Thursday

Hi, Paddy.

Thread pic: Coons have manners.

Still working on my family archive project -- up to 4 published now -- and still wading through files and translations. I came across a couple of pages not written in English, that my grandfather later in life wrote about his union days -- it starts with this:

These notes make no great claims: they are intended simply as a recollection of facts and events that have left their mark on the transformation of the economic and political life of a new historical period of this Nation, in which the greatest transformations have been possible and in which the ideas of the great pioneers have shaped a new way of life.

They are hastily written notes; they are fragments left here and there; they are memories that time will not have the power to erase; they are pages of a life actually lived.

It is the life of a generation which, shaped by an ideal rich in faith, found its fulfillment through harsh and bloody struggles, through terrible suffering, which today are remembered with satisfaction because they represent and give meaning to my existence.

The human mission is to leave one’s mark through one’s own personality. To create where it is necessary to create. To build where it is necessary to build. To shape the destiny of the world according to principles of Justice and Freedom.

To call to mind events that took place over a span of 35 years is neither easy nor particularly fascinating.

Thirty-five years of battles on different fronts; 35 years spent in different cities and villages, among people never seen before, amid the most complicated situations; among inhuman employers; among workers ready to risk everything to obtain a little more freedom and bread; and among workers who were cold, enslaved, fearful, indifferent to great changes, and ready to inform on others and betray them.

And it was within this picture that one had to act, build, educate, and rehabilitate; in plain words, one had to create consciousness.

I do love this sentence: To call to mind events that took place over a span of 35 years is neither easy nor particularly fascinating.

It’s interesting too that I’m now coming across later letters/notes of his where he’s very blunt about what the union had become and his disappointment in it.

“There are only a few of the old comrades still alive, and they were forced to retire at 65. Today they have to live on pensions that were established many years ago, when the cost of living was much lower. These forced retirees have been abandoned as though they were human refuse.”

“But what is even more painful is realizing that no one has ever thought to find out how these old comrades are living…”

“We have often criticized the conduct of certain employers, and we would not want the same criticism to be directed at the leaders of the labor movement.”

“Has anyone ever considered that this group of lost and forgotten people were the principal architects who opened the way and consolidated it into one of the finest and strongest labor organizations in the nation?”

“Remember. It was these forgotten men who undertook the work of organizing, overcoming resistance, risking their lives, rejecting tempting offers, and through enormous personal sacrifices created the XXXX”