Modern day Bonus March needed
Two recent events — one cataclysmic, the other merely earth shaking — point to the need for some good old street protesting: the kind that did so much to change the direction of the country in the 1930s.
The first of these events occurred in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day and involves the struggle to end the slaughter of our children in their classrooms by gunmen using military-style assault weapons.
If the shooter in this instance was mentally deranged — as he was likely was — then as a nation we are insane for permitting the sale of weapons that were solely designed back in the day to kill and maim enemies of the United States of America.
The sale of high-caliber-magazine assault rifles — essentially U.S. Army M-16 rifles — to civilians supposes that American school children pose an imminent threat to the country.
Of course, some point to the Constitution as authorizing unfettered access to any and all such weapons.
But there is no way the Founders, in the Second Amendment, intended to arm citizens so that they might execute deadly attacks on children sitting at desks learning their ABCs ( Sandy Hook Elementary), English literature and higher mathematics (Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School).
In the same vein, there is no way the National Rifle Association is on the side of parents and children in the struggle to rid the nation of mass killings, as President Trump has implied. Believing so suggests a serious political and sociological derangement that hardly seems possible in a country founded by such Enlightenment figures as Jefferson and Franklin.
Why, the very idea of the NRA as national benefactor is so wacky that if I were a parent today I would be tempted to run for the hills with my kid, in order to save both of us from NRA leaders, with their incendiary and warped views of the Second Amendment and their stranglehold on the Republican Party.
Text us when the madness ends.
The second development that should get a certain segment of Americans to hit the streets involves the capacity of labor unions to protect and promote the wellbeing of average working Americans.
Last Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that on its surface is about workplace free speech. But as the right-wing groups that helped move the case along know, it’s really aimed at the health of labor unions and the labor movement itself.
Here’s an excerpt from The New York Times story about the Supreme Court hearing that helps put the matter in context:
“Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reflected on the consequences of ruling against the union in the case before the court. ‘It drains it of resources that make it an equal partner’ with the government in negotiations,’ she told (lawyer) William L. Messenger …
“Near the end of the argument, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the case represented an existential threat to the labor movement. ‘You’re basically arguing, “Do away with unions,”‘ she told Mr. Messenger.”
Fortunately, the student leaders of the don’t-kill-our-kids movement have a march planned for Washington later this month. Labor has been slower to respond.
Protesters appeared outside the Supreme Court building during last Monday’s hearing, but that’s been about it.
The failure of the political parties to deal with the early onslaught of the Great Depression prompted a massive movement on Washington in the summer of 1932 by veterans of the First World War.
The veterans, including scores from western Pennsylvania, came to Washington; they marched on the Capitol demanding their wartime pensions; and then they stayed — some 15,000 of them — when Congress refused to act. They so unnerved officials by their continual presence that the Hoover administration eventually booted them out of town, with the help of the army and Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
One of the sorriest episodes in American history, it sealed President Hoover’s fate and helped to usher Franklin Roosevelt into power.
The country sorely needs a march, or marches, on Washington in the spirit of the Bonus March of 1932. Today’s failure of politics demands the intervention of citizens, even young citizens, marching, demanding, standing fast.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.