Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (108 page)

In January 1970 I got a call from a young Jesuit seminarian. He was working with a new organization known as CAP. I had lunch with him, and the next day I was off and running. It was like a roller coaster ride. It took off like wildfire. At St. Daniel’s the women especially got active. I’m an advocate of the Women’s Lib movement. I try to have as many women as possible participate in the church services. Many of the extraordinary ministers at St. Daniel’s are women. The women understand exactly the need for power. They became committed organizers for CAP.

There’s a great difference between textbook civics and the actual civics of the streets. When people, fifty or a hundred, go to see the alderman or the mayor, they can’t believe what they hear. They’re resented by the men they put in power. For the first time in their lives they learn that politics is power. People with the big money—the big institutions, corporations—have worked out deals in back rooms with politicians. They’re not going to break these deals until they’re forced to by the people.

We had five hundred down at Mayor’s Daley’s office during our battle with Commonwealth Edison. They were peaceful. Some of them for the first time in their lives had ever been to city hall. They were just digging it. They’re really looking around and enjoying it. Out come two aldermen, Tom Keane and Paul Wigoda
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and they yell at the people, “You should be home with your kids. Why do you have your kids down here?” Who are you, sir?” said one lady. She couldn’t believe an alderman would talk to her that way. The next thing, she’s being shoved by a policeman. A middle-class woman who loves the system, who’s a friend of the police because they’re for law and order. All of a sudden she’s pushed. She came up to me with tears in her eyes: ”I didn’t do anything. I would have moved if he’d asked me, but he just shoved me. I could understand what those kids went through in Lincoln Park in 1968.“ She hated these kids before.

Funny thing, a lot of the police are for CAP. Some of them are from our community. Their wives have actually participated. The people who delight me are the policemen and their wives. We have many of them involved. They can’t take out-front roles, but they’re silent supporters. They know the system needs an overhaul, that change must come.

Ours is a white community, except for the housing project. A strict racial balance was kept in the area adjacent to the project, fifty percent white, fifty percent black. During the civil rights decade, black organizations pressured for the removal of the quota system. Consequently, white people moved out and black people came in. Homes were built in this area, where you put five hundred dollars down and the rest of your life to pay. The community there is now ninety percent black. Youth gangs keep the black people of this area in fear.

This affects my parish nearby. “Where are we gonna go? We don’t want to live in a black neighborhood.” The blacks say, “We don’t want to live in a white neighborhood.” Both want to live where they can have good schools, good services, good transportation, and feel safe. I blame the CHA,
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which couldn’t care less about these blacks and whites.

Yet in the process of organizing we have seen black people and white people share the same problems. The small home owners. The community has been built up around Midway Airport. When the airlines, in their overscheduling, clogged up O’Hare, Mayor Daley wanted a lot of them transferred to Midway, with their 747 jets. That’s why we’re fighting the Crosstown Expressway. It would gut the city and demolish many of the homes. Black and white together have united to stop the Expressway.
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Another fight. The Sanitary District had been processing waste into sludge, dehydrating the sludge, and the gases had been polluting the community. We had attended Sanitary District meeting after meeting, with one hundred, two hundred, three hundred people. It kept escalating. Finally all the trustees but two came to the rally in the school basement at St. Daniel’s. The room holds eight hundred. Over fifteen hundred were there. They were standing in the aisles, on the window sills, up on the doorway, out in the parking lot. We had testimony from the people who were being terribly affected by this pollution.

I gave a speech and demanded that the trustees sign a contract with the people, setting a date to end that pollution at their next regular meeting. The five trustees present made little speeches and signed their names. The people were just absolutely elated. The roof almost went off. For the first time in their lives they saw the culprits responsible for the smoke that was polluting their neighborhood. The people felt they had won. The trustees —I’ll give them credit—have lived up to the agreement. It’s a much cleaner neighborhood now. If it wasn’t for the pressure of the people, this air would still be polluted.

In 1971 we started to fight U.S. Steel because of pollution. That’s the company my dad works for. This company broke the agreement about cleaning up. How could we fight it? We didn’t have a consumer angle. Ordinary people don’t buy steel ingots. We started investigating U.S. Steel’s tax history. We discovered it was under-assessed by P. J. Cullerton
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to the tune of sixteen million dollars a year. Here were people being polluted to death by a company they were actually subsidizing, because the money lost by the county had to be made up by the small people. As we investigated further, we found out other companies and banks and race tracks were also under-assessed. We went to the county building, en masse, and demanded redress.

The people have now learned the importance of coming out in large numbers. We’re peaceful. We trust ourselves not to be violent. Our strongest weapon is the volume of our voices. Confronting a person up to now considered unapproachable and making him show his face—and state his position in our presence. The people have become politically independent. They recently threw out an alderman . . .

Tremendous changes have occurred in their lives. They are able to understand that their problems in society are not just caused by what they used to consider goofy little minority groups. They’re becoming extremely politicized. They’re able to see people—even black people—as allies, rather than enemies you have to run away from if they move next door to you. What these people are seeing now is a common enemy. It can be called city hall. It can be called the private corporation. It can be called big money. God, have I seen attitudes change!

The most exciting moment in my life? Picture this. It’s the annual meeting of the shareholders of Commonwealth Edison, one of the largest public utilities in the entire country. The chairman of the board and all the directors are up on the stage. We had about two thousand people in the lobby.
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It was like a festival—people dancing. About twenty of us entered the hall. The chairman heads for the podium and is about to gavel the meeting to order. We walk down the aisle. Here is the symbol of the establishment of the United States—the annual meeting of a large corporation. I look up at the chairman and I tell him, “We’re here to find out what you’re going to do about pollution. You have a half-hour to give us your answer.” People were on their feet: What is this priest doing here, disrupting this meeting? We did it.

