I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. Our children, grandchildren and daughter-in-law all stayed with us here in Albany. We went first to the home of a friend we’ve known since she was in elementary school. After going back to Latin America, she came back and stayed with us while going to the College of St. Rose, until she began to seem like family – we’ve been to her graduation, her naturalization, her wedding and will soon celebrate her daughter’s graduation from college too. Along with her daughter and her dad, her sister-in-law, originally from Venezuela, and her niece also came. They, and our extended family that gathered and celebrated farther away, include a car mechanic, an exercise coach, computer technicians, a conservator at a major museum, a musician fulfilling her grandfather’s dream by teaching in a conservatory, an engineer remaking major cities, and a budding nurse – all warm, lovely, very much loved, and looking out for each other.
But our Thanksgiving wishes extend much further. We need so-called “essential workers” to be healthy, housed, fed and safe. We need to protect all Americans without distinctions about economics, race, gender, or religion. I would be counted as among the Middle Class, but as the Bible tells us “I am not better than my fathers” or more deserving than our brothers. And I am not an island. I personally know and care about people in all ranks of society. I have no illusions that I am any better. I made some good decisions that enabled me to take care of myself and my family but the reality was that I followed dreams about what interested me that led me through law school. But going through law school doesn’t define the goodness of people and not having had the advantages I’ve had does not define the badness of people. I’m tired of talking as if only the Middle-Class counts. Nonsense – we all count.
As an attorney I have represented the very wealthy and the very poor and let me tell you nothing was ever more painful than losing a case for one of my poorest clients. The rich would get up and move on but what would barely be bumps in the road for the rich are huge obstacles for those who don’t have the resources to move on. I particularly love those who share their love, who care about all Americans, who admire America most when it spreads the democratic values of brotherhood and sharing. Of course, we make mistakes – we’re human – but I respect and admire the humility that allows us to criticize ourselves and make things right.
In case you didn’t figure it out, your health depends on the health of everyone else, not only because some are essential workers, but because all human beings can spread disease. And we depend on the education of every man, woman and child in America because we will all share the vote and contribute to our country’s progress, as well as to Social Security, and nothing saps the strength of a country more than when some portion stops caring about the others and we start fighting among ourselves instead of facing national problems together.
So, I hope you’ve had a very Happy Thanksgiving and all good wishes for the future.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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