Thinking about Trump...and my dad

The more I think about Donald Trump – infuriating as it is to even do so – the more I think about my dad…and about what he would have to say about the Republican presidential nominee.

It wouldn’t be nice.

My dad – who would be 102 today – was born in Russia. He, his older brother, and their parents left Kiev for Berlin six weeks after his birth, when my grandmother was cleared to travel. Moscow natives and Jews, my grandparents had seen the writing on the wall in the rural community outside Kiev where my grandfather was working. They knew they had to leave Russia to prevent their sons from being conscripted into the Russian Army once they became teenagers, and being assigned the most hazardous duty because they were Jews.

So they spent the next five years in Germany, where my grandparents worked and saved the money for passage to the United States. When my dad was six and my uncle seven, they set sail for America.

Settling in Chicago, near other relatives, they moved into an English-speaking neighborhood and quickly added another language to their bilingual Russian and German skill set. My dad and uncle headed off to public school, and my grandparents went to work, soon opening a record and bookstore downtown. And they all became proud American citizens.

After World War II began, my dad, who had been working multiple jobs – helping in the store, working at a gas station and driving delivery trucks – enlisted. His leadership skills attracted the Army’s attention, and he was sent to Officer Candidate School. Commissioned as a lieutenant, he and his unit were eventually sent to Europe, where his fluency in Russian and German were critically important. He led that unit into Germany in the closing months of the war in Europe – leaving my grandmother to cry every day he was there, dreading the possibility that a Nazi officer might capture her Jewish son.

Instead, he and his unit captured a group of German officers who had refused to surrender, and he earned a Bronze Star for his valor in that armed exchange. He also made sure to get up in the faces of each of those officers to inform them, in his perfect German, that they were his prisoners, and that he was an American…and a Jew. He wanted there to be no question whatsoever in their minds that their anti-Semitism, their hatred, and their evil had been vanquished, utterly and completely.

I’m sure that’s what he would want to see on November 8, 2016, in his beloved America: the utter, complete, unquestioned, unmitigated vanquishing of the presidential candidate who this year has used hate, fear, paranoia, xenophobia, misogyny, name-calling, ridicule, distortion, misrepresentation, racism, sexism, anti-minority, anti-immigrant, anti-gay rhetoric -- and even outright lies – to garner the support of a sadly misled minority of voters.

My dad followed up his military career by returning to Chicago, where he helped his parents sell their store and move with him to Southern California to enjoy their retirement in the California sun. My mother followed him here, and they were married. After starting their family, they bought a home in a racially mixed corner of the San Fernando Valley – choosing that neighborhood because he’d been deeply troubled by racial segregation in the U.S. military, and the deeds to homes in our subdivision had no racial covenants.

He and my mom became friends to everyone in the neighborhood – black, white, Mexican, Japanese, Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist…it didn’t matter. My mom, raised as a Lutheran, learned to cook like a Jewish grandmother, thanks to my dad’s mom’s coaching, and put up the best kosher dills of anyone in town. My dad took great delight in decorating our Christmas tree every December, and in cooking up massive batches of potato latkes on the weekends – bringing a long line of neighbors to the door, plates in hand, to collect their share.

He also became the neighborhood’s moral compass at a critical junction – literally throwing a realtor off our front porch when the race-baiting salesman trolled the neighborhood looking for listings, conspiratorially warning the homeowners that “some Indians are moving in around the corner.” Word of my dad’s response quickly spread. The Indian family moved in, no one sold their homes, and we all learned to love dishes flavored with curry.

That is the America my dad helped build. And that is the America Donald Trump would all too willingly tear apart.

And my dad wouldn’t hesitate to say so – loudly and right in Donald’s face – if he were still here today. Just as he shamed those German officers, he wouldn’t hesitate to shame Donald for the hatred and bigotry that the GOP’s alt-right sympathizer has all too willingly encouraged here in the United States of America. That is not how someone who wants to lead the nation that welcomed my dad, his brother and his parents -- and millions of immigrants of all nationalities, religions and races, from around the world – ought to behave.

Thought for today: Equality achieved? Hardly!

Saw a news item today, about a recent Pew Research Center survey of American men and women. Whichever of the two major political parties they identify with, and whichever presidential candidate they're voting for in November, 63% of the women surveyed say that obstacles continue to make it harder for women than men to succeed. Among men, though, just 41% think those obstacles still exist.

