Monday is the last day before school for tens of thousands of families in Charleston County public schools, including ours. Our son Jackson will begin his Junior year at Wando High School. He's 17. I'm sure he could wolf down some cold cereal and OJ and jump on the bus. (He is opposed to driving to school and is committed to transit, He would like to be able to bike to school, but there's no safe way to do so. Jim Demint is apposed to government funded sidewalks and bike paths).
Since he was in Kindergarten, Jackson and I have always celebrated the last day of his summer break by spending the day together. I take the day off from my practice and we add to our shared wealth of quality time. It's changed over the years. We take the bus. Once he was a little boy I treated to a pizza lunch and a sandcastle building visit to the Isle of Palms. Now he's a teenager who understands how nearsighted I really am and puts his arm in front of me until it's safe to cross the street. It's never a real expensive day. Water parks, museums, historic sites or just a long, quiet walk in the August heat.
Our conversations have changed. We've both done some growing up. We use the day to take stock of the summer, the settle our goals for the school year ahead. As the years we have ahead together have narrowed and college approaches, these days become more important.
Jackson has done more than his share on for healthcare and social justice this summer. He began with a protest in North Charleston on the first day of summer. He's canvassed for healthcare, including some brutal door to door work in our largely Republican community. He's attended half a dozen meetings, rallies and demonstrations. He was a delegate at the national YDA convention in Chicago. I'll bet he would suffer through DeMint and a room full of teabaggers if I asked him to, but we won't.
The Town Hall Breakfast has been set for 7:30 am on Monday. It's on Daniel Island. There is no public transit to that community. It's virtually inaccessible for the tens of thousands of people who don't have a private automobile. Jackson doesn't have a drivers license yet. He's in lessons. However last week he negotiated the Chicago Transit system for three days, the cab fare we gave him stayed in his pocket.
DeMint's Breakfast is being held in a private country club. It's actually a meeting of the Daniel Island Neighborhood Association, an organization noted for its violent opposition to working class housing on their island. The newspaper announcement says, "The senator will talk about economic development and jobs in South Carolina and give an update on Washington. Healthcare reform, which rated less than two pages in his recently published book isn't mentioned in the notice.
The Post and Courier reports that of the RSVPS "priority will be given to those who pay the group's $12.50 attendance and breakfast cost." Apparently your fee for breakfast includes some finding for the Daniel Island Neighborhood Association's operations. You shouldn't contribute to that orgainzation until you have researched it's history regarding middle income and low income housing on their island. The location and host of the meeting sends a powerful message to large groups of people that they're not welcome. The Daniel Island Club has a perfect right to be private, but the Senator's job is a public one and healh care reform is a public issue. He should be holding a public forum in a public place. He may have sold his influence to the Club for Growth (his largest contributor, whose members would feel comforatable at a country club) and the health care industry whcih has given him over two million dollars, but he still works for the people.
Of course working class people have jobs to get to on Monday morning, so Demint's timing is impossible for most of them, who struggle to raise kids and skip going to the Doctor because they can't cover the deductible and copayment. They save that for their kid's care.
It has all been rigged to guarantee that the room will be full of wealthy, retired people in sympathy with Demint's no tax, no government, Jesus as a footnote to every policy plan for the future. They'll be older and their natural anxieties about their own mortality and their alienation from the rapidly changing world they're no longer daily engaged with will make them easy targets for the myth spinning fear mongers to exploit. Most won't care about the 7OO thousand South Carolinians who don't have health care, our public schools or the declining level or real wages. They will come to agree with DeMint and he will come to agree with them. He'll probably sell some of his tedious books full of disconnected logic, right wing urban mythlogy and whatever he picks up during the bible studies at the C Street house.
I've spent one miserable hour surrounded by raving teabaggers this summer already in front of DeMint's office in the Customs house. I know my most careful research and powerful arguments presented in the most patient and measured fashion will have no impact on them. Even if I nail them on the numbers with a clean hit that gets landed before the yahoos start shouting, they'll always be able to produce a new lie faster than I can get back and forth to the Library.
The long term damage of this civic and political vandalism isn't a concern to them. The thousands of people who may drop out of politics serve their ends. The debasement of the leel of debate in our nation suits them fine. They just trying to be sure Obama, and the government fail.
I don't think I'll poison Jackson and I's last day of summer, the second to the last we'll every have together, serving as a whipping boy for the tax credit and single malt scotch set while they slurp down country club coffee. You can scarf down your cheese danishes and class arrogance without us, Jim DeMint. We don't want to live in your version of America. You don't want to live in ours.
Jacson and I will have Breakfast at Alex's with the handful of liberals who will show up and then hit the beach unless Jackson has a better plan. We won't talk about Santa Clause or Barney this year the way we once did. We'll probably talk about politics, the future and the summer. We'll talk about the wonderful rally in Chicago where 1000 people supported the President while 30 ineffectual teabaggers shouted from across the street. We'll laugh at how the teamsters kept sending trucks to wait for the traffic light to change in front of the teabaggers, blocking them from view and the way they proudly blew their air horns as they rolled in, one after another.
I'll try to burn the memory of our Monday together into my mind and we'll join Mother for dinner when she gets off work. I'm absolute certain I would rather dicuss social policy with my son than Jim DeMint. Most people I know feel the same way. After that, we'll be back, clipboards, laptops, folding tables and everything else to support our President, the one who is an American Citizen born in Hawii. So will a lot of our friends. We'll not be beaten this way and we won't assent live in a nation governed on the basis of who has the least work to do and who can yell the loudest. Enjoy breakfast with your friends Jim DeMint. We're determined to serve a big platter of justice, healthcare, hope and change before Thanksgiving. The rednecks may win, but we won't surrender to them on the ground, in our heads or in our hearts. However, I won't fight them on ground of their choosing at the moment they select. I will fight them later, elsewhere to win for our President, our State and the future of our nation. |
Senator Jim DeMint, who has promised to "break" President Obama as our representative in the US Senate, has scheduled his first Town Hall meeting for Monday, August 17 at 7:30 at the Daniel Island Club, at 600 Island Park Drive, on Daniel Island, Charleston. I won't be going, but if you want to you can email slindbergh@homesc.com to RSVP. 
