My
close friend, Dan Cooney has passed away.
For many years Dan and I had dinners or lunches at the Friday’s
restaurant near where he lived on the Ben Franklyn Parkway in Philadelphia. On one of these occasions, I noticed my
cousin, a corporate lawyer, was also dining there. My cousin was gracious and introduced me to
his associate and I introduced him to Dan.
Later,
I mentioned to Dan that I have only spoken to my cousin on rare occasions and
that we don’t have much in common. Dan
responded to this by saying something like, “He’s not the one who is different,
we are the one’s who are different.”
So,
when I speak of the life of Dan Cooney I would like to speak of one of the
questions he was most interested in.
This question is: Why? Why did
Dan choose to live the life he lived? In
summarizing Dan’s life, I think of two qualities he had that we might think
about. Dan was sensitive as well as
perceptive.
Dan’s
father worked in the laundry of a hospital.
His parents adored their children and did their very best to care for
them. Dan understood this very well.
However,
working in the laundry and living on the wages of a hospital worker gave Dan’s
father a perspective on life. He lived
through the McCarthy era where anyone who even associated with communists was
blacklisted. However, his experiences in
life taught Dan’s father not to go along with that way of thinking.
Dan
told me that his father’s favorite book was Looking
Backward by Edward Bellamy. In this
book, published in 1888, Bellamy imagined what a future socialist world would
look like. There would be no poverty,
women would be liberated, and everyone would have a sense of solidarity.
Dan’s
parents felt that sending their children to Catholic schools was the best
option they had. Dan attended these
religious schools for twelve years.
However,
Dan didn’t like the time he spent at these schools. Many of us don’t have fond memories of our
times in school. What he didn’t like was
the regimentation as well as the demand to strictly adhere to the rules. Clearly, there is nothing inherently wrong
with having rules. Without certain rules
we wouldn’t be able to survive. What Dan
didn’t like is the fact that there were no good reasons for having many of
these rules.
After
high school, I believe Dan spent some time in the military. Dan had many funny stories, but some of his
most hilarious were of his short time in the military.
This
was in the time of the war against Vietnam.
Drill sergeants demanded that eighteen and nineteen year olds strictly
adhere to discipline. The consequences
for not strictly following orders might be jail or death.
Dan
was opposed to the war in Vietnam and he clearly did not appreciate this
atmosphere. Dan questioned officers as
to why he needed to follow their orders.
This infuriated officers and they attempted to break Dan’s spirit.
Then,
Dan was sent to the infirmary where a doctor discovered that Dan had a defect
in his eye that wouldn’t allow him to shoot straight. One of the best things Dan heard in his life
was when this doctor told Dan that he was given a medical discharge.
After
the army Dan went to Temple University and studied history. This interest in history continued with Dan
throughout his life. However, Dan grew
to dislike his studies at Temple. I can
summarize Dan’s feelings about his studies at Temple with the title of a book
by James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told
Me. Dan liked that book.
Gradually
Dan gained a perspective towards his studies at Temple. Initially, Dan was attracted to the wrings of
Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. These
writers exposed the mythology Dan was learning at Temple. In Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, Dan learned that there was a
completely different history of this country.
In
later years Dan learned that while Chomsky and Zinn wrote compelling histories,
they weren’t advancing a political orientation that had any hope of promoting
meaningful change. Today, Noam Chomsky
chastises people who refuse to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Then,
Dan listened to a leader of the Socialist Workers Party named Fred
Halstead. Halstead was also a leader of
the movement against the war in Vietnam.
He even went to Vietnam to talk to soldiers about why they should be
against the war.
Fred
Halstead was a large man who made his living as a cutter in garment shops. These garment shops are also known as sweat
shops.
Dan’s
first impression of Halstead was that he liked what he said, but couldn’t get
over the fact that he was a factory worker.
Dan’s experience led him to believe that smart people were the one’s who
were college professors. Dan would begin
to learn that this idea was also a part of his miss-education. In his later life, one of Dan’s joys, that he
always looked forward to, was selling The
Militant newspaper that represented the politics of the Socialist Workers
Party.
Armed
with his history degree from Temple, Dan became a hospital worker. Here, Dan was in the Hospital Workers Union
1199. As we might see from looking at
Dan’s life, he instinctively gravitated to this union. Before this job, Dan needed to adapt himself
to his environment. Now, there was a
union that supported his interests and the interests of his co-workers.
