I would like to thank the United States of America for
welcoming my grandfather, Alex Rozoff, who was a refugee from the Russian
Revolution. Things were tough in Russia, which is why he left. It must have
been damn tough because he left the only home he had ever known to come to a
place where he knew no one and could not speak the language.
It must have been hard for him, but somehow he managed to
land on his feet. It was a time of mass immigration and there must have been a
sizable Russian contingent in the states, one that was willing to help him in
one way or another. He got a job at Youngstown Sheet and Tube and worked there
for forty years, worked there until a brain tumor stopped him from working and
eventually ended his life.
It was hellish work, the kind of work his son and his son’s
sons wanted no part of. Without any proof backing this statement up, it might
well have been the work conditions he endured that contributed to his
condition. After all, workers back then had nobody looking out for their safety
or questioning what chemicals were being used. In fact nobody was looking out
for the workers at all. Things got so bad that they decided they had to look
after themselves. They went on strike for better wages, better working
conditions, and a chance at a decent life. Things must have been bad for
someone so far from home to risk everything he had in order to fight for a
better life.
It must have been bad too for those workers in the mill who
were born in this country. You see, all those immigrants that were let inside
our borders weren’t brought in because the U.S. had a mission to help the poor
and the dispossessed. Sure, words to that effect are inscribed upon the Statue
of Liberty, but that was a gift from the French who wanted to believe the U.S.
was something special, a beacon to the world. It was a symbol of our promise,
not a reflection of our reality. No, the U.S. wanted cheap labor, that’s why we
opened our borders to tens of millions of people from all over the world. The
U.S. wanted it, and by that I mean the rich people who owned the politicians
who made the rules wanted it. You see, they had been using cheap domestic labor
for a while now. They had been getting away with it for decades, promising that
once U.S. industries reached a place of prominence that it would then be U.S.
labor’s turn to share in the good times.
Of course, the rich industrialists never had any intention
of sharing the profits equitably. Promises are just a tool in the capitalist’s
tool belt to help motivate those who earn profits for them. But it is a tool
that can only be used so often before the workers can’t accept the status quo
anymore.
That’s when the immigrants started pouring in, to awaken the
working slobs from the delusion that they had some degree of power. All of the
sudden a working class that was beginning to feel its strength had to contend
with competition from beyond what they believed was a closed environment. All
those promises they had been given in return for their blood and sweat and
sacrifice were swept away in a flood of foreigners willing to work for a fraction
of what U.S. labor was already being given, which wasn’t enough to begin with.
You see, those foreigners were just looking to survive, they’d take promises of
better days to come, just as the U.S. workers once had.
I can imagine just how much the U.S. workers hated those
foreigners. If they weren’t taking their jobs then they were driving down
wages. They were taking over neighborhoods and driving up rents. Those damn
foreigners were living five families to a house. They stunk like garlic or
other unfamiliar spices. They worshipped God differently, they spoke a
different language and made people feel alienated in their own country. IN
THEIR OWN COUNTRY.
So it must have been really hard for those foreigners and
their coworkers who were born in the U.S. to somehow come together and join a
union. They had a hell of a lot of differences to overcome, and there were
assuredly company forces working really hard to drive a wedge between them.
But somehow they managed to pull together. Somehow they
realized they were on the same team, that they all wanted the same thing, a
decent life for the people who did the work and created the fancy mansions for
the bosses. They faced the private muscle that the company hired, and they
faced the government troops that were sent in because in the end the government
always works for the people wealthy enough to make a politician understand that
he is in office only because of the power and influence of the people who write
the campaign checks.
I won’t lie to you, the struggle was real. It was very real.
It was real in the way that most of us, living in an imaginary world
constructed for us by a very powerful propaganda machine, do not wish to
contemplate. There was blood on the streets and there were cracked heads, and
there were threats of so much worse. Those who took to the streets, who walked
off their jobs, risked so very much. Perhaps they were capable of doing so
because they had already learned how precarious life can be. Perhaps there were
many who, like my grandfather, had already left all they had known behind in
search of a better world. Perhaps it was because they had been born in a time
when values and convictions meant something, when a secure life wasn’t more or
less assured to you so long as you didn’t make waves.
I don’t know for sure what was going on in the mind of my
grandfather, or the tens of thousands of men who stood with him, or the tens of
thousands of wives and mothers who stood with them. I really wish I did because
I’m sure I’d be a better person for having a taste of it. It must have been something
special, because what they accomplished is nothing short of amazing. When
people are able to put aside their differences—real as well as imagined—in order
to work on their mutual interests, there is where greatness is to be found.
That is how the world is changed for the better, that is where we as humans
discover just what we can accomplish and how absolutely wonderful it is to be a
human being.
We are capable of great stuff. We can send people to the
moon, we can transform the planet. We just have to do it together. We have to
put aside our differences and understand the goals we share. And we have many
shared goals. The examples of what we can achieve for the individual by working
together are endless. We just have to start looking at them, learning from
them, honoring our fathers and forefathers by showing once again what we can do
by working together for the common good.
