November | 2016 | leavingleavesineaves

My take home message from the election. White America is now feeling the way inner city black, and hispanic residents of large cities have felt for decades. Because of changes in the global economy jobs have left their towns, drug use is rising, they are beginning to fear their police, and they worry about their children’s and grandchildren’s futures. Their white children and grandchildren are suddenly being incarcerated in large numbers due to meth, and prescription pain medicine abuse. They are also dying from heroin. They feel the government is working against their needs and not for them.Their children are not finding jobs, and college does not seem to be the answer. College was once a way out, but now is way to expensive, and they all know of people who went to college, and now are not working. They fear immigrants, because they are willing to work for no money at jobs, that middle class white people aren’t supposed to be doing, but those are the only jobs around. Once Walmart came through all those little shops in town closed, and Walmart only pays for part time work, without benefits. The center of their town looks like an inner city street, lots of empty buildings, except maybe a hair salon. They now look at a police light in the mirror and they for the first time ever begin to worry. Their children are not getting married, but instead having babies. Their daughters and granddaughters have to work even as young mothers, because their sons and grandsons, aren’t working or aren’t in the picture. They may also for the first time have a biracial grandchild or niece of nephew. They see a vision of reality on TV and in the movies that seems increasingly not about them. Their houses are worth less then they were 20 years ago. Because many of their family members may not be working, or barely working, money is tight. Family members or neighbors are having to use government programs to get by. They are now finding those changes made to discourage blacks from being “welfare queens” apply to them. The government programs that helped their grandparents or great grandparents through the depression are now mean spirited, and you can be in jail for cashing that welfare check they sent you, but then say wasn’t yours. Those three strike laws aimed at residents of inner cities, now apply to them and their children and grandchildren. Also due to climate change, they are being hit bard by environmental forces. California isn’t the only State in the US being hit hard by drought. However, because its in the center of the Country the media elites don’t report on it, because they don’t know about it. Well inner cities have for years been toxic dumping grounds, you are now at risk for becoming another great dust bowl. The difference is government has slowly over the last decades been cleaning up those toxic waste dumps in inner cities, but no one is helping you. Welcome to inner city life white America. You realize it sucks, and you are not happy.

The problem is we let ourselves into this mess. Just look at unions. Unions are and were the best defense of middle class life in America. There’s a reason there has been a 50 = year attack from the right on unions. There is a reason you have come to think of unions as unAmerican. They are not. Sure they are not perfect, but they protect their members. They keep their members in the middle class. But white America was sold a bill of goods and have fled them in droves. When the Right offers a persistent media blitz, white America has eventually bought into the message. Their are smart people working to pull your strings, and you are the puppet.

The problem is that the genie is out of the bottle and we can’t go back. Those tax cuts for the wealthy being proposed are not going to bring back jobs. That factory owner with his tax cut is going to just buy more robots to do your jobs. There is more coal being produced in coal country then 50 years ago, but with only one-tenth the labor force. Driverless cars will replace 10s of 1ooos of US jobs. Those were largely good middle class jobs. Cuts to medicare, medicaid, and social security will hurt millions of Americans. They also want to take aware your health care, because you were sold a bill of goods that it was unamerican to have it. There goes you daughter’s or granddaughter’s birth control. That means either more abortions, or more mouths to feed and feeding the family is already a huge burden, Food stamps only go so far, and thanks to congress only last a few months. Then there is your preexiting condition that is going to come back and bite you in your but. Once they take away the Affordable Care Act, your healthcare will look even more like what’s available to poor black and hispanic people living in inner cities.

I don’t have solutions to all of these problems. I do know that even with those persistent attacks inner city America has survived. During the great migration from the south to the north, Northern cities almost literally became refugee camps for millions of black Americans. Yet those people survived. Now many inner city neighborhoods are beginning to thrive or at least do better. Many are not. What we need is for Americans to realize that rural American and Innercity America have the same interests. Need the same programs and supports. We need government to work for us, and not against us. We need to stop throwing people in jail for years for minor drug offenses. We need to end programs that pull the family apart. We need programs that make it easier for a young family to stay together, versus programs that make it easier for them to live apart. We need government programs that provide families support when they need it, but that don’t criminalize them for using those supports. We need more American’s to form and join unions. Its great to sit around and listen to each other complain, not really.We need people to get off their buts and get busy working on the solutions to the problems they and their families face. We need White America to come learn from inner city neighborhoods how to live in the face of adversity. We need both communities to work together for more and better jobs. We need both communities to turn back those laws that criminalize being poor. We need both communities to tell government to stop giving money to the rich but instead to help the poor and middle class. We need to tell government to not mess with our healthcare. We need to tell government to stop denying climate change and to create jobs for us to fight it. We need to stop letting people with vast money and interests from dividing us on wedge issues into the left and the right, red state and blue state. We are all Americans. That used to mean people who would come together in times of crisis across divides and issues that divided us and fix things. Now we are in crisis, just look at how climate is causing drought, but no one will admit it. We need being an American to mean something again.