The men's response must have sounded a bit odd to the women observing Black Women's Equal Pay Day today, which commemorates the fact that it took America's black women from January 1, 2015, until this day -- August 23, 2016 -- to earn the same amount of money that white American men earned last year. That's right: it takes the average black woman eight extra months to match the average white man's annual income in this, the land of equality. That massive pay gap -- which adds up to a lifetime differential of $877,480 -- persists even though black women are the most educated group in the United States, and even though they participate in the labor force at higher rates than other American women.

It must have sounded odd to most other American women in the workforce, too. Whichever calculation you accept as valid, women still are paid less than men who bring the same levels of education, training and experience to the same job. Women often find themselves bumping up against the proverbial glass ceiling, not even being considered for the next job. They observe that it is they, but not their male "peers," who are asked to organize the staff meetings, plan the menus, and sometimes even prepare the coffee. And heaven help women who try to prove their ability to compete in the workplace by being tough and authoritative rather than nurturing and collaborative: instead of being seen as leaders, as their male counterparts are, they're dismissed as bitches.

An oversimplified, anecdotal statement, yes -- although research studies abound to prove these notions true.

That's why I am convinced that, when Hillary Clinton becomes President (yes, she will!) on January 20, 2017, the quest for full equality for American women will not have ended. For just as Barack Obama's election didn't signify the end of racism in America, but rather brought issues of racism further to the fore in the national conversation, Hillary's election is sure to do the same when it comes to the quest for ender equality.

August 23, 2016

Reflections

Reflections

in history

in a glass ceiling

in shop windows

on our TVs

Reflections

from 150 years past

black men voting

in a nation

that finally

set them free

Reflections

of the President

who made the moment

then sacrificed his life

for history

Reflections

of women walking

garbed in white

winning the vote

for daughters

for today

Reflections

of heartbroken father

Constitution in hand

wife garbed in blue

in proud silence

at his side

both standing strong

facing down hatred

from a small

sniveling

heartless

yellow-haired man

Reflections

of five young women

on TV

giggling before the world

proud

strong

victorious

winning gold

reflecting the myriad faces

of America

today

What of tomorrow?

What reflection will there be?

Glass ceiling broken

light shining through

hope

pride

American family

motherlove?

Or shop windows shattered

Krystallnacht anew

ridicule

shame

darkness of spirit

fear of the other

me against you

hate

division

fear in America

fathercontrol?

Reflect, America.

Look in the mirror.

Reflect

who you want to see.

Then vote.

-- Marcy Rothenberg
   August 2016

Can an all-woman team succeed? Yes we can!

by Marcy Rothenberg

First posted to Let's Talk Nation, July 2016

I don’t know if Hillary Clinton will ask Elizabeth Warren to be her vice presidential running mate. No one but Hillary does – and she probably hasn’t decided yet. But I do know that, if she does, Hillary and Elizabeth are equally as likely to succeed in office as any of their same-gender predecessor teams have to date.

As I listened to political commentators pose that question, over and over, in the days following Hillary’s nomination-clinching primary wins on June 7 and Elizabeth’s rousing endorsement days later, I thought back to high school. Because that’s where I first experienced “girl power” in action.

The high school I attended, a Los Angeles Unified School District campus in the East San Fernando Valley, was barely a decade old when I enrolled as a sophomore. The campus included a football field and bleachers, but it lacked stadium lights. So our Friday night “home” games were played on our opponents’ fields – giving the opponent a psychological edge and depressing the sense of school spirit that normally accompanies a meeting with your opponent on home turf.

Every year since the school’s opening, candidates for student body president had pledged to raise the needed funds for stadium lights. Every year, they’d bring in a few thousand dollars…and every year, the projected cost would increase even more.

And in every year but one, the student body president was a boy.

My junior year, a group of students took note of this trend and decided to do something about it. We assembled a candidate slate – student body president, VP, recording secretary, corresponding secretary, treasurer and historian – and promised that, if we were elected, we would raise every last penny of the funds needed…the next year.

The six of us were girls.

The novelty of an all-girl slate, and our audacious promise, captured the attention of our fellow students, and we were elected.

And, to the amazement of students, faculty and community alike, the next year, we got the job done.

We raised money every which way – placing collection cans for pocket change at local merchants, holding flower and cookie and candy drives for months on end (I couldn’t look at a pink Almond Roca can for years afterward), seeking contributions from parents and local businesses, waging a public relations campaign that reached out to the local media…and finally, holding a fundraising rally on a Friday night on our lightless field, with the football team, cheerleaders, band and drill team parading around the gridiron with flashlights, to highlight the need for stadium lighting. We made the local news.

And we raised enough money to get the lights installed.

