by Brother Michel Bettigole, O.S.F.
Like so many children born of working-class parents whose defining life experience had been the Great Depression of the 1930s, I was a born Democrat. My father spoke often of the hardships he encountered as a young man seeking work, and he had an emotional bond akin to awe for the person and New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. My mother, who had supported her mother and four younger siblings since the age of 16, told me how, when her infant sister was ill and they had no money for medicine, she would go to local bars to beg. Her two brothers eventually got jobs through the local Democratic machine. Her gratitude for the help they had received lasted a lifetime.
I came of voting age during the JFK campaign for president. I worked with the Democratic Party to help elect Kennedy, and I continued to support Democratic candidates on the city, state and national level.
Then in the 1960s, things began to change. I still supported the Democrats and President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. Like many Americans, however, I had profound doubts about the wisdom of our war in Vietnam and began supporting liberal Democrats who opposed the war and were active in the growing Civil Rights movement.
In the 1970s, these liberal Democrats took up the banner for abortion. The phrase, “personally opposed, but politically affirmative,” became a mantra. Throughout the next 30 years, the party that was once the party of working-class Americans morphed into a party controlled by liberal elites. The Democratic Party which was once the party of the neighborhood became the party of “a chardonnay crowd” – an elite whose allegiance was to municipal unions that espoused the most extreme liberal programs and that has become increasingly hostile to religious institutions, especially Catholicism.
The recent refusal of Gov. Andrew Cuomo to provide a provision for tax credits for donors to parochial and private schools and the Obama administration’s attempt to force religious institutions to accept health care programs contrary to their religious beliefs has sealed my final disillusionment with the party of my youth.
In New York City, the real electoral battle is not the election but the primary. Whoever is the Democratic candidate will win. Primaries by their very nature are an ideal fighting ground for those who feel alienated from their party’s current philosophy (i.e., the Tea Party). Candidates that a group wishes to oppose can be clearly identified. The winner of the primary will be those who can get out the vote. Thus a strongly motivated political opposition can be a powerful tool to effect change.
Politicians only respond to power. My proposal is to play old-fashioned Democratic clubhouse hardball.
We can build an organization that will help us regain control of our party. Let’s get off our backsides, and let’s play hardball![hr]
Brother Michel was principal of Bishop Ford H.S., Park Slope, from 1978 to 1988, and is the former program director of The Prayer Channel.
