My mother was a sixteen-year-old child when she found out she was pregnant with me. She had me at seventeen. My father was nineteen and already an alcoholic and drug abuser. Five years later he left her with three children and didn’t pay child support. Imagine yourself right now, 22 years old with three toddlers, on your own. She moved close to my maternal grandmother who worked at a cannery in the Bay Area, California. My grandfather was a 101st Airborne veteran from WWII and he drove cab, trucks, worked at the Mint, and drank too much as well. They watched us when they could.
We lived in a
one-bedroom apartment and my mom worked three jobs. She worked three jobs.
Three jobs: waiting tables, making pizzas, cleaning hotel rooms. She was
hispanic and never graduated from High School. Even with her three paychecks we
still qualified for food stamps and welfare. My mother drew the wheels and
little windows of buses and cars on the boxes the government cheese came in and
that’s what we played with.When I was seven or eight my mom would get home from
a graveyard shift and sometimes send me to the store with food stamps for
milk or cereal for us to eat. They weren’t the credit card they have today. The
food stamps were bills, the bigger the value, the bigger the bill. The only way
the store would let me buy anything was with a signed letter from her giving me
permission to use them. Picture an eight year old child struggling to set a
gallon of milk on the store counter and then unfolding a note from his mother
with the big food stamp paper-clipped to the corner of it.
She didn’t make
enough money to pay federal income tax. In fact, tax time was her favorite
time of year because we received a refund and she could finally catch up on
buying us Christmas and birthday presents after she fixed the piece of shit
car, because every year it needed something, tires, alternator, new battery.
Two years later
she couldn’t do it anymore. The only way out was to give my brothers and I to
our paternal grandparents. They were retired and lived off a modest pension and
social security. My grandpa was a flight medic in WWII, left the service and
started as a dog catcher in South City, San Francisco. A little less than
thirty years later he was the head of public works and would dine regularly
with the mayor of San Fran. They retired and moved to the Cascade
Mountains of Oregon, into a trailerpark for couples 55 and older. They
took us in. They didn’t pay income tax either.
Years later my
alcoholic father came back in the picture and my brothers and I bounced from
trailerpark to trailerpark with him. We were the worst of the white trash. Dad
sold his foodstamps for half their value to buy booze. He worked under the
table or at job just long enough to get fired and collect unemployment. Occasionally
he paid taxes, but for the most part he used the system. He was the worst part
of what Romney identified as his 47%. I can’t deny that.
I say this for a
reason. Here’s my point: I lived both sides of the spectrum, and in the middle.
My grandparents somehow survived with three small children on their meager
income without asking the government for anything. My mother tried, but even
with welfare couldn’t do it. My father abused the hell out of the system and
for most of my childhood I was the filthy, white-trash kid that someone like
Mitt Romney would look at and dismiss as a waste, someone who would never,
never do anything with his life except be a draw on society. The sad part is
that he would be right about the majority of people I grew up with, but not me.
As a junior in
High School I lived on my own in a one-bedroom house, went to classes during
the day, and stocked shelves at the supermarket at night. I joined the military
young and traveled the world. I defended democracy and saved lives in Haiti in
1995. I stayed in the military and had two amazing children then left in 1999.
I enrolled in college and used the GI Bill but before my second year I left to
join the military again the day after 9/11. I fought in the Iraq War and was
critically injured, recieving a Purple Heart. My platoon of 30 to 40 men won
the Presidential Unit Citation for their actions during that war. That is the
same fucking medal they gave Seal Team 6 for killing Osama bin Laden. Later, I
volunteered to save lives again during Hurricane Katrina and I did. I did save
lives. After leaving the military for a second time it only took me only five
years to get my Associates, Bachelors, and Masters Degree. Now I help manage a
national company and I have, myself, hired over 30 veterans this year.
My parents and
my grandparents were the very bottom of Mitt Romney’s 47 percent. I would have
been what Mary Matalin calls a parasite. I grew up with the poorest of the
poor.
My point is that
no one, no one, can tell where the good people will come from. No political
consultant, no politician, no human being should be allowed to dismiss any part
of the population as being useless to America. Isn’t that what the American
Dream is? Isn’t it?
I’m not a
registered Democrat. Being 39 I’ve only voted in a handfull of elections and it’s
been on both sides of the board. I voted against Clinton for Perot. I voted
against Gore and I’m sorry to say for Bush the first time, for Kerry the second
time. But my vote for President Barack Obama was the proudest one I cast. I saw
a man who wants to change what is wrong with the system and in these last four
years I’ve seen him put into policy what he said he would, against incredible
odds. It hasn’t happened yet. I know. As an employer I see it. I can’t pay people
a living wage right now and it breaks my heart, especially when I see how these
people live. They have roommates all they way up to their sixties. I know we
are hurting. I see it every day and if there was a better way I would vote for
it, but Romney isn’t it.
I will vote for
President Obama again. I will do everything I can so he can finish what he’s
started. I believe a president has more of an opportunity to get his policies
passed during a second term. I know that my choice isn’t popular with some of
my war-buddies, some of the people I respect more than anything else in this
world, but I need to do what I see is right. This is the best country on the
planet. I know, I’ve been to many of the worst. In this country even the
poorest kid, white trash, black, hispanic, even the poorest kid has a shot at
becoming great. We’re all Americans. Let’s stop dividing the country into
percentages and work together to move forward.
Sean Davis
Sean Davis
[To read The Breech, Sean Davis' haunting first-person account of the humanity -- and inhumanity -- of war, click Here.]
Sean Davis is a Purple Heart recipient who served in the army infantry for fourteen years; during his time in the military he served on numerous deployments including a revolution, a war, and three humanitarian missions. He left the military to go back to school and received his Bachelor's from Portland State University and his Master's at Pacific University. He lives in NE Portland with his beautiful family and Great Dane/Mastiff. A memoir of his experiences in the Iraq War and New Orleans during humanitarian missions for Hurricane Katrina will be published in 2013 by Ooligan Press.
