Extraordinary Ordinary People: Rosie The Riveter, Wisconsinites & Tokyo Firefighters
21 March 2011By
Jane Stillwater
My daughter Ashley needed a ride out to Richmond (CA)
yesterday because of the pouring rain. Oh, okay. But
while I was out there, I also went to visit the city's
relatively new Rosie the Riveter/Home Front National
Park. In the rain. And I also talked with park ranger
Betty Soskin while I was there. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdpDAGGXcD8
"I like the way this park looks," I told Ranger Betty,
"but isn't all this talk about how wonderful Rosie the
Riveter was just one more way to mythologize and
glorify war?"
"That's not true," replied RB. "I'd never ever work
here if it was. This park is very important to me --
but not because of its connection with World War II.
This park has meaning because it makes a record in
time and shows an example of what ordinary people such
as you and I can achieve -- just by working together.
In the Richmond shipyards here, in the course of just
a few years, American workers -- many of them female
-- built over 747 vessels in a mere three years and
eight months. That is a more massive achievement than
the pyramids of Egypt." Or even the Great Wall of
China. "And that achievement has meaning."
Ranger Betty stated that the Richmond shipyards'
example offers a vision of what people can do if they
work together -- ordinary people accomplishing
extraordinary things.
"Yes, I think that I see what you mean," I replied.
"It's like what the people of Wisconsin did when they
stood up in defense of their unions. Or when the young
people of the Middle East achieved regime change armed
only with their laptops and a burning passion for
freedom. And like what the extraordinary ordinary
firefighters of Tokyo did when they got into their
firetrucks and drove off to Fukushima to try, against
all odds of succeeding, to put out the terrible
nuclear fires there -- knowing that they might never
come back alive," mirroring the heroism of the first
responders at the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Ranger Betty seems to believe that people are
basically good -- and will eventually do the right
thing. "It may take a while, perhaps decades or even
centuries, but eventually it happens." And that is the
story of how I left the rain-soaked city of Richmond
with more hope for the future than I ever had before I
arrived. Thanks RB.
And Rosie's important lessons of the 1940s are still
pointing us in the right direction even today. "We can
do it!" said Rosie back then. And she's still right.
Not only that but, by working together in this time of
crisis, we extraordinary ordinary people today can
take even more steps forward.
We can stop building pyramid schemes for the pharaohs
on Wall Street and start building a better world for
ourselves and our kids.
We can invent and construct so much solar, wind,
thermal and other alternative energy that we'll all
look back on our former dependency on oil, coal and
nuclear and just chuckle at those past follies -- much
in the same way that we now do toward those who
thought the world was flat.
"We can do it!"
We can repossess our government too -- take it back
from the rich. We can limit campaign contributions,
shut down the lobbies and impeach anyone in the
executive, legislative and judicial branches who still
believes that corporations are persons. We can put our
government back to work building infrastructure,
funding education, making healthcare work and
protecting and serving -- instead of just handing out
OUR money to oligarchs and war profiteers. And we can
hand-count our own freaking ballots.
We can stop giving tax breaks to huge corporations,
billionaires and weapons-peddlers and start giving tax
breaks to ourselves. We can take our money out of
usurious banks that lie to us for profit and put it in
credit unions that work for us instead. We can shut
down banksters "too big to fail," shut down the
casinos on Wall Street that happily gamble away our
money and shut down those counterfeiters at the
Federal Reserve. Let's make our hard-earned money work
for US for a change.
"We can do it!"
And we can stop building warships for blood-thirsty,
fear-mongering politicians and war profiteers -- and
start building plowshares for ourselves.
PS: My father enlisted in the US Navy during World War
II (anything to get out of the house!) and was
stationed first in the Pacific and later at Yokohama
Harbor where he was in charge of the Navy's fleet post
office there.
My father's letters home from Occupied Japan (now
donated to the Rosie the Riveter/Home Front National
Park's archives BTW) were heart-felt and moving.
"Today I was one of the very first Americans ever seen
by residents of a small town outside of Tokyo. I think
that they had been told to expect monsters and were
probably surprised that we didn't have horns and
tails."
When Pop came back from Japan, the ship he was on --
which was more than likely had been built by the
Rosies -- got detained at Coronado and so my mom, who
was a VERY determined young woman and who was sick and
tired of her husband being gone, rented a rowboat,
stuck us two kids in the prow, rowed out to my
father's ship and waved to him from our boat.
You shoulda seen it -- hundreds of returning sailors,
leaning over the rails, cheering, waving back at us
and kidding my poor father. "Hey, Lieutenant Purpus!
Look! There's your wife!"
©
EsinIslam.Com
Add Comments