We also trimmed the project costs, first by convincing a general contractor, the father of one student, to oversee the work at cost, and then convincing another dad, the owner of a local electrical contracting company, to do the same.

Shortly after our graduation in June, construction began. And a year later, we were invited back to campus – as college sophomores – for the first Friday night home game on our high school field.

Now, I’m certainly not equating a one-time fundraising drive at a local high school with the immensely challenging job that confronts the President and Vice President of the United States. I’m merely suggesting that capability is capability, competence is competence, creativity is creativity, and leadership is leadership – and that those qualities, and all others, are equally likely in all of us.

When former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell responded to a question about naming Elizabeth Warren to the ticket by saying she’s “bright” but “not…ready to be commander-in-chief,” I thought about the male political leaders who have been mentioned as possible running mates for Hillary -- many with no more military or international relations expertise than Elizabeth Warren, but none dismissed from consideration for that reason. After all, whoever is tapped to run for vice president on Hillary’s ticket will be running with a former Secretary of State. Perhaps the nation will be better served if the VP brings complementary expertise to the team.

Rendell’s remarks also reminded me of the research studies that show how people’s assessment of job candidates’ qualifications can be colored by the candidate’s gender: resumes from John Doe are considered more impressive than resumes from Jane; musicians performing in “blind” auditions result in more gender-diverse orchestras than do auditions where the musicians can be seen as they perform.

Maybe our elections ought to be run as “The Voice” competition is on television – with our chairs turned so we cannot see the candidates. If there’s one thing we all need to keep in mind as America considers the election of our first female President, it’s that the gender of the person being considered for the job is – or ought to be – irrelevant.

No research needed: stories about Trump, his father abound

by Marcy Rothenberg

First posted to Let's Talk Nation, June 23, 2016

When writers research stories, we usually have to go hunting for sources whose life experience is relevant to the subject. Their first-person narratives help inform our stories by providing factual background to support a particular observation – but they’re often hard to obtain and verify.

Not so, it seems, when you’re writing about what drives one Donald J. Trump. No hunting for sources seems necessary: the stories just fall into your lap, even for a life-long Californian whose social circle has never included Trump or any member of his family…and never will.

Twice in the past few weeks, personal friends have shared their own stories about the Trump family -- one who told of his grandfather’s frustrating business dealings with Fred Trump, Donald’s father; and the other who shared memories of his own weekly encounters with a teenaged Donald.

Story number one tells us why Donald Trump thinks it’s OK to renege on business agreements and force his vendors to accept 30 cents on the dollar…or sue. He thinks that’s the way business is done because it’s exactly how his own father ran things.

Our friend’s grandfather was a concrete contractor in New York City when he landed a contract with Fred Trump to pour the foundations for some of Trump’s apartment buildings. When the project wrapped up, Fred still owed him $30,000 for the work – a princely sum at the time for a small business owner. But Fred Trump refused to pay. He decided that our friend’s grandfather had gotten as much as he was going to get for the work he’d done – contract be damned.

Story number two tells us why Donald Trump’s own children think they’re entitled to the riches they’ve gained simply through the good fortune of their birth to a wealthy man.

This friend was a teenager living in one of Fred Trump’s New York apartment properties in the early 1960s. Every Saturday morning, when he and his buddies would head outside to play basketball, they’d watch as a limousine pulled up to the property and a teenage Donald stepped out, accompanied by his mother. They would watch, muttering to one another, ‘Trumpasshole.” Why? Because Donald was there to collect the coins from all of the washing machines in the apartment complex – the precious coins that those kids’ moms had scrimped together to do the weekly wash. Their laundry money was Donald’s allowance.

No wonder, then, that Donald Trump’s children seem to view their father’s campaign for the presidency, not as an opportunity for public service to a nation that has treated him and his family incredibly well, but instead as a “yuuuge” marketing opportunity for the Trump business empire.

It was only slightly surprising to read through the Trump campaign’s late June filing to the Federal Election Commission this week and see where a full 20 percent of the campaign’s expenditures are going: straight into the Trump empire. Millions of dollars paid to Trump Tower, Trump Plaza, Trump Restaurants, Trump Café, Trump Ice, Trump Grill, Trump Wines, Trump Corporation, Trump Payroll Corp., Trump hotels, Trump golf clubs, the Old Trump Post Office, Trump Soho…

…not to mention the campaign’s “rental” payments to Trump’s own Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, or his own private Trump jet fleet.

After all, the entire campaign seems to have begun as a grandiose effort to promote one of Donald Trump’s books – which as his opponent, Hillary Clinton, now suggests, “all seem to end at Chapter 11.”

