How many of you were red diaper babies?

good thread idea, gotta be some of you out there

Could Keith write some sort of script that caused a thread to be locked if one particular person revives it?

Wasn't born into a Red Diaper, but I got here as fast as I could.

i thought this had to do with bloody stools

some people still wearing diapers, apparently
xxpost

Mother's parents were commies who became disenchanted with Stalin but remained hardcore lefties to the end (my grandma, at 90, still is one and so is her second husband). They were heavily involved in civil rights and labor in Chicago and suffered the usual suspicions and profiling that Jewish lefties did in their day but still had successful careers.

The last letter my grandfather ever wrote me was a mildly dementia-influenced but largely correct rant about American foreign policy and about how Bush is the most dangerous president of his lifetime (which is something considering he lived 80-some years). Sadly I no longer have this letter! I am still kicking myself!

Anyway, my mom is more of a liberal than a radical. She did tell me from the time I was young about how the US always supports "our bastard" but she's pretty much a work-within-the-system kind of person. I guess I'm a lefty in mind although I don't always act on it. Unfortunately I think I lack the instinctive sense of urgency that my grandparents gained from growing up with hardship.

see, this is exactly the type of post I (and probably amateurist) was hoping for, thanks Hurting.

you're welcome

i have some quaker blood churnin around in there. some history of CO and social justice crusader junk. but the pacifist/separatist thing became diy/wilderness small govt libertarianism... (gop bait) i think there's some hope in me and a few of my cousins keeping the strain alive but we have other cousins already fighting overseas, etc. funny how times change. you hear those knowledgeable in the political history of the parties in the last fifty years talk about how grass roots changes really affected things... this branch of my family is a good example of liberals gone conservative. ("girls gone wild!" in a totally frightening way.)

i b a quaker 2 msp

other notable details:

-My grandfather as a child went to fascist rallies in Chicago -- to throw rocks at the fascists

-During the McCarthy era he had to go before some kind of local loyalty board. The charges included the fact that he had been seen with African American houseguests and that he "opposed anti-semitism."

-As a young adult my grandmother worked for a draft board - I assume while my grandfather was serving in the Navy during WWII. She recently told me a story that she became aware that two of the officers working there were virulently racist and so she basically arranged to have them shipped off to the war by telling her supervisor "how badly they wanted to go."

I might add that as a generally timid and soft child I mostly just felt trapped under the weight of all these stories as much as they awed me.

yeah, a few of my great grandparents lived much more behind their beliefs than i ever have. it's something that messes with me from time to time.

grandmother on mom's side - Quaker

mom & dad - folksinger/civil rights era, arrested in demos, part of back to land movement in early 70's, dad arrested protesting Cambodia bombings.

I have been a longterm activist as well, but I definitely come from a different place than the commies. there is a super excellent (and out of print) documentary called Seeing Red about former USA CP members.

oh yeah it's probably also worth noting that the whole reason that grandfather was born in the USA is that his dad and uncle left Poland/Russia (they were from a borderland that changed hands a few times) due to the uncle's revolutionary activity. He wasn't a communist though, just some kind of pro-democracy radical.

TBH Rock this is an interesting thread that died too soon, not sure why you've taken issue with it being revived?

For my part I wish my parents had been of any kind of interesting political stripe but alas, dad is from conservative casually racist farming stock (hes not racist, but pretty old fashioned) and mum's from conservative, nice, religious stock. So no commies or lefties in my upbringing.

My grandparents on both sides were conservative in their own ways. My parents stayed pretty middle of the road, though they both had radical siblings. Several of my mother's brothers were members of the Brown Berets and my Tio Chano still claims with pride that he once chatted with Huey P. Newton long into the night some evening in 1969.

Both of my grandfathers were very old school liberals with decidedly pinko leanings. My paternal grandfather was probably furthest to the left of the two but my maternal grandfather was the one who kept me subscribed to 'The Nation' all through high school.

i'm not one (if there's any activist history in my family, which is doubtful, they have kept it extremely well hidden) but my friend's grandmother was trotsky's secretary for a stint

My parents were both pretty moderate socialists (by the standards of Sheffield in the early 80s). I remember watching my dad get into an argument with a newspaper-selling member of the SWP about some foundational tenet of socialism in about 1993, but he's generally become pretty right wing in a Clarkson way.

Potato Jones is my great uncle on my dad's side.

http://www.terrynorm.ic24.net/spanish%20civil%20war.htm#9

Less popular with Time Magazine at the time:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,931579,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,757681,00.html

i thought this had to do with bloody stools

-- remy bean, Monday, February 4, 2008 4:44 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Link

^^

My dad was a militant in the Chilean socialist party during the period of the Popular Unity government. He's became progressively less radical since the end of the 80s or thereabouts.

I'm fairly centrist politically.

TBH Rock this is an interesting thread that died too soon, not sure why you've taken issue with it being revived?

No problems with it being revived really, it was just a lazy zing at someone who revives loads of threads and sometimes seems content to revive, sit back and let other ILXors do the heavy lifting. It is a good thread idea though. I regret the zing.

For myself, it's always been kind of amusing to me that my father, super-Republican, has benefited from his union pension and VA benefits since his hip replacement forced him to quit work. I wonder if he would have turned out a little more reasonable if he hadn't spent his working life in Orange County.

My parents' politics are all over the place, kinda lower-middle class libertarians from working class backgrounds who don't like paying taxes but still hate the Tories and read The Mirror. Dad will moan about PC, then praise Galloway for speaking out against Iraq. Don't think they've ever voted, can't stand politicians and think any sort of broadsheet worldview (left or right) is pretentious.

we were encouraged as kids to point two fingers and pretend to shoot at the tv screen whenever "The Witch" appeared on the news. Even now, if I see Thatcher on the telly I still have that reflex.

My maternal grandfather has been a Republican since before it was "cool." Maternal grandmother was a Southern Democrat. They still argue about FDR, even though she became a Republican long ago. They are also very Catholic, so they love people like Pat Buchanan, Mel Gibson and even Generalissimo Franco. Sad but true.

The lefties are on my dad's side. My great-uncle Alan was blacklisted in the States and investigated in the UK by MI5. His brother John (my grandfather) was far more to the center, but he still had racial views light years beyond those of his neighbors in Houston, who were scandalized when he would invite people like Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin' Hopkins to his house.

As for my parents, they were both pretty radical. As hippies went, they were far more into the music and the drugs than the demonstrations, though. But they did come a hair away from naming me Geronimo in honor of the Apache warrior. On our wall, we had a huge portrait of him kneeling with his rifle. (I think we had one of Mao too.) In the end they gave me one ordinary name and one hippie name.

I thought this phrase meant bloody stool until now!