the Economy Overall, which examines the economic benefits of a wage increase for large chain retail workers on consumer experience, businesses, families and the economy.
Walmart workers currently make about $10 an hour, but, the study shows, if Walmart would raise the wage to $12 an hour -which would mean about $25,000 a year income for a full-time worker – that would enable workers to actually buy the products the store sells. In fact, the company would get back about $5 billion a year (of the $12 billion cost), in just those new purchases. The federal government would also see fewer people taking the Earned Income Credit, and would get more income tax revenue.
According to the report, a higher wage floor equivalent to $25,000 per year for a full-time, year-round employee for retailers with more than 1000 employees would lift 1.5 million retail workers and their families out of poverty or near poverty, add to economic growth, increase retail sales and create over 100,000 new jobs. The findings in the study prove there is a flaw in the conventional thinking that profits, low prices and decent wages cannot co-exist.
McGhee also noted that during the recession, employers like Walmart asked their employees to sacrifice, but even after companies like Walmart registered record profits this year, how does it justify not giving something back to workers?
But David Frum, the spokesman for the Republican/Conservative view, argued that workers’ wages should only go up when there is full employment and employers actually have to compete for workers. Just raising wages without being forced to, he suggested, is somehow unAmerican or not the American way.
However, he dismisses the one good aspect of Henry Ford, who famously paid his factory workers enough so they could buy the cars they produced (and otherwise had his goons shoot and kill protesting workers).
But it is this thinking that is so cynical. It is his party that wants the federal government to do little or nothing to provide a social safety net, and now he is also saying that private employers should make sure to pay the minimum they can get away with, for as long as they can get away with it.
He represents a party that does not want a minimum wage or union protections at all. They have made a calculation that it is less valuable to have people who can be active consumers in the economy, than to prevent a rising middle class with political power to counter the monied interests that dominate the political process now. After all, the Supreme Court has ruled that money equals speech. This is the equivalent of wanting to keep women barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen – and out of the political process.
So you have these images of the true, unrepentant Scrooges of this season like John Schnatter, CEO of Papa Johns Pizza, who plans to cut back hours for employees in order to avoid having to provide health insurance. And yet, can give away 1 million free pizzas as part of a promotion, and can afford one of the biggest homes in the country, and I am quite sure, believes himself to be a good Christian man.
I am sure he will have a lavish Thanksgiving and make some sort of redemptive charitable contribution as he looks down upon those suffering masses who are in their miserable state because they are lacking in character, as opposed to lacking opportunity.
That position was articulated last year by the Tea Party darling (unfortunately reelected), Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. After vowing to weaken social safety net programs such as Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, and unemployment benefits, Bachmann said that if you are not paying your own way, you should starve.
“Our nation needs to stop doing for people what they can and should do for themselves. Self reliance means, if anyone will not work, neither should he eat,” she pronounced in Biblical tones.
This reflects the Calvinist (Puritan) philosophy of many of the early settlers, but it is important to recognize that the Plymouth Colony was established as a commune – they all worked together and shared together in order not to starve – that is until their contract to their corporate overlord, Company of Merchant Adventurers of London was up and they could go off on their merry, individualistic way.
Until then, they were bound together by The Mayflower Compact: “Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic; for our better ordering, and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.”
This brings me to the final theme of Thanksgiving – which is the “Giving” as in charity, and this sad state of American affairs that sees the growing poverty and widening income inequity.
This is the time of the year when those who go through the rest of the year looking down on those in dire straits as somehow lacking the fortitude and character to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps, all of a sudden find charity.
I often think that the reason the plutocrats -as exemplified by Romney and Ryan – really don’t want to restore the mechanisms for the upward mobility that is the essence of the American Dream is because they want those redemptive opportunities to be charitable. Romney, for example, made so much of all his charitable contributions (and defended his low tax rates), but had little remorse over the companies he shuttered and the people he threw out of work and off their health insurance.
There is an abhorrence of taxes that go to the general good, as determined by elected officials, in favor of philanthropy that boosts one’s own power and prestige, and even establishes a personal legacy.
On the other hand, charity becomes a minor issue if there is no systemic poverty and suffering, after all.
Last Thanksgiving, the country was taking note of the message of Occupy Wall Street that had begun that summer: that the inequities and injustices perpetrated by a powerful 1% – the trickle down economics that never trickled down – were no longer acceptable to the 99%.
Thanksgiving is a time to take note and not just take things for granted. Not just in our personal lives, but in our community and our country.
But it shouldn’t just be about being content with our own lot, how meager or magnificent it may be. It should also be about thinking about a better future, as I am sure the Pilgrims did contemplating how they would get through the coming winter.