And it will be even less surprising to this writer, when the Trump campaign finally comes to a (hopefully futile) end, that whatever money might be left in the campaign coffers will go first to pay back Donald Trump’s own loans to the cause (which he said he would forgive but has yet to do), leaving his remaining creditors empty-handed.

As Donald himself proclaims, he’s “very good” at business.

At least when it means doing good for himself.

America needs real solutions, not insincere rhetoric

by Marcy Rothenberg

First posted to Let's Talk Nation, July 2016

In President Barack Obama’s rousing endorsement of Hillary Clinton last week, he offered many words of praise for his 2008 primary competitor and his administration’s first Secretary of State. But one particular line of commentary stuck with me – likely because I’ve heard the same thing from neighbors, friends and family who’ve had the opportunity to meet Hillary in person.

The President’s comment focused on the Hillary he sees “when cameras weren’t on…when no political points were to be had….[when she is] meeting with people who quote, unquote, weren’t important.”

That, he told the enthusiastic crowd, is when you’d see the Hillary he wished we all could know. Because, as he -- and my friends and family have said -- seeing her up close and personal helps you realize that “you can count on her.”

That’s the experience neighbors of ours had back in November 1999, when then-First Lady Hillary Clinton flew to Los Angeles to meet privately with people who had been injured when a neo-Nazi with an arsenal of weapons strode in to the North Valley Jewish Community Center in suburban Granada Hills and began shooting. Everyone who was wounded at the Center survived, but a postal worker in nearby Chatsworth was murdered before the shooter was captured.

The victims included Josh Stepakoff, a then-6-year-old boy who had been hit twice by semiautomatic gunfire. He, his parents, Loren and Alan, and his brother met Hillary that November day. He later told his parents he didn’t know who the woman was who talked with him – he just thought she was “a nice mom.”

Hillary didn’t just do her duty as First Lady that day and then forget about the NVJCC families and the horrific trauma they’d endured. A year later, when one million people attended Million Mom Marches in Washington, D.C., and cities across America, demanding sensible gun laws, Hillary joined them.

She’s been with them ever since – voting against the NRA-sponsored Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which shields gun manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits by gun violence victims; and calling in her presidential campaign platform to strengthen background checks, close gun purchase loopholes, make straw purchasing a federal crime, hold irresponsible gun dealers and manufacturers accountable for their products, take military-style assault weapons off our streets, and keep guns out of the hands of terrorists, domestic abusers, other violent criminals, and the severely mentally ill.

And this June, when Hillary came to Los Angeles for a campaign event, she learned that Loren and other gun violence prevention activists who she’d met in 1999 were in attendance. She zoomed out to see them, greeting each of them by name, hugging them, asking how they were, and asking to see pictures of their now-grown children. It was a reunion of friends – not an obligatory campaign stop meet-and-greet.

I’d heard the same thing from a friend of mine, who volunteered for Hillary in the 2008 primaries while I was volunteering for Barack. She kept telling me how the Hillary she’d come to know and love was bright and congenial and caring in person – not at all the guarded and defensive person the press too often describes.

And I heard it from my husband when he came home earlier this year from a Clinton campaign event at East Los Angeles College. He was invited backstage, where Hillary was greeting local elected officials and campaign volunteers, and was immediately struck by her friendliness, her easy smile, and her eager interaction with each person she met – whether elected official or just plain citizen.

This week, two minority men, both in legal possession of firearms (one of whom informed police that he had a firearm and was going to reach into his back pocket for his identification, which the officer had requested) were tragically shot by police officers in Baton Rouge and St. Paul.

Those events were followed by the horrific massacre of police in Dallas – five killed and seven wounded, along with two bystanders, as of this writing – during a peaceful march the evening of July 7 to protest those police shootings.

In light of those events, the position taken by Hillary’s GOP opponent on gun safety – that a “good guy with a gun” is all Americans need to stop “a bad guy with a gun” -- has become even more foolishly illogical than it already was.

America doesn’t need his glib parroting of that NRA talking point. We don’t need his shallow response to the Dallas tragedy – decrying the state of race relations in America after having built his campaign on multiple racist appeals to voters, and delivering knee-jerk jingoism – telling us we need more “law and order” instead of calling for thoughtful, constructive interactions between police and the citizens they are sworn to protect.

What we do need is someone who has thought long and hard about seemingly intractable problems like gun violence, and who has offered thoughtful, rational, workable solutions over the course of her long career in public service.

We need Hillary Rodham Clinton.