We're a big people - we can handle this

             I traveled much when I first came to this country. It was easy, just deliver a car to San Francisco and you could hit the road, be your own Jack Kerouac.

The vastness and potential of the country was awe-inspiring – the interstate highways, the industriousness of the people, the sense of American can-do!

I learned even more about the US with Black 47 for I came to know and appreciate Irish-America in a way that few native-born Irish ever do. I learned first hand the difference between a person born on Tipperary Hill in Syracuse and one reared on Chicago’s South Side, while it didn’t take long to become acquainted with the huge cultural divide between Dorchester and Geary Street in San Francisco.

Music, however, bonded all these communities: Irish-Americans everywhere raised their fists to “James Connolly” and jigged with abandon to “Funky Ceili.”

For the culture is strong – you can almost touch it at the various festivals and the Irish centers that dot the country. It’s a rare city now where you can’t take lessons in the Irish language, not to mention that you can get a decent pint at a traditional music seisiún just about everywhere.

The Irish embassy and consulates are playing a major role in reaching out to the Diaspora and helping foster the resurgence of Irish-American cultural pride. This is in stark contrast to some decades back when there was considerable friction between Irish diplomats and Republican activists; a blinkered patronization set the tone for any social interaction. Where once Irish embassy and consulate officials preferred the lace-curtain certainties of DC and NYC, now they travel nationwide to festivals and cultural events, as willing to listen as to lecture.

And still I feel that a certain potential is unrealized – and I’m not talking about investment in Ireland or boosting tourism – no rather a meeting of minds, or even more importantly perhaps, a union of hearts between the home country and the Diaspora.

One of the keys to such a reunion is for Irish natives to realize that Irish-America is nuanced and not just some generic cash machine to be exploited around St. Patrick’s Day. Irish-Americans have a deep interest in Ireland that goes beyond kissing the limpid Blarney Stone; many are au courant with modern Irish music, theatre and literature and are often more at home on the Falls Road than your average punter from Waterford or Walkinstown.

Irish-America is often seen to be rigid and static. Nothing could be further from the truth. The social changes of the last few years have been startling – legalized gay marriage is sweeping the states along with a general forbearance, if not total, acceptance of this alternate life-style. But then there’s always been a latent Libertarian streak in American culture that encourages people to be what they are.

How odd then that cosmopolitan New York City should provide the one major issue with which Irish-Americans can be whipped every year. 

Though there was initial relief on both sides of the Atlantic when the LGBT group from NBC was invited to march in the 2015 St. Patrick’s Day parade, it has since come to be seen for what it is – a short-term effort to stop the hemorrhaging of sponsorship.

New Yorkers deserve better. We live in the most inclusive and international city in the world and we don’t shirk from big gestures.

We can argue ‘til the cows come home about Catholic doctrine and who should or shouldn’t march, but it’s time to put all that behind us and use plain and unvarnished logic.

If an American LGBT organization can be invited to march – then why can’t an Irish group? The streets will not cave in. In fact our LGBT brothers and sisters will bring new life, joy and verve to a parade that has undergone many changes since 1762 when Irish soldiers in the British Army began the tradition.

We’re a big people, we handled Know-Nothings and the tragedy of 9/11; we can take cultural change in our stride, and in a couple of years both the Irish in Ireland and Irish-America will look back and wonder what the fuss was all about.

Joe Hill's Last Will

My will is easy to decide

 For there is nothing to divide

My kin don't need to fuss and moan

‘Cause moss don’t cling to a rolling stone

My body? Oh, if I could choose

I would to ashes it reduce

And let the merry breezes blow -

My dust to where some flowers grow…

            So went Joe Hill’s Last Will. Swedish immigrant Joel Hagglund/aka Joe Hill wrote that in 1915 the night before he was executed by the State of Utah, supposedly at the instigation of the copper bosses.

            The big bosses have never been ones to mess with particularly if you want to unionize their businesses. True, Apple has never whacked anyone; yet their poorly paid “genius” employees toil on without the benefit of a union.

            That would be no big surprise to Mr. Hill, yet I bet he’d be staggered by the current level of political unawareness. 

            For instance in the New York Times recently a middle-aged lady from Kentucky was lauding Obamacare now that she is able to get treatment for a number of serious ailments.

            When asked, however, whom she would be voting for in the upcoming Senate election, without hesitation she opted for Senator Mitch McConnell. When reminded that this gentleman has vowed to repeal Obamacare “root and branch,” she blithely replied that she always voted Republican. You don’t have to be Joe Hill to scratch your head at that logic.

            Then again there have always been people who vote against their own interests. James Connolly and Big Jim Larkin, contemporaries of Joe Hill, never ceased to wonder at the scabs who took union members’ jobs during strikes. Didn’t these scavengers know that even if they gained a few weeks work the bosses would eventually pick them off too?

            The Great Recession officially ended in 2009; corporate profits have been sky high for many years and yet the workforce is so beaten down by the threat of dismissal, few dare mention a wage raise. To add fat to the fire, real wages as adjusted for inflation have actually been dropping since 1972. Hey, Joe Hill, maybe it’s time to organize again.

            Whatever happened to the “social contract?” Remember that archaic concept where capital and labor not only co-existed but actually thrived together. Instead of squeezing every last shekel from his workers Henry Ford had a crazy notion that if he paid them a decent wage they would eventually become customers.

If Ford’s idea made sense a century ago then it’s bible-strong today when 70% of the economy is dependent on the goods and services we supply each other.

            Instead we have a federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Try asking out Kim Kardashian on that! It’s beyond time for an across-the-boards raise.

But won’t that increase the cost of living? Of course it will, but the economy could do with a little controlled inflation right now. The extra dollar on my pint to help pay for a reasonable minimum wage will cost me $20 a week but it will be money well spent as it will go directly back into the economy and make us all that bit richer.

            There we go again, says Your Man up in Pearl River – taxing me bloody pint and getting the government involved too!

That’s only the half of it, man - the federal government should be pumping money into an aging and ailing national infrastructure thereby providing decent paying jobs.  Who else is going to do it? Apple, Facebook?

            Turn on your Fox News, your Rush Limbaugh, or whatever your reactionary secret pleasure might be and I guarantee you that within minutes you’ll hear the holy trinity of “government, Obamacare and unions” being damned to high heaven.

            There’s a reason - all three of them are working for the general good. And after Joe Hill appears in his shroud in Congress and causes a stampede to raise the minimum wage, he’s going to head for Kentucky where he’ll recite the last words of his will to a certain politically unaware Obamacare recipient. I hope she’s listening!

… Perhaps some fading flower then

Would spring to life and bloom again

This his is my last and final will

Goodbye, good luck to all of you