New Years Day - Reminiscenses of a 65 Year Old Worker on New Years Day

New Years Day 2011. This day is for most a day to reminisce, to reflect on years gone by, foolishly make resolutions thinking that old habits can be overcome because the hands on the clock moved a millimeter. It is hard not to be just a little self absorbed on this day. More so today for me-it is not only my birthday but my 65th birthday! I was never supposed to be 65!
Thoughts like threads weave in and out of my mind today. Memories and impressions move to the fore in consciousness as if they have a mind if their own and I wonder what that means. Why are certain thoughts, impressions and reminisences asking to be articulated.
For instance I keep thinking how fortunate I am to have friends and comrades of all ages – dear people that do not judge a person by her age –but forge connections based on what we stand for and solidarity in struggle. Gratefully I realize that despite how much our capitalist society would like to segregate me, turn me into a "senior," encapsulate me in an artificial bubble with edges defined by the needs of the profiteers-they have failed –and for that I am deleriously happy and give those bastards the finger as I raise my fist in solidarity with hundreds of millions of working and poor people of all ages everywhere. I am determined to continue to spit on the multitude of ways the capitalist class tries to divide us across artificial lines of age, gender, race and nationality.
At some point in our lives we all reflect on the influences through time that shape us , make us who we are. This impulse to draw our lives into some kind of coherent story tends to become stronger as we get older. Born in 1946, just after the 2nd great imperialist war, there were many dramatic and deep influences on my growth and development.
I was a curious child and an early reader. My father subscribed to many popular magazines. LIFE, TIME, The Saturday Evening Post to name a few, and at the age of five or 6, I was horrified and fascinated by images of Hiroshima. And for some reason I kept my scary thoughts to myself. I knew at some basic level that the US had committed the worst crime of history against innocent people thousands of miles away. The media did not tell me that - but the pictures spoke for themselves. Strange but very real thoughts and fears for a very young child! Very early I was aware of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. There was no doubt that the world was divided. But there were many fears that one or another side would tip the balance. I remember the Cuban missile crisis and my Dad collecting me from uptown where I was hanging out with friends , bringing me home to gather around the television with my family. I was frightened to death, certain that I was going to die that night.
Yet despite all the red-baiting and Red Scare tactics lingering everywhere in the media and literature, I was never taught to hate the "Reds." I never heard anti-soviet propoganda in my home.I never thought that they anymore than the US were a threat to my way of life. I wonder now why that was and wish my Dad was alive to ask. I also remember wondering to myself why, if the US could have nuclear weapons and bases, wht was it not ok for the USSR to have nuclear bases in Cuba .
Of course I would have really preferred that nuclear weapons did not exist at all but they were a fact of my life and that was that. But communism existed in my world and was part of my consciousness. I knew nothing about Stalinism of course and all the implications, but I was aware that the world was divided and that communism represented something that seemed in a naieve way kinda “good," to me.
I did not know that I was born into what was to be one of the best times for the children of working people in history. I had never heard of the “post war boom.”
I was never subjected to a critical education, I did not know about trade unions, about the struggles of the working class. I had no idea why, despite the periods of near poverty my parents endured,the idea that there was hope for me in this world existed. I had no idea that it was the same struggles of the working class as a class that made that hope possible.
I was taught that progress was a fact of life, that “human history” just evolved into something better eventually for all people. I had no idea I was being lied to .It was a few decades before events catapulted me into action and history as the relationship of class forces in conflict became clear. So today at the age of 65 I acknowledge that it was the struggles of working people that gave me my education , my good health and health care that gave me hope. I owe everything to sisters and brothers and comrades thenm before and now.
Because of this I believe I owe a huge debt.I have an obligation to the working class and poor youth of today who for the first time in history face a future more difficult than the lives of their parents and in some cases even their grandparents.
Another preoccupation today is that getting old is new to me. I am simultaneously grateful and afraid. Yes I must work until I am seventy as will millions of workers robbed of their labour, their jobs and homes and pensions –but I can work and for that I am grateful and owe a debt to comrades and brothers and sisters that came before me. But for me today my biggest hope is that I will be able to live out the few years remaining to me in fierce battle against the profiteering bastards who are determined to make life for poor and working people desperate and miserable ,subject only to their callous drive for profit. It is scary for sure –this getting old. But I console myself that even if the worst should happen and I end up in a nursing home , I hope I will be the crustiest old , fiercest fighter , whispering in the ears of the workers who tend to me that they must form a union and must fight for their rights. I will tell them stories about working class history , the REAL TRUTH . I will continue to try to make life miserable for anyone who dares mistreat a worker , mistreat the folk around me . I am kinda looking forward to that!
I am optimistic this New Years Day. History teaches me that working and poor people are the strongest, brightest and hardest fighters and when we rise up and fight back together again we will win.
And when that victory happens I take great comfort that I have been and will be the tiniest part of our great collective history of struggle, of solidarity and joy after all.