Just a Closer Walk with Thee

It snowed two days ago in the Skagit Valley. The roads are still ice-covered because we have no snowplows or trucks to spread sand on the slippery stretches. It's very cold at night and the snow will not melt until next week. We've been starting the fire in the wood stove first thing in the morning, to keep the frost out. It's not like real winter back in the Midwest, but it's cold enough for me.

BUNKY THE BALD EAGLE. I call him Bunky. He perches at the top of the cottonwood in back of our house on Fir Island. He only recently got kicked out of his mama's nest -- has those mottled juvenile feathers. The adult bald eagles look like they own the country, with a commanding predator's glare. But Bunky looks lost, "Mom?.... Mom?.... Where's the food?....What am I supposed to do?" Bunky is perched up there in the cottonwood, all alone in the world now, looking into a lean winter before he figures out that he has to get his own dinner.

HE'S SERBIAN. Illinois Governor Blagojevitch is neither corrupt nor insane, he's Serbian. Chicago has a large Eastern European contingent -- Poles, Ukrainians, Croats, Slovaks, etc., and they are aware of the ethnic distinctions. Serbia was that country that Pres. Clinton bombed back to Bejesus after they invaded Kosovo. They also started World War I at Sarajevo, in Serbia, and now we have this Governor, the most famous Serbian-American in the country. But his name will be forgotten by next week. As they say, in Chicago, to the rest of the country "What's it to you?... It's not your state and it's not your tax money."

Of course it does reflect a bit on our new President, as the nation slowly realizes that Obama is the brains and the style, but Mayor Dailey is the muscle. It took muscle to kick that cowboy out of the White House -- just being right and asking nicely won't get you anything.


TAKE IT BACK. But another event in Chicago will become an important date in American history, December 5, the day when the workers at the window factory in Chicago decided to take it back. They were laid off with only three days notice, more than 200 workers, many with more than ten years experience -- no severance pay, no accrued vacation pay, just "get out."

But they didn't just clean out their lockers and go home -- they refused to leave the premises until they got paid. They began a six-day occupation of the window factory, until all the politicians, and reporters, and bankers, and owners came by to hear their story. Their calm determination prevailed, and they got their back pay.

And did those workers win because they deserved it? Because they were right? No, they prevailed because they seized the premises -- an illustration of muscle effectively deployed on behalf of labor.

I am just astounded by this act of labor militancy, because it marks a turning point. Labor has been meek and subnmissive since another famous date in American history, August 3, 1981, when President Reagan fired 11,000 air traffic controllers for going on strike. Eleven thousand he fired, with a stroke of his pen, and ever since that date 27 years ago American workers have cowered while Reagan spoke about a city shining on a hill. Reagan's shining city exists, but most of us don't get to live there. Instead we bought his promise, "If we all work for less money, the nation will prosper" .... ? .... Reagan said it with such a nice smile, that many of us believed him, and many of us got confused. "Okay, I get it, I'll get rich if I just work harder for less money" ..... but that doesn't actually make sense.....

UNLESS you live in Alabama. Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, was the leading voice in oppostion to the Detroit bailout. Alabama is the home of cheap labor. Their state motto is "Dirt Poor and Proud of it."

Alabama gave America slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, sharecropping, mule plowing, George Wallace, the Klu Klux Klan, corn pone, fat back, pellagra and tuberculosis, and six different flavors of chewing tobacco.

That's all I need to know about the bailout. Think what you will about Mayor Dailey and the Big Three automakers -- but people got paid well. I don't want to live in Senator Shelby's cheap labor world, do you?

So, I will close with a wonderful, moving song, sung by Mahalia Jackson, often considered the finest gospel singer who ever lived. Her voice, with its infinite power and grace, represents that best of life of Chicago. Even her life story illustrates the story. Mahalia was born and raised in New Orleans, but she came north, as so many other Southerners did, black and white, to escape grinding poverty, because they could get factory jobs in Chicago, and the jobs paid so much better than picking cotton. Mahalia Jackson came north to freedom. Listen to her music. Listen to "Just a Closer Walk With Thee."

