I grew up singing songs around camp fires with my eyelids slipping and the heat from the fire on my face. I heard my family hamming up old labor songs. “You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt / St. Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go / I owe my soul to the company store.” I always felt sympathetic for the workers in those folk songs. It wasn’t fair that they worked so hard and got so little in return. That’s where my liberal roots began, around that campfire, with my family, singing about the unfair treatment of the worker.
Struggles of the common person told in these songs have shaped my political ideas. I believe that one of the most important things about democracy is that everyone, from the CEO to the garbage collector, has a voice and that one voice is not more important than another. I call myself a leftist, a term used often negatively today because it is associated with extremism. But I use it because it means the ideals of egalitarianism, where everyone is equal.
My grandmother was very involved with the environmental movement in New York City. Her work helped lead New York to ban hydraulic fracturing. Her environmentalist ideas have influenced me and inspired me to take action too.
Two years ago, we attended the People’s Climate March in New York City along with 300,000 other people. The atmosphere of that march was nothing like anything I had ever experienced. People were yelling protest rhymes, beating on drums, carrying flags and signs, all marching down the carless streets of Manhattan. I loved the feeling of solidarity I had with everyone there. All of us trying to tell the world (or as the case was at the time: the world leaders attending the UN Climate Summit) that we need to stop treating the earth like it’s a never ending resource. In other words: change the system, not the climate.
I don’t think environmental protection is a liberal idea, but recently it has become one. This issue has always been important to me, so anyone who will help in this effort has my support. Currently those people are mostly liberal, hence another reason why I am a leftist.
I love that feeling of solidarity and unity that comes from a march. The idea of the community working together to make sure everyone’s needs are accounted for is a main pillar of what I believe as a leftist. Universal health care is a good example of this ideal because the philosophy behind it is that everyone deserves basic rights and those are not determined by your wealth.
When living in a community, you give and you take. The left emphasizes support because often the system isn’t fair to the common person. I saw this in those worker songs that I sang around the campfire. I see it today in people needing to work multiple jobs to support their family because their wages aren’t high enough or they were shut out from opportunities because of a lack of good education. But not only do you invest in helping people, but you also are helped by people when you are struggling. This exchange is just the human way.
– By Meredith Avison
