Occupy Seoul

I wanted to post a blog about this because I believe that it’s a very important issue not just for Americans but for the people of the world. You may or may not agree with my opinions and that’s alright. The world would be a boring place if we all believed in the exact same things. But I ask that you respect my opinions just like you might expect me to respect yours.

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I went to the Occupy Seoul protest yesterday (October 15^th, 2011) to show that I stand in solidarity with my American brothers and sisters in fighting the good fight against all the problems that plague our country. There are too many issues at hand and I am not going to try to talk about all of them because I would never finish and frankly, I’m not very well versed in all of them. Like I said, there are just too many of them. Instead what I will do is talk about the one that I am most familiar with because it has hit me on a personal level, the economic crisis. Again, I know that you may not agree with my opinions or the fact that I protest, but in all honesty, I don’t need anyone’s approval on this other than that of my mother and father. Why my mother and father? Let me explain…

My dad went to the United States in (I believe) 1979 and my mom in 1981. They went there originally as illegal immigrants. They did this not because they didn’t want to go through the process of legal residency, but because attaining legal residency in the U.S. took very long, it was very expensive, and this was a matter of survival of the fittest. Their situation back at home in Mexico was not good. In any case, they went to the U.S., they met, and got married. Life was not easy for them as illegal immigrants. They were at the bottom.

My dad worked in the fields for a short while, then at a bakery, he drove a tow truck, he was an auto mechanic, and eventually he found work with a very nice American man who hired him and trained him in hardwood floor installation. He worked there for a while at the same time that he went to night classes at a nearby high school where he learned how to read, write, and do basic math (yeah, Mexico was not very good at sending kids to school). He wasn’t there for very long, but he was a quick study and ran with what knowledge he had attained. At the same time, my mother was working very hard as a “costurera” (seamstress) in the clothing factories of the L.A. Fashion district and surrounding areas. The pay was not good because the bosses knew that most of the workers were “illegals” and they took advantage of their situation by paying them below minimum wage. Regardless of that, it was the only job that she could find, so she stayed. There was another advantage to staying there: she didn’t have to pay for child care. No, the factory didn’t provide child care. My mother took me with her as a baby, would sit me down in my car seat next to her sewing machine, and got to work. She watched me and worked. When she needed to change my diaper, the bosses were at least kind enough to let her step out for 5 minutes.

This was our life in Los Angeles.

We moved around the first few years. Fist, we lived in someone's garage, then in someone else’s garage, then we moved into a trailer home. My mother submitted the applications for legal residency under the amnesty act of the 80’s and they were both given their green cards. Legal status attained, my parents, with the help of my aunt, were able to gather enough money for a down payment on a broken-down house in South Central L.A. I was 4 at the time and my sister Nancy was born soon after. Times were tough. My parents rarely had enough money for a proper trip to the grocery store after all the bills were paid. They refused to accept welfare or food stamps, but many times we did have to resort to the local church and other charitable organizations. We never had money for Thanksgiving dinner or for Christmas presents and I do remember standing in line with my mom, and baby sister at the Rescue Mission during Christmas season just to get a box of food, a pair of shoes for each member of the family, a couple of blankets, and a toy that some kind-hearted person somewhere had donated.

Eventually, my dad learned his trade well enough that he started his own small business in hardwood floor installation. He was very good at it and began to climb out of the dump; little by little, but by his own diligence and hard work. After a few years of dodging bullets in S.C.L.A., my parents decided to get us out of that neighborhood and to a safer one. They bought a house in Pacoima. Now, Pacoima isn’t the nicest neighborhood, but it was way better than the last one so my sister and I thought we were suddenly rich. Our parents’ American dream was starting to manifest itself. My dad always dreamed that his hard work would some day allow him to buy a nice plot of land and have his own “rancho” in America. My mom dreamed of getting an education for her kids and for herself. We weren’t quite there yet, but we were going somewhere. My dad kept working hard at his flooring business and my mom found a job at the Price Pfister factory in Pacoima. It was the largest employer in the San Fernando Valley and they offered great benefits. Things were looking up… Until suddenly they weren’t.

When I was still in middle school, Price Pfister decided to move its factory operations out of the U.S. and into Mexico. They began to lay people off and this spawned a protest from displaced workers and angry valley residents. My mom lost her job and we took to the streets and started protesting. The factory still moved to Mexico, but because of pressure from the worker union and the media attention, Price Pfister agreed to pay for the displaced workers to get job training in another field. This was a huge victory for us because my mother was able to go to school and study English and child development which she later used to get a job as a Special Ed Paraprofessional at L.A. Unified School District. It was at that age that I learned that standing up for one’s rights and getting an education is the way to get ahead.

So why did I tell you this really long story? Because my parents worked very hard to get ahead in America and they were going somewhere, but when the economic crisis hit a few years ago, my father’s business took a hard hit, his mortgage skyrocketed, and he lost his home. He had to move out of his house with his two youngest children (my parents have now been divorced for a while) and was forced to move in with his sister. He’s been working very hard and trying to get as many clients as he possibly can, but it just isn’t enough. He now lives with his current wife in the Mohave Desert because it’s the only place he can afford. Because of all of that, he has not been able to keep up with child support payments and my mother, now single and responsible for my two youngest siblings Sandra and Jonathan, has to support two kids and pay the mortgage on that house in Pacoima. She struggles to make the payments and there is the looming threat of being laid off just like so many other school employees have been laid off due to budget cuts caused by a collapsing state and national economy.

Maybe you have been only lightly affected by the U.S. economic crisis and that’s great. I’m glad that you’ve been ok. But unless you’ve actually been at the bottom, you cannot expect my family, and millions of others with similar stories, to start out at the bottom again. Unless you have been at the bottom, you cannot fully comprehend the devastation of this regression. I have seen my father’s eyes. They no longer laugh like they used to when I would sit and watch him entertain his friends with his guitar and Mexican folk songs. They no longer tell of dreams and aspirations but of the harsh reality of the country he immigrated to with all the best intentions in the world. My mother is the only one who still laughs and dreams despite being downtrodden. I cannot sit idly by and watch the fire leave her eyes like it has in my father's. The least I can do is to uphold the dreams and aspirations that they instilled in me and fight as hard as I can. Not just for them, but for all the other people in America and in the world who keep trying to realize their own dreams only to be knocked down by faulty economic systems.

Being that I don’t currently live in the U.S., I took the opportunity to protest in Seoul. I had no comments to make on the Korean economic system because I’ve only been here a short time and I still don’t understand it. I was there to stand with my fellow Americans because the problems in America, like it or not, affect the world.

If you have stuck around to read this entire blog post, I applaud and thank you. I know it’s very long but I really thought this needed to be said.

As for the protest itself, it was quite peaceful yet powerful. I ended up at a smaller protest in Yeouido Park near the Korean Stock Exchange. It was a great feeling to see everyone - Americans, Canadians, Spaniards, other foreigners, and of course, Koreans - stand up for their rights as global citizens.

Special thanks to the lovely man who worked the weekend shift at the U.S. Embassy for answering my after-hours call and advising me on the dos and don'ts of protesting as a non-citizen in Korea before I actually went to the protest.