The
battles that 1199 had with the hospital corporations were intense to say the
least. On the day of August 28, 1972,
Norman Rayford was murdered while organizing a strike by hospital workers. After his untimely death, the union negotiated
a paid holiday called Norman Rayford Day, and union hospital workers have had a
day off every year since Rayford’s murder.
It
was in this spirit that Dan marched on picket lines when 1199 went on
strike. Dan also took advantage of one
of the benefits the Union negotiated.
Being a hospital worker made Dan eligible for a scholarship for his
education to become a nurse.
Dan
was also like many young people who relieve their alienation by drinking to
excess. After many years, Dan managed to
quit this habit with the aid of Alcoholics Anonymous. We should keep in mind that most people who
attempt to quit this disease relapse.
Dan, as best as I know, continued his sobriety for the rest of his life.
Many
individuals who manage to quit addictions to drugs and or alcohol develop
careers aiding those who have this disease.
This is what Dan did, but he wasn’t like many of those who work in this
field.
Dan
wanted to understand the question: Why do people feel the need to resort to
addictive drugs? A typical approach to
this problem is to teach a patient about how addictions are harmful, and for
people to develop a different way of conducting their lives.
Dan
certainly understood this, but looked at a deeper question. Why do we have this alienation that we all
feel at one time or another? Given Dan’s
background with the communist movement, he began to understand that the cause
of alienation has to do with the fact that working people only receive a small
percentage of the wealth we produce.
That wealth that working people don’t have access to is used to support
the interests of the affluent.
One
of Dan’s favorite socialists was Eugene Debs.
Debs was a labor leader who ran for president as a socialist five
times. He was so articulate that people
actually paid to listen to him speak, and this was how his campaigns raised
money.
Debs
gave a speech in Canton, Ohio in 1918 against the United States participation
in the First World War. This speech
landed Debs in prison for three years.
While in prison Debs ran for President again, and received over one
million votes.
After
his release from prison Debs wrote a book arguing that the prison system in
this country needs to be abolished. In
this book Debs wrote about why there would be little incentive for crime in a
genuinely socialist world. These words
also demonstrate why alienation exists in the world we live in today.
“What
incentive would there be for a man to steal when he could acquire a happy
living so much more easily and reputably by doing his share of the community
work? He would have to be a perverted
product of capitalism indeed who would rather steal than serve in such a
community. Men do not shrink from work,
but from slavery. The man who works
primarily for the benefit of another does so only under compulsion, and work so
done is the very essence of slavery.”[1]
Given
that we don’t live in a socialist world, Dan did his best to help his patients
deal with their inner turmoil. He
deliberately worked the graveyard shift so he would be able to talk extensively
with patients. From what I understand,
this is exactly the kind of aid patients need in order to help transform
themselves into the people they want to be.
However,
Jefferson University Hospital, the hospital Dan worked at for many years had
different ideas. They decided to close
their mental health section where Dan worked.
The hospital administrators felt that another specialty would be more
profitable. However, from what I
understand there is more need for mental health treatment than for any other
specialty.
Dan
continued to work in mental health.
However, due to cutbacks, he was only able to spend a few minutes with
patients. Dan felt that this kind of
treatment was totally inadequate.
Another
aspect to Dan was how he travelled the world.
While he was a voracious reader, he also wanted to learn by travelling
to different countries. While Dan never
visited Cuba he had a deep appreciation of the Cuban reality.
Being
a hospital worker Dan was inspired by how Cuba, a relatively poor country,
managed to have the most doctors per capita than any other nation in the
world. Not only do Cuban doctors treat
patients in their country, they go all over the world to treat patients in some
of the poorest parts of the world.
One
of the aspects of medicine that most impressed Dan was how Cuban doctors would
eat their meals with the hospital staff.
Dan said that this never happens in this country.
Dan
wasn’t a writer or an orator. His skill
was in his ability to talk with people.
He was able to see the absurdities and nonsense that we’re exposed to in
our every day lives. He had the
confidence to talk to people about how there clearly is a better way. His contribution was unique and he clearly
will be missed.
No comments:
Post a Comment