Election Year?

 Election Year?

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but this is an election year, a presidential election year. I post a lot on Facebook and Twitter about the election, and I get a lot of responses. All of them are adamant. The Biden supports are trashing Trump, and the Trump supporters are trashing Biden. This has been going on for about 4 years, and I expect it to go on for another four years, regardless of who wins.

For me, one of the interesting things about this whole Trash Fest is that when I was growing up I heard almost nothing about politics and elections.

My parents were largely uninterested in politics. They came over to America after World War II as Polish refugees, Displaced Persons. And as refugees, they took as much interest in American politics as they did in American sports or comic books. My mom and dad, like a lot of the DPs in my neighborhood, were too busy trying to figure out how to survive in this new world to put much time into reading up about Republicans or Democrats.

Don’t get me wrong. My parents knew there were elections and who the candidates were, and sometimes they even voiced an opinion. They liked Eisenhower a lot because he was the general who led the army that freed them from the German concentration and slave labor camps. They also liked John F. Kennedy because he was a Catholic, and that was something they shared with him. But other than that, my mom and dad weren’t interested in politics. I remember asking my dad once why he didn’t apply for US citizenship. He looked at me like I was a nutcase, and he said, “I was born a Polish citizen, and I will die a Polish citizen.” My mom, on the other hand, was a little more flexible about her politics. After I became a naturalized citizen in 1967, she asked me to help her become one too. I reminded her of what my dad was always saying about being born Polish and staying Polish, and I then asked her why she wanted to become a US citizen. She shrugged and just said, “I’ve been in this country for 19 years, and it’s time I become a citizen.”

I’m not sure why she ever became a citizen. She never took an interest in politics after she was naturalized. I remember asking her who she was going to vote for in local elections and in the national elections, and she’d just shrug again and say, “I’ll decide the day I go to the polling place.”

Me and politics?

I’m just the opposite of my parents. After being naturalized in 1967, I’ve voted in every single election I could. I not only voted, I also tried to encourage other people to vote. I’ve volunteered to work on voting phone banks, and I’ve gone door to door reminding people to vote, and I’ve stood outside supermarkets and walmarts handing out leaflets.

I feel it’s the absolute responsibility of every citizen to vote. As Chicago Mayor William Hale Thompson once suggested, we should all vote early and often.

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My latest column for Dziennik Zwiazkowy, the oldest Polish newspaper in America.  

https://dziennikzwiazkowy.com/felietony2/rok-wyborow/

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