CINCO DE MAYO,
SHIFTING DEMOGRAPHICS,
AND MY GREAT
GRANDFATHER
By Resistance Fighter Robert Cacciopoli
May 22, 2001
NEW YORK STATE (Robert
Cacciopoli) May 5, 2001; Cinco de Mayo -- Call me a nut, call me a fool, call
me a liberal - but in addition to trying to instill in my children a sense of
family tradition beyond the Memorial Day/4th of July/Labor Day BBQ (and my
family traditions - southern Italian and Puerto Rican, and my wife - Irish and
German), I (we) also try to instill an understanding of other cultures. We celebrate
Chinese New Year, we celebrate Mardi Gras, and we celebrate Cinco de Mayo, and
we celebrate by cooking our version (pretty darned good, if I do say so
myself!) of the food of the culture that we are honoring. And we try to round
the experience off by playing appropriate music on the "stereo" as we
cook and eat.
So today I'm frying up onions
and garlic, starting our Cinco de Mayo dinner, and listening to Tish Hinojosa
on the CD "Aquella Noche" - I don't speak or understand Spanish, so
I'm just savoring the beautiful sounds of the language - and I have one of
those "Paul on the road to Damascus" moments, a thought, an idea,
that ricochets around in my skull, bouncing back and forth, gathering up
seemingly disparate bits of information, and weaving them together into
something coherent. At first I stand stunned - I see the Bush Bros., the stolen
election, the rush to push the Cheney administration's big business agenda in
something resembling clarity - then I grab a piece of paper and start to jot
down what I can remember. My wife starts to stir the pan, breaking my concentration.
As I look at her I realize that the onions are beginning to burn. Transcendent
moments may make time stand still for you, but it doesn't stop hot oil in a
frying pan!
And what was it, you might ask,
that caused me to almost ruin dinner? It was Spanish, the language.
Listening to Tish made me think
about a conversation I had with my son recently. He was wondering what foreign
language he should sign up for in school next year, his top two choices were
Italian or Spanish. Since I've been trying on and off for years to learn
Italian I thought that was a good choice, thinking maybe it would force me to
get my act together on this (I thought of the bonding potential - father and
son learning Italian verb conjugation together!). But I had to concede that his
rationale for choosing Spanish was valid, that more people speak Spanish in
America than Italian. That thought brought to mind all the articles that I've
read about the latest census, how "whites" were now a minority in
many major cities, how the Hispanic population was growing nationwide. I
recalled an article in today's local paper about how the number of registered
republicans was dwindling on Long Island due to the growing Hispanic
population, who tend to register as Democrats. And then it made perfect sense
why the Bush Bros. are governors in states with large and growing Hispanic
populations, why they speak mangled Spanish at any occasion, why the pResident
is courting Mexico so hard, why Jeb married a Hispanic woman (and even
converted to Catholicism, if I remember correctly). The white power
establishment is not dumb, they recognized these trends years ago, and the Bush
family (part of the white power structure) made sure that they would have two
attractive potential presidential candidates to court the Hispanic vote in
2000. (This was the lesson of the republican anti-immigration initiatives in California
that turned that state into a democratic bastion - don't piss off the Hispanic
voter.) This can also partially explain why the republicans made such a
lackluster effort to oppose Clinton in 1996 by nominating the charismatically
challenged Bob Dole. The Bush boys needed some time to achieve presidential
"stature", so they were being groomed for the 2000 election. The
republicans already knew that they couldn't defeat Clinton in 1996 (despite
everything that they had thrown at him, he still remained popular!), but knew
that they could make Clinton's last four years in office a living hell (as they
had made his first four - and, heck, maybe ol' Ken Starr could find something
to impeach him on), so they were not too concerned about loosing, as long as
they could prevail in 2000 (and ol' Bob had carried a lot of water for the
party, so he deserved his shot at history). There was still a window of
opportunity in 2000 (a census year), but after that the demographics would
start to change the political landscape, a landscape that would not be
favorable to the republicans and the corporate interests that they represent.
Call them what you will, but the corporate power structure takes the "long
view", and they don't mind losing a battle if they can win the war.
So although W's play for the
Hispanic vote wasn't going according to plan, but with assurances that Florida
was in the bag from the smaller Shrub, W ventures into California during the
last weeks before the election to do his Hispanic courting thing. When the news
hits from Florida panic sets in. Projections about Hispanic population growth
and voting patterns (despite republican attempts to win them over with "compassionate
conservatism" and "education reform") suggest that republican
presidents may be an extinct species for the foreseeable future - and the
window of opportunity is closing. The corporate interests have invested heavily
in this campaign, and they want to see results. There is no real "fall
back" position. If a Democrat wins then the window may close completely,
maybe in four years, but certainly in eight. And there it is. Because the
demographics (and time) were against them, the corporate interests had to
"go for broke", and killed whatever vestiges of the illusion of
Democracy that were left in America.
