(right) Mother Jones with striking miners' family
Today a friend on the block went into his Unemployment Hearing and won his case. The bad news for him was that they won't send his check for two to three weeks. Nonetheless, as we'd discussed his case several times, I shook his hand and congratulated him.
On my way to pick up my daughter at our local school I was stopped by another neighbor in her car. Her car had been robbed overnight. Her purse, ID, everything was gone, even her kids' backpacks. She has a hard life, she is on Section 8 and has managed to keep all her kids out of the gangs and in school. She teared up a bit and added it was a bad day for her. A few minutes later I remembered that this morning I had noticed a pink backpack in someone's front yard. The thieves must've discarded it.
I thought of my own struggle with being unemployed as long as I have. I'm not alone, but that's hardly a consolation.
I picked up Mother Jones Speaks while riding my exercise bike today and it helped me get perspective. I'll quote a bit from her on this blog. Some background: she was born on May 1st 1830. At 50, her husband and children were dead from yellow fever and she began her life as an activist. She was probably the most important fighter against child labor in US history, but remains generally unknown, because she described herself as a social revolutionary.
In 1902, at 72 years of age she helped the miners in West Virginia on strike. At she took the helm of a strike meeting, a US Marshall approached her and informed her that she was being arrested for violating a judge's order against her addressing the strikers. The rest is in Mother Jones' own words:
I looked over at the United States marshall and I said, 'I'll be right with you.' I went on speaking till I had finished. Then I said, 'Goodbye boys; I'm under arrest. I may have to go to jail. I may not see you for a long time. Keep up this fight! Don't surrender! Pay no attention to the injunction machine at Parkersburg. The Federal judge is a scab anyhow. While you starve, he plays golf. While you serve humanity, he serves injunctions for the money powers.'
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