Reader Mail (Cuomo): Dear Mr. Navarrette, What a delightful surprise to read your column about Mario Cuomo. My name is Lydia Eagle-Kaplan and I am a Democrat. Always have been. Why? Because my parents and relatives were lucky to come to the US in the early 1920s to escape the virulent Anti-Semitism. They knew what hatred was because they suffered it. They also lived through the first world war before coming to the US. I won’t bore you with their stories of terror, but I will say that they met and married here and had two children before I was born (an unexpected child). They struggled to live and place food on the table during the Depression. My father was a house painter and he asked landlords to give him an apartment and he would paint free of charge. After studying while working, my father passed the test and received his citizenship, which was a very happy occurrence for him, and then it was my mother’s turn. My earliest memories are going to the school with them and watching them vote. They never missed an election and neither do I or my husband. We both grew up in Brooklyn me in the Jewish ‘Hood’ and he in an Italian neighborhood, which was problematic for him as when he was young, when he friends went for CCD, they would come out and want to beat him up because he was Jewish and killed Jesus. I never encountered such problems because I lived in a poor lower middle class Jewish neighborhood. However, the neighborhood abutting ours was a poor African American neighborhood and that’s where I learned how awful life was for them in the US. I went to school with them and although we played during recess and interacted during class, we never went into each other’s home. That and the Holocaust taught me about hatred. Okay, so getting back to why we’re Democrats. My parents knew that the Democrats worked for the middle and lower classes. Roosevelt, about whom I have mixed feelings, did just that during the Depression years. Truman continued in that vein. I learned from my parents that voting was not to be taken for granted and they felt so proud to have that honor. Opps, I’m getting off track. I know that Roosevelt was beloved by African Americans and that was strange to me as he never did anything for them. It was his wife, Eleanor, a very strong Democrat, who did. Years went by before the Civil Rights Act was passed and it was done by a Democrat, Lyndon Baines Johnson, much to the unhappiness of the Republicans. I could go on and on, but I’m sure you know the history of our country. When I went back to work after my children went to school, I received my Masters in Counseling and eventually, I worked at a university in the CHANCE Program, which went into the African American and Latino neighborhoods in Chicago and worked with the young people who came into our program. What a wonderful time it was working with these young people who were the first in their families to go to university. There was always the fear when they went home on holidays, that they’d come back safe because of such things like driving while a person of color. All these programs like ours and Head Start and free school lunches for children and many others were all because of the Democrats. I remember when Ronald Reagan said that ketchup was a vegetable. It’s interesting how the Republicans speak of Reagan as a saint. Interesting because Reagan couldn’t be voted for dog catcher in the Republican party of today. There’s much more that I can write about, but I think you get the message. The Republican Party of Everet Dirksen, Nelson Rockefeller, and even Barry Goldwater is gone. Barry Goldwater, the original Conservative, would be aghast at what his party has become. The party is now full of people who don’t care about the middle and lower classes. Remember when Mitt Romney spoke about the 4%. Well that told me and many other people that his attitude about the remaining 96% was screw them. As for people who came to this country through means other than the correct ones, there are so many things that are available to them. I know because I have a few friends who are in that situation and they have Clinicas to go to for health, their children go to school, and they work and give back to the community. In situations where their children were born in the US, to knock on their doors and take the parents back to Mexico is unconscionable. A few years ago, there was a story in the LA Times about a family where the parents were taken and the children, who were all doing very well in school, were left because the parents felt it would be awful to take them away from that. The parents chose to live in Tijuana and the kids were left in the care of their oldest sister, who was in high school. The children’s grades dropped and they became depressed. I am completely behind giving the parents some sort of card allowing them to stay and somewhere get on the road to citizenship. I have seen so much that the Democratic Party has done for minorities and that the Republicans fought that I can’t get my mind around the fact that you are such a staunch Republican and so against the Democrats. Don’t you realize who is working for you and who isn’t? Well, I’m going to end this email. I’m pleased that you wrote such a wonderful story about Mario Cuomo. He was such a special man who epitomized what the Democratic Party was doing. Our own Barbara Boxer will be missed, Dick Durban of Illinois fights the good fight along with Senator Al Franken, Charles Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Lois Capps, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Linda Sanchez, Barbara Mikulski, Loretta Sanchez, Harry Reid, Julia Brownley, John Lewis, Henry Waxman, Elizabeth Warren, Carl Levin, Carolyn McCarthy, Barbara Mikulski, and even more than those I’ve listed. It IS the party that cares about us and that’s why you puzzle me. Be well, and have a healthy, happy, prosperous, and peaceful new year, and take another good, hard look at who’s working for you and who isn’t. Feel free to contact me anytime. All the best to you and your loved ones.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 06:09:56 +0000