It was a liberating experience for me. I never believed I would be able to do that kind of thing. I had always been taught to be polite. To say, Yes sir, No sir. To stay in my place. I should be seen and not heard. But I felt, Hell, if you’re not heard, you’re never gonna be seen.

We had the rally outside. A half-hour later we came into the hall again. They let us in, one at a time. Only about ten of us were allowed. They tried to seat us in different parts of the hall. I made a break for this aisle and the others broke away and followed. I faced the chairman again and asked for his answer. There was no answer. He threatened to adjourn the meeting. I said, “Okay, here’s
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answer. You won’t listen to the people, but we’re not gonna take it. We’re gonna go to city hall and force this issue through law.” By this time one of our women who had been wrapped in an arm lock by a security guard—she didn’t know whether to be a lady or kick him or bite him—broke away. She told the chairman a thing or two. We all walked out together.

At the city council we forced them to pass one of the strongest air pol-lution ordinances in the country. We tangled with the all-powerful Commonwealth Edison and forced them to purchase six million tons of low sulphur coal. They’ve retired much of their antiquated equipment. It’s not over yet. There’s a lot of struggle ahead. But we’ve had a touch of victory and it’s sweet.

To be free is to have some kind of say-so about your life. I have no vote on the board of directors of Commonwealth Edison. I count for absolutely nothing. But that company is polluting my environment, is shaping my life, is limiting it and the chances of the kids at St. Daniel’s parish. It’s killing me as a person, as life in the steel mill is killing my father. I have to fight back. That brash act—that rude act—of interrupting the chairman of the board did it. I felt free. I don’t have to be afraid of him. He goes to the toilet the same way I do. What makes him better than me? His hundred thousand dollars a year? Hell no. Well, that act made me free. You can’t emerge as a person if you’re a yes-man. No more yes, Mr. Mayor. No more yes, Mr. Governor. No more yes, Mr. Chairman.

 

My father is the comptroller, treasurer, and a member of the board of directors of a large corporation. His title, salary, his house in the suburbs, everything about his life—the successful American life—is right out of the picture book. But I wouldn’t trade places with him for a million dollars.

My father’s spent his life adding up numbers for somebody else. Any connection between his real life and his work seems to be missing. I feel, with all my doubts about the institution I work for, with the sense of hypocrisy, there’s a connection.

In order to do a better job, I have to become a better man. In the business world, in order to do a better job, you have to become ruthless. In order to make more money, you have to care for people less. In order to succeed, you have to be willing to stab your competitor in the back.

A couple of years ago I was in my father’s office. I think we were getting ready to go out for lunch. He got a phone call. His boss was chewing him out for something—in a tone and language that was humiliating. Here’s my father who had worked for this company for thirty years.

My father’s a dignified man and he works hard. God knows he’s given that company all the years of his life. He doesn’t have anything else. There are no hobbies. He wasn’t close to any of his children. Nothing outside of work. That was it. He would get up in the morning and leave the house and come home twelve, fourteen hours later, six days a week. That was it. Yet here he is at sixty and here’s a guy chewing him out like he’s a little kid. I felt embarrassed being there. I felt sorry that he knew I was watching that happen. I could see he was angry and embarrassed. I could see him concealing those feelings. Sort of shufflin’ and scratchin’ his head, in the face of higher authority. We went to lunch. We didn’t talk about it at all.

I would hate to spend my life doing work like that. If work means something to you, it doesn’t matter what the boss . . . I can imagine being fired from my job. I can imagine an administrator at the college disapproving my teaching methods. But there’s no way he could deprive me of the satisfaction that comes from doing my job well.

If my father were ever let go, I don’t know what he would do. I suppose he could find somebody else to add up numbers for, although at this age that would be hard. There ought to be a reason behind what men do. We’re not just machines, but some of us live like machines. We get plugged into a job and come down at nine o‘clock in the morning and someone turns us on. At five o’clock someone turns us off and we go home. What happens during that time doesn’t have any connection with our real lives.

I have a lot of respect for my father. He worked hard. During the Depression he went to night school in Washington, D.C., and got a law degree. He was a soda jerk in the drugstore of the Mayflower Hotel and he worked his way up to be the chief accountant. He gave his whole life to that corporation. I don’t know any man more honest, more conscientious than my father. But what is it worth? What has it gotten him?

His family and his children got away from him. When I got old enough to go to college, I went off and that was it for me. My sisters graduated from high school and, soon as possible, moved out. It was a place where we all slept, but it wasn’t home.

I felt, as long as I stick to talking about his job, we could have a pleasant, superficial conversation. As I became interested in music and politics, I found no comfortable way to pursue those things with him. His job was the only topic . . . He makes some contribution to the Republican party, he always votes, and he reads the newspaper every day on the train, but the job is really it. After all those years, that’s his life. To ask whether he loves the company or not—it’s irrelevant.

I had a series of jobs in the early fifties, after flunking out of college. I worked for a bank, sold insurance . . . I ended up with a good job as a traveling salesman for a business machine company. I was twenty-three years old and making ten thousand dollars a year. I probably could have made it seventeen thousand the next year. I could see it was going right up.

I began to run into conflicts with my own feelings. I couldn’t accept the way my boss did busines or the way in which everybody in the field did business. If I had remained, I’d be sitting on top of a business of over a million dollars. One of the outfits that had become disenchanted with my boss offered to take me on as their manager and buy them out. It looked like a beautiful proposition. But I just . . . it wasn’t my life. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wasn’t doing it.