Meeting Jesse Jackson on the South Side of Chicago

When That Evenin' Sun Goes Down
That's when you'll find me hangin' around.
I said the night life -- it ain't a good life,
But it's my life.

Those are words from a blues song by B.B. King. I used to hang out on the South Side of Chicago -- I had aspirations to be some kind of cool guy, or maybe I could ride in B.B. King's Cadillac, or maybe I could smoke some reefer with Paul Butterfield out in the back of the club. Or hold the door open for Dinah Washington. I used to have a picture of Nancy Wilson on my wall. And Lou Rawls records.

I used to listen to Daddio Dayley's Modern Jazz Patio -- "for those who live it, love it, for those who make a living of it." Daddio Dayley came on in the middle of the day from an under-powered AM station, but he played all the best -- Arthur Prysock, Billy Ekstein, Sonny Rollins and Clifford Brown and so many others that I learned about.

I was cool, I was gonna have roots, know people, be on the street, on 63rd Street, Cottage Grove, Stoney Island, and places like that.

I saw Louis Farrakhan and the Black Muslims and their clean bow ties selling their newspapers. I saw Blackstone Rangers. They were a gang, everybody was scared of them. I saw plain clothes Chicago police detectives park their car anywhere they wanted to. They were the toughest men I have ever seen in my life -- they didn't strut, they just stood there, trench coat like Colombo, cop shoes.

I wasn't that stupid. I kept my eyes open. I kept moving if I needed to. I learned to trust my instincts, if things didn't feel right. People tell lies, they act friendly, but they're playin' you.

I ate sweet potato pie at the Mount Olive Baptist Church at the Sunday dinner, after all that fried chicken and all that gospel music.

In 1966 I associated with Jesse Jackson on the South Side. He was not known by anyone at that time, just getting started. He worked out of the basement of the Mount Olive Baptist Church. We did something called "community organizing." Have you ever heard of that?

It was called Operation Breadbasket and it was about getting jobs for people in the neighborhood -- all the black people lived in that neighborhood, but it was more about where they lived than it was about race.

So, we targeted the Pepsi Cola Company. We said to Pepsi Cola, "You sell lots of Pepsi around here, but you don't hire any of us to drive your trucks or to work in your bottling plants."

Jesse Jackson did the talking. He was only 25 years old in 1966, and just making a name for himself.

"We want jobs for our people, or you're not going to sell any Pepsi products in our neighborhood," he said.

Pepsi didn't listen and wouldn't deal. So our task, at Operation Breadbasket, was to organize all the little grocery stores on the South Side of Chicago ( they only had the big supermarkets in the suburbs ) -- go to each one of those little grocery stores and convince the owners to take the Pepsi products off the shelf, and put up a "Boycott Pepsi" sign.

Everybody knows that black people prefer Pepsi over Coke, because Pepsi tastes better, but they wanted to get those good jobs driving the Pepsi trucks.

So, the boycott worked. Pretty soon, after a few weeks, Pepsi couldn't sell a bottle of soda anywhere, and they caved, and began to talk to Jesse Jackson, and they promised some jobs for people in the neighborhood.

I liked that kind of economic muscle. It wasn't like, "Oh, we're poor people and you have to give us jobs." No, it was much more real. It was, "We drink Pepsi every day. You're making money off of us, so you have to give us jobs, or we just won't drink anymore Pepsi." That's real. And it worked.

Funny how you remember things like this years later. It kind of blows my mind to think about it now that another man, who did some "community organizing" on the South Side of Chicago, is on the verge of becoming President of the United States.

Barack Obama -- I expect he learned a lot from Jesse Jackson, and Jeremiah Wright, and a host of very colorful characters that one can easily encounter on the South Side, a neighborhood that might seem exotic to the likes of Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin -- I have not heaped abuse on her like others have done, but I will continue to make fair comments. Other says that Palin has no foreign policy experience. But I would say different. I would say that you don't need experience in foreign travel to be a good President. But what you DO need, is to KNOW your own country. If you really know America, then you can deal with foreign leaders.

And how can you ever know America, if you have never been to America's most vibrant and vital neighborhood -- the South Side of Chicago?

Today, in St. Louis, Barack Obama drew a crowd of over 100,000 people. That's amazing.