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Young People Stand Up to Those in Power
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2015-03-31 13:58:39
As the New York State Budget nears passage, a group of New Yorkers involved with the Hedge Clippers campaign are
demonstrating at the North Cove Marina at the World Financial Center, to prevent a sales tax break for buyers of yachts and
expensive private planes. As the rest of us pay 8 percent or more sales tax on the modest items we buy—from hardware to
books to clothing to cars—the wealthy buyers of big-ticket items get out of paying for two items that 99 percent of us will
never be able to afford. Yacht and Gulfstream customers made a small investment for their tax-free purchase in the form of
campaign donations to our elected officials, “public servants” who seem to serve only those who pay them directly, and they
have been rewarded many times over while us middle class voters dig a little deeper into our pockets to cover the shortfall.
[caption id="attachment_6736" align="alignleft" width="300"} A chalk
tribute to one of the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. [/caption] Ast we ponder ways to challenge our political leaders
and their wealthy backers who seem to get away with everything, we can take some lessons from the past. The early part of
the twenty-first century has been called the New Gilded Age. People during the original Gilded Age more than a hundred
years ago faced trying times as well. Protections for workers didn’t exist. Along with a race to the bottom in terms of wages,
workers as young as five years old toiled long hours in sweatshops under uncomfortable and unsafe conditions. The Triangle
Shirtwaist fire of March 25, 1911, killed 146 garment workers, most of them young women who had been locked inside the
factory by their unscrupulous employer. This, the deadliest industrial accident in New York City, led to major reforms.
Pushing those reforms were a generation of young immigrant labor leaders who sacrificed much to make work pay, and to
make work safe. Among those young “upstanders” was a Russian-born Jewish activist named Clara Lemlich. Melanie
Crowder’s just-published verse novel Audacity explores Lemlich’s life, beginning with her childhood in Russia, where she
and her family dodged pogroms while she chafed against the restrictions imposed on her because she was a girl. Moving to
America, she found new restrictions, in the form of having to work ten hours a day, seven days a week, to help support her
family on what little she made. Often, the bosses stole the workers wages by shortchanging them on payday or firing them
without giving them what they’d already earned that week. This happened to Clara several times. Nonetheless, Clara went to
English classes and the library every day after work to study, in the hope of getting a scholarship to medical school. That left
her tired at work, and her father beat her for not doing her chores. She also felt torn between bettering herself by studying
medicine, or bettering all the other women workers by becoming a labor leader. Through
eloquent free verse, Crowder conveys the emotional power of young Clara’s choices and actions. Readers see her struggling
with her narrow range of options and the risks she takes to give every poor young woman more choices in life. Crowder sets
us in the middle of early twentieth century New York City, immersing us in the filthy tenements, the teeming streets, and
demonstrations brutally suppressed by police and thugs hired by private employers. Readers will understand the struggle and
violence (mostly against the workers) that accompanied the labor protections that we have attained—but are in serious
danger of losing. Read Audacity, and you will know what life is like without them and how hard it will be to get them back.
While Audacity explores political struggles of the past, Claudia Guadalupe Martinez’s Pig Park takes place in the present
and depicts a very real “unholy alliance” between business interests and politicians. Ever since the rendering plant closed in
Masi’s Pig Park neighborhood of Chicago, times have been tough for the local businesses tucked behind the plant. Masi’s
father and grandmother started a bakery when they came to Chicago from Mexico thirty years earlier, but now the bakery is
losing money. The local councilman, though, has an idea. He has been in contact with a New Mexico businessman, and if all
the local businesses can contribute a substantial sum, the businessman will build a Mayan-style pyramid in Pig Park to
attract tourists. The money is sent, and construction begins. Masi wants to work outside, but she and the other girls are stuck
indoors doing clerical work. Although she has liked her best friend’s older brother, she finds herself attracted to the teenage
intern that the businessman has sent to help. Her mother, who is ill with diabetes, leaves because the stress is too much.
Claudia Guadalupe Martinez
Masi is an engaging and resourceful protagonist who wants to do right by her family and
community. Readers will turn the pages, wondering if the bakery and the other local businesses will survive, especially
when Masi finds out that other places that hired the New Mexican businessmen ended up worse off than when they started—
and the beneficiaries of their pain turned out to be outside investors tight with the local politicians. Eventually, Masi prevails
on both the intern and her father to take matters into their own hands. This is a good book for showing that young people
really can take matters into their own hands, bringing about personal and political change through creative action.
