Where I grew up in Revere, the mailbox at the bottom of our hill was often attacked - older kids would throw a dead squirrel in, garbage, trash, then, finally rip it off the sidewalk and throw it in the street. The city would come and replace it eventually, and the whole process would begin again; the violence came from those who would never write a letter, pay a bill or have the sophistication to buy a stamp and put it on an envelope.
I was about 12 years old when, one day, our mailbox was gone; I already had two pen-pals I couldn’t reach: one, from England, he didn’t work out as he only wanted nude photos of me; the other, a Native-American boy in Pocatello, Idaho. I liked him. Both pen-pals had been found in teen magazines.
Without the mailbox, my mother couldn’t send cards or pay her bills. My mother couldn’t drive a car, and, even if she could, my father would have taken it to work. Like most of the people now who are left without a mailbox in their neighborhood, my mother didn’t have the time or the energy to go look for the nearest mailbox. Finally, she asked the mailman to pick up her mail when he delivered, and, thankfully, he did.
I’ve been thinking of our old mailbox lately as Trump tears up the USPS, as he vandalizes our mailboxes and mail sorters, as he leaves Americans who don’t have the internet without the means to communicate.
As a writer, my whole impetus is to communicate. With no mailbox at the end of our street, we had lost a significant part of our Freedom of Speech.
My gut reaction to seeing the mailboxes and sorting machines piled up in a dead heap was tears in my eyes. How many times have I cried because I felt like I had lost my country? Naomi Wolf calls this phenomenon, “American tears” in her book, “The End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot.” She calls on people to act, not cry. I’m weak, so I cry and I write.
DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN THE UNITED STATES WOULD REFUSE TO RECOGNIZE ANY COUNTRY THAT HAD INTERFERED IN ITS OWN FREE ELECTIONS? Now, here we have the President of the United States interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election by closing polls, and taking this point in time to sabotage the United States Post Office, thus taking Freedom of Speech away from thousands of citizens.
"MAIL DELIVERY SUSPENSIONS IN LOS ANGELES: Los Angeles City Council member, Mike Bonin joins The Appeal to discuss the ongoing mail crisis on the Westside of Los Angeles, where the U.S. Postal Service has suspended mail service to an entire low-income community, overwhelmingly consisting of people of color. Instead of having their mail delivered, these residents are being forced to travel to pick up their mail from the post office that is over a mile away. This action will have significant and severe consequences for community members who do not own or have access to a car to drive to the postal facility, are seniors or people with disabilities, or are essential workers who are juggling job responsibilities while trying to educate their children at home and do not have the flexibility or the time to have to go to an offsite location to retrieve their mail. The postal service’s action disenfranchises them, and denies them access to essentials, such as their income, medicine, and voting and election information."
Woody Guthrie
So, I’ve been thinking too of Woody Guthrie’s mission to Kill Fascists - I’ve softened the word kill, changing it to FIGHT. Most woke people know that Woody wrote “This Machine Kills Fascists” on his guitar. Woody’s idea of a fascist was any rich bully who was taking from the poor. During the Depression, Woody would have seen many farms and homes go into foreclosure, many families living in tents, trucks, shanties. He characterized fascism “as a form of economic exploitation similar to slavery, straightforwardly denouncing the fascists – particularly their leaders – as a group of gangsters who set out to 'rob the world.’” (John S. Partington (2011). The Life, Music and Thought of Woody Guthrie: A Critical Appraisal.)
Woody romanticized bank robbers like Bonnie & Clyde, John Dillinger, Jesse James and Pretty Boy Floyd as folk heroes who got a bit of justice back from the banks who were robbing the poor.
Woody’s own political activism was his songs like “Tear The Fascists Down” and “All You Fascists Bound To Lose," thus working the Fascist Killing Machine!
Woody Guthrie
"All You Fascists Bound To Lose"
In a similar political act of deviance, postal workers in Washington State reinstalled high-speed mail sorting machines despite USPS orders not to put machines back in use. Go Washington!
What other political acts can we do? We’re already doing it! Helping our neighbors to get to the polls! Serving free meals! Healing the sick! Wearing a mask! Social distancing! Eating healthy! Teaching others to be healthy! And free! I can’t help but feel that all the signs of hope and encouragement that people are putting up on their lawns and homes are their way of communicating during a time when they cannot communicate.
I’ll end by posting another of Woody’s songs - we can do it!
Tear the Fascists Down
with music, powerful words and love!
©Patricia Goodwin, 2020
Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.
Within this blog, Patricia writes often about non-fiction subjects that inspire or disturb her, hopefully informing and inspiring people to be happy, healthy and free.
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