Thank You

[grantcart]

As I end my active posting at DU, I would like to take a moment to express my gratitude to the administrators, the moderators, and all who passionately participate here with a view to electing Democratic office-holders and promote the progressive agenda.

Twenty five years ago, I was in a very high-pressure situation, the issue being a lack of refugee resettlement numbers forcing first-asylum countries to forcibly repatriate refugees to where tens of thousands died. I found that even though I was carrying the operational load of the office, the Chief of Mission was spending his time scrutinizing and critiquing my work during the morning meeting, while others that were making no contribution remained untouched. In private, I asked him why he did this. “Because I respect you, I am going to engage you and challenge you. The others aren't worth the effort”.

I hope that everyone I engaged at DU, in agreement or combat, understand that for me engagement is a sign of respect.

I doubt anyone will be too surprised that I am part of the obvious migration from DU. In my previous effort to contribute to the discussion of factions here, I included this statement:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/grantcart/311

“You cannot expect Solidarity Democrats to come here and see a President, who they like and support to keep getting bashed in thread after thread after thread as a corporate sell out”. Even if you feel that is the truth you certainly can understand why people who support the President wouldn't want to continue to come to a site that promotes attacks against the President that, in many cases, approach the venom of the right wing.”

There is no need to re-litigate the issue. The DU community has come to a fork in the road and, with the new rules now expanding criticism of Democrats (without having to reach the very low bar of “constructive criticism”), the chosen path has been determined and set upon.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/board.php?az=view_all&address=437x743

What you cannot understand (and that which I cannot hope to communicate to each of you) is how grateful I was to be here.

To understand what a great value DU has been to me, I have to take you back to 1978, when I left the US, and compare it with my return in 1995.

When I left the US, G. Gordon Liddy was easily the most despised man in the country; when I returned, he was given a First Amendment award for his statements about the most effective way to kill a federal officer being to shoot him in the throat, because it was not protected.

When I left the US, the Church I grew up in was a bastion for peace, an advocate for the poor that celebrated diversity. When I returned, they preached about angels, taught that God blessed good people with big salaries, and led a fight to keep gays out of the ministry.

When I left Spokane, it was a city with two percent AA population that had an AA City Councilman that would become mayor. When I got back, people outside the region established an Aryan compound – and I worried about security for my mixed race family. I noticed that a police car was now parked in front of the Jewish synagogue every Saturday.

When I left the US 'mother' was not a hyphenated word.

In those decades, I had gone ‘native’ so to speak. Having left the UN community, I started a factory in Bangkok, where I would only see a few expatriates during my last two years.

When I returned to the US, it was like a Twilight Zone episode.

Someone had stolen my country.

We arrived lived out of sleeping bags in a relative’s basement. I worked my way up to a partner in a large management consultant company, but I was stuck watching a lot of people arguing about things that I thought were long settled.

I had become a refugee in a strange land – and yet it was the land of my birth.

A minor medical catastrophe wiped us out again, and our little family returned to sleeping bag survival – but we enjoyed working together to survive in what was now a strange country.

It wasn’t until I found DU that I could reconnect with my earlier life. I found people who felt passionately about the same things I did, and DU became an existential lifeline.

I have no doubt that DUers share a similar agenda – a single-payer health care system, elimination of nuclear arms, reduction of the military, full employment, responsible corporate citizenship, equal rights for all – the list goes on and on. And although we may be taking separate paths toward common goals, we will inevitably be meeting down the road.

I leave with the clear awareness that I have taken from DU much more than I contributed, a debt that I cannot repay.

I will, however, take credit for be the leading light on exposing the dangers of those “Goddamned Flemish”.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/grantcart/54