I was supposed to write an explanation for Yearly Kos, in 500 words, on how I became a progressive person. I kind of blew it off. Actually, I kept forgetting about it. But, I did think about writing it, and so I thought about what I would write, if I did write it.
I’ve received various accounts of how I got my name. But they all share something in common. The spring before I was born, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. At the time, my father was good friends and co-workers with a black man named Marty. I don’t know how many black men were then working in upper management on Madison Avenue. But, I assume, there were not too many. In any case, that’s how I got my name.
My parents are very religious people and they took me to church every Sunday as a child. I would leave before the service was over and attend Sunday School. After the service, there were often lectures in the dining hall. And since my church was across the street from Princeton University, they had a lot of prominent speakers. In fact, some fairly prominent religious thinkers were members of my church. Elaine Pagels, for example.
Episcopalians get a rap for being rich, white, and non-serious about their religion. Think George Herbert Walker and Barbara Bush. Princeton’s chapter fit that description, except for the non-serious part. Trinity Church was serious and it was progressive. It was the first Episcopalian church to ordain a woman as a minister. The focus of the sermons was not on fire and brimstone. It was based on the needs of the poor. It was based on opposition to apartheid in South Africa. I never understood the divinity of Christ, nor could I make sense of the miracles in the Bible. But I absorbed the core teaching of Jesus Christ, nonetheless. I suppose I took from it what I liked and left the parts I didn’t. I learned to oppose hypocrisy, not to adhere to a rigid set of rules for my life, to question the authorities, and to care for my neighbors. We read from the Book of Common Prayer, and I repeated these words hundreds of times:
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.
I’ve had plenty of friends trespass against me. I’ve always forgiven them. Other people? I’m still working on that. It was the early exposure to a very progressive version of Protestantism that began my road to progressive political thinking.
My first really political memory comes from the second grade. It was 1976, and there was an election on between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. The whole class had an election. I went home and asked my parents whom I should support. My father was still raging over Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon. I don’t remember his words, but they made a strong impression on me, and I went in the next day and cast my vote for Jimmy Carter.
By 1980, my father had become deeply disillusioned with Carter. I think he initially supported Anderson, and cast his vote for Reagan. I, on the other hand, was still loyal to Carter.
My parents moved out of the house I grew up in a few years ago. When they did, my mother delivered to me a few boxes of my childhood toys and other knick-knacks. I was stunned to find a collection of cartoons I had drawn back in 1980. They were cartoons of Carter and Anderson and Reagan. I portrayed Reagan as a warmonger. I had mushroom clouds, and missiles, and wrote ‘Ray-Gun’. Clearly, I was already an election junkie. And a progressive.
As I became a teenager, I was opposed to the wars in Central America and I thought the get tough on drugs ‘Just Say No’ stuff was a ridiculous waste of time, money, and energy. I couldn’t understand why Reagan slashed programs for the poor and called ketchup a vegetable.
I’m not sure how I became a progressive. But the teachings of Jesus and Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon were big factors.
How did you become a progressive?