Since the coup I have been
trying to understand why the repugs risked a real constitution crisis by their
naked power grab. Had some democrats (any, actually) chosen to stand with the
Congressional Black Caucus there might well have been a crisis, and who knows
where that would have taken us? The repugs might have gambled that the dems
would stay true to form -that is, spineless - but they had no way to know for
sure. It was, in fact, a risky move, fraught with danger. As it turned out the
dems rolled over, and Al Gore officiated over the theft of his presidency, and
the gamble paid off, but I still wondered why they were so desperate that they
would risk all on this one throw of the dice. When I look at this question in
light of the shifting demographics, it begins to make sense. They really had
nothing to loose in this, and all to gain. If Gore won then they faced the
almost certain possibility of having to wander in the political wilderness for
years to come, and if they lost the gamble they faced the same future...but if
they won the gamble...If they won then they had at least 2 years (the make up
of the new congress was already know at this point, and Strom could kick over
any day!) to try to reorganize the priorities of this country to benefit the
ruling class for many years to come. It was a gamble worth taking. And if I look
at what has happened since, in light of the shifting demographics, all of their
plans make sense. First off, it explains the sense of urgency in this
administration. They know that their days are numbered, as is their razor thin
majority (remember Strom). Second, it explains the time frames of the items they
are pushing. Tax plan, energy plan, missile defense plan, etc., all are long
term plans, existing for longer than even a miraculous 2 term Cheney
administration. They want this massive redirection of the country's wealth to
continue for at least a decade. The tax plan alone further strengthens a
permanent hereditary ruling class, and the energy and defense plans would
ensure that the coffers of big business interests will always be overflowing.
Populating the courts with members of the Federalist Society will ensure a pro business/anti
democracy slant on the justice system for decades to come. This is, simply put,
the white power structure's last stand, and absent any principled opposition,
this may be the future that we and our children will unwillingly inhabit.
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Although I started this on May
5th, it got delayed by the realization that I was able to finally access the Ellis Island web site after weeks of
trying. For those who may not know, Ellis Island is a small island in New York
City harbor, that housed the Dept. of Immigration's main facility for
processing the huge wave of European immigrants that came to the New York City
(and the northeast) from 1892 to 1924. Several weeks ago the Ellis Island
Foundation made available, on-line, all the information that they had about
every person who passed through that facility. As an amateur family
historian/genealogist, who knew that all my ancestors passed through here, this
web site is like the holy grail. But for weeks after it opened it was
inaccessible, I could not even fully load the main page, midnight, 2 AM, 4 AM,
6AM, it was always jammed. Then last Tuesday I got in! Not for long, but long enough
to find out who was traveling with my great grandfather when he came to America
on April 18, 1911 - it was his wife (I knew this from family stories, but had
no proof,) his four youngest children - my great uncles and aunts!, and a
cousin's father, only 20 at the time, a family mystery solved! The rest of the
week was involved in navigating a still overloaded web site (they say over
100,000 hits per hour), slowly discovering answers to questions that no one in
my family remembers. And I thought about my ancestors, what made them leave
what is arguably one of the most beautiful pieces of real estate on the planet
(the southern coast of the Bay of Naples) for an uncertain future in a foreign
land, one that didn't particularly like "eye-talians". (The answer is
the grinding poverty that most southern Italians at that time lived in.) Why did
they gamble it all on one throw of the dice? And then I saw the parallel,
desperate people do desperate things. When loosing the dice toss means you're
no worse off than you are now, but winning means that you might be better off,
you toss the dice, you have nothing to lose!
I think of my great grandfather,
would he recognize the country that he came to 90 years ago? Certainly not New
York City, where he lived for the last decade and a half of his life. The
immigrant neighborhood where he lived is long gone, the tenements replaced with
high rise apartment buildings. And would he recognize his 90 plus great
grandchildren, and the world that we live in - with our cars and cell phone and
computers? He was a simple man, a peasant really, but by all accounts a kind
and generous and good natured man, I'm sure that he would be proud but amused
by how his descendants turned out. But I am certain of this - and I am certain
because a sense of fairness and justice seems to flow through the blood of all
of his hundreds of descendants - that he would recognize how the "land of
opportunity" that he escaped to has begun the resemble the near feudal
world that he escaped from. My great grandfather and his children escaped from
a world where the majority of people worked for the interests of the
landowners. A world where the peasants would say "...We plant and we reap
wheat but never do we eat white bread. We cultivate the grape but we drink no
wine. We raise animals for food but we eat no meat. We are clothed in
rags...". A world where unending drudgery for bare subsistence was all
that they could hope for. (And then there was America!)
That the corporate interests in
this country, aided and abetted by their political puppets, envision a slightly
more "humane" version of the feudal system, is absolutely clear to
me. Explaining what I mean about "humane feudalism" is a whole other
essay, but briefly - we'll have plenty of food and drink - if you don't mind
pesticides, salmonella and arsenic, we'll have clothing - courtesy of third
world slave labor, we'll have mindless entertainment and wanton consumption -
and smog alert days and unexplained cancer clusters, and we'll be jerked around
so that we are always worried about making ends meet - a little blackout here,
a little gas price increase there - a fearful populace is a docile populace.
And this is my point - my great grandfather had someplace to escape to - I
don't, we don't. This is it, this is my country now, and this IS America
("And then there was America").
This is another reason why I
must oppose this illegal corporate coup - I owe it to my ancestors, who placed
so much faith in the promise of America.
Robert Caccioppoli - 5/22/01
P.S. - A must for those who
resist the BBBR, buy a copy of Vincent Bugliosi's
book "The Betrayal of America" and keep it handy. Anytime that
you feel your anger subside to manageable levels pick it up, flip to a page
(any page) and read.