storytelling

While riding the train to work the other day, a homeless man entered our train car and started working his way up the aisle, stepping into each row of seats, getting into our faces, and asking for food and money. He was large and imposing and clearly unwell and when he got to me I froze. A couple of rows behind me he grabbed a man’s bag and started demanding money, yelling at him and hitting him. The man fought back and managed to hold on to his bag. The homeless man yelled at and hit a few other people, and then he started getting into our seats again and yelling at all of us. We were midway across the bridge so there was nothing anyone could do but watch it unfold and hope nobody got hurt. We all breathed a sigh of relief when the incident was over but it didn’t seem like anyone was visibly shaken. Just another day in Philadelphia. I, on the other hand, was shattered for the rest of the day.

If I were a conservative, I would tell you this is a story about the need for increased law enforcement on trains, more cameras, and more good guys with guns to keep us safe. I would tell you a story about our country being in decline and how we need to take it back from the criminals. I would tell a story about homeless people being weak-willed and lazy. I would tell you a story that we are not safe and suggest that only a militarized surveillance state can keep us safe. I think of a quote I read in the paper from a Trump supporter, something along the lines of, “I’m worried about the ladies. They don’t feel safe coming downtown anymore.”

Because I’m a progressive I’m going to tell you a different story. That man on the train was hurting for reasons I know nothing about. It’s a story about a man who was failed by our so-called great society. Maybe it’s a story about being a disabled vet, or not being able to access mental health care, or of being a victim of generational poverty, or something as simple as the kind of cascading fuckery that can visit any one of us worker bees. It’s a story of his doing everything in his limited power to have his basic needs met. Violence was the only tool at his disposal because his requests for help were not seen or heard and had not been seen or heard for some time. This is a story about our needing to build our social safety net so that everyone can at least have their basic needs met.

Same event. Different stories.

The conservative story is a selfish one centered on protecting ourselves from others.

The progressive story is a selfless one centered on empathy and compassion for other people’s struggles.

In a society that fetishizes wealth and power, the conservative story is the story that won. Fear won.

This is exactly what FDR was talking about when he said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Our government’s primary focus right now is deporting immigrants, building a lethal military, and shocking us into bending to its will. It believes its ability to do these things swiftly is a show of strength. It is not — it only shows how scared those in power are.

When you’re operating from a position of strength you don’t need a lethal military. You don’t need to deport people. You don’t need people to conform to your standards. You don’t need to fire your watchdogs and goad civil servants into resigning. When you’re operating from a position of strength you stand in your power and lead.

What we’re seeing right now is a President who is terrified of his country because he knows he is weak. Because he’s weak he needs us to buy into his lies and make us as afraid of our neighbors as he is of us. He is in power because he successfully stoked those fears. Now he’s offering us his solutions and every one of us will suffer the consequences.

I reject this outcome.

My great grandparents fled the Russian pograms to bring my pop pop, then a toddler, to America through Ellis Island. The promise of freedom and prosperity for all who came here to seek it turned out to be a rugpull. Pop pop came of age during the Great Depression. After he graduated high school, having no job prospects, he “went on the bum.” He didn’t want to be a financial burden to his parents, so instead he crisscrossed America by train with all the other hobos searching for work.

My pop pop was the homeless man on the train.

I don’t know whether he found work, but in his travels he managed to meet a feisty southern belle – my mom mom – brought her home, got a job in chemistry, and started a family. As a beloved, long-serving union president, he led DuPont into its best years, fighting for worker safety and fair pay, before he got sick and became one of the first asbestosis plaintiffs to sue the company.

All of that trauma is encoded in my DNA. So too, is the reservoir of strength built through surviving difficult circumstances.

My pop pop didn’t go through all of that for us to be doing this right now. I didn’t go through all of my hard times to be doing this right now.

Most Americans are familiar with the quote “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” because it’s sampled in music (notably in the timely and appropriate song Cult of Personality by Living Color) and plastered on motivational posters, mugs, and bookmarks. Maybe you have a general understanding of who said it, and when, and what was going on in America at the time.

I’m not a historian so this won’t be a deep dive but if you’ve read Grapes of Wrath you have the general flavor. It was during the Great Depression. The stock market had crashed. Shady banks were doing shady things, nothing new under the sun. If that weren’t enough, a severe drought caused the Dust Bowl which wiped out farms throughout the Great Plains and killed thousands of people both directly and indirectly. Hundreds of thousands of people lived in Hoovervilles because President Hoover was a feckless do-nothing.

Because everything I’ve tried to write this week is better left in the confines of my journals, I’m going to share Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, made on March 4, 1933. This speech was not merely hollow reassurance that times would be better. It was a call to action. It was an acknowledgement of the terrible times the country was experiencing and an indictment of those who sought to extract value from our country’s resources without giving anything in return. While our circumstances today are different, the roots of what led to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl have grown so strong they’ve cracked the foundation of our government. It is now up to us to fix it. This will require us to work.

We all have a part to play in saving ourselves.

Progressives like science and data and we tend to let the experts stand in for us instead of using our own voices. We also tend to share stories about other people we want to help, which is noble! But it’s not as effective as sharing our own stories.

Trump is in office because he’s an effective marketer and storyteller. He pushed the fear trigger and people responded. Self-preservation is one of the most powerful motivators. When faced with a bully many of us will align with the bully because we think that action means we’ll be spared their wrath.

The Democrats’ story was less powerful because it was diluted by stories about everything but what we were offering. Frankly in this election cycle I’m not even sure what our story was other than “we’re not that guy.” That story is meaningless in an election. Only people who agree with it will respond, and there weren’t enough of us.

The fear story, on the other hand, is something everyone connects with. You know how I know this? My first instinct when I was on that train was my safety, not helping a man who clearly needed help. It took the privilege of time and space to cultivate empathy to be able to step back and acknowledge the pain he was in. This is something not nearly enough of us have in our struggle to not drown in a capitalist society. I’m a little ashamed it wasn’t my first response.

Every human has a story. Every human is an expert on the human condition and is qualified and entitled to speak about it with authority.

I don’t have guns. I have words. I have art. I have stories.

You have stories too. Share them. You must give something of yourself if you want a country in return.

I leave you with FDR, who was presidential AF, and encourage you to read the whole thing (bonus points for responding with your own story and sharing it with your elected representatives, who work for you):

This is a day of national consecration. And I am certain that on this day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency, I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels.

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure, as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunk to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; and the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.

Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True, they have tried. But their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of that restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy, the moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days, my friends, will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves, to our fellow men.

Recognition of that falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, and on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation is asking for action, and action now.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing great — greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our great natural resources.

Hand in hand with that we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land.Yes, the task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products, and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, the State, and the local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities that have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped by merely talking about it.

We must act. We must act quickly.

And finally, in our progress towards a resumption of work, we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order. There must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments. There must be an end to speculation with other people’s money. And there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.

These, my friends, are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the 48 States.

Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time, and necessity, secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor, as a practical policy, the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment; but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.

The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not nationally — narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in and parts of the United States of America — a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that recovery will endure.

In the field of world policy, I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor: the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others; the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize, as we have never realized before, our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take, but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress can be made, no leadership becomes effective.

We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and our property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at the larger good. This, I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us, bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in times of armed strife.

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.

Action in this image, action to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple, so practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has ever seen.

It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations. And it is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly equal, wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But, in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis — broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.For the trust reposed in me, I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded, a permanent national life.

We do not distrust the — the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

In this dedication — In this dedication of a Nation, we humbly ask the blessing of God.

May He protect each and every one of us.

May He guide me in the days to come.