...for all these wonderful historical sound files you've been putting up in recent weeks!

What Would Bobby Do?

Ironically, on a number of levels, my father, a first generation native and mexican american, grew-up the son of the jeffe, on the largest citrus ranch in S. California--the Murphy. In part because of my grandfather's position, my father went on to Berkeley and was officer in USMC during WWII. Consequently, I grew up with a dad who was a die hard Goldwater Republican. He died when I was 16, in 1978, at 57.

After School my father, an Entemologist worked for Julius Hymen, a chemist in Denver, who derived dieldrin and aldrin from DDT. Shell bought them out whereby my father ultimately became int'l sales manager, selling all three and others pesticides to Israel, S. America, etc. He died from a liver bleed that I believe was a consequence of a mercury poisoning in a hospital and his long term exposure to pesticides, aggravated by alcohol abuse.

More interesting in the Diaz family trajectory into assimilation in america and back from it: my grandfather, at the Murphy's request, testified before Congress for the development of the Bracero program. My father also frequented a Quaker's general store that was on the Murphy Ranch border and whose owners made their living off the earnings of the migrant workers. That would have been Richard Nixon's parents.

As a result of these various exposures and opportunities, my father truly believed people were able to eat b/c of dieldrin and aldrin--and nations were able to form. He had, while a young adult on the Murphy Ranch, also been part of the Government project to assit Sunkist eradicate the Blackfly in (Guaymas) Mexico before it spread to S. Cal.

And so I grew-up with a die hard Goldwater Republican for a father, and I grew-up not as a migrant farm worker, which I'm convinced I would have had my father and grandfather not been the trail blazers they were.

However, for these digressions I find little to judge him for, though his death at 57 made me question everything, from corporate america to politics to the "us and them" mentality, and radical extremism and dogmatism of any kind.

For me, as free a thinker as I think is possible without being insanely alienated, things--people--are not so easy to write off as evil or other than or less than human now that I've grown-up, had a top notch education, some real life experience and been afforded the opportunity to be able to look within and back critically do to the sweat and sacrifice of a man I once abhorred.

But I always remember what Barbara Jordan said to a group of us graduate students at the University of Texas back in the early '90s: "When your right, as right, as right can be. When you know in your heart of heart's that you are absolutely right, you have to open-up yourself to the possibility that you might be wrong."

What that means to me today is that political arguments are won and lost not so much on who is right, and who is wrong, but by the tactics and social construction of evil that ensues resigned, like a child, to bully someone to believe as you do--even if for the greatest good--because you cannot accept that they have a different opinion than you in spite of the seemingly incontrovertible facts.

And please do not confuse what I'm saying as being naive or ignorant regarding humane working conditions, workers rights, negotiating, labor unions, collective bargaining, striking and the like.

Nevertheless, the Dali Lama said this week, something akin to: you cannot just have compassion for your friends and those with whom it is reciprocal--that is false love, false compassion--in short, attachment. True compassion means having it for enemies as well, as they are suffering and struggling, like you, with their humanity as well, and are also worthy of happiness and affection.

We would all do well to remember this as we deal with the compartmentalized western corporate political psyche. How you treat people, even the tea baggers and Palin's of the world, goes a long way toward the efficacy of your real effort--which is social justice, I would assume? Look at me, I grew-up as a Goldwater Republican, and though not rich, think I turned out pretty good. I too have marched with the United Farm Workers and the Brown Berets. We have yet to evolve beyond the instinct of reciprocity that MLK was trying to achieve. In fact, I have always believed that the marriage of his philosophy and Malcom's is what got them both killed: love, by any means necessary.

What's this all got to do with migrant workers and Cesar Chavez's political quest for social and economic justice for them?

Think about it before you fly off the cuff in response to me.

BTW, the Julius Hymen's Denver Site is still the site of a EPA Superfund Clean-up. And the band played on . . .