Union Man Part 2, Growing Up

As I look back over the years, there is absolutely no doubt that when this book is published alot of lives will be uplifted, impacted, inspired and improved.  This universe definitely has order but is also crazy at the same time.  I do know this, nothing we do in life will be successful unless we are doing what we were created to do.  Each of us has a piece to the puzzle, and to the extent we work with our allotted piece do we see real gratification in our lives, the kind that no amount of money, possessions or even relationship can provide.  Why a book Mr. Lowery?  Very simple, I am beginning to see my piece of the puzzle, the ups, the downs, the highs, the lows, the accomplishments, the screw ups, the disappointments, the heart breaks are all for a reason.  They make me who I am and yours make you who you are.  I believe more "ordinary" people need to write books about there lives and through all of the lives put out there for all to see, maybe we will realize that we are definitely more alike than different.  This series of articles is a rough outline of what you get when the book is finished, saving the really good stuff for the hardback.  So sit back and enjoy the ride.  And know for sure putting your life out there isn't easy, but if one person can identify and be helped along this path called life, then it was worth the journey.

Growing Up

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1968 in the Old D.C. General Hospital, at the time I believe my parents was living in the old Parklands on Trenton Place in S.E.  I was raised mainly by my dear Aunt and my Mother though for alot of those early years I did not really know my mother.  It was my Cousin, my oldest brother and me being the youngest of the group, besides my Aunt us three practically raised and depended on each other.  While I have no bitterness toward my upbringing (that I am aware of :)..) I guess you could describe my brother and me as abandoned children for alot years.  We moved around alot.  I think I went to a different elementary school for every year through the 6th grade including three different schools in Florida (you do the math).  My family as I remember was a very tight knit loving family, but they loved to party.  Most of my childhood memories are of family parties with a lot of alcohol, drugs, and music.  There was also a very dark side to that party lifestyle, a lot of domestic abuse.

In the book we going into the juicy details, but for now it would be sufficient to say that I had a very unstable upbringing.  Out of that instability something good did evolve especially as it relates to me as Union Man.  Because we moved around in very diverse situations, I learned to get along and fit in with alot of different circles from Redneck white to straight hood figure type of people and all in between.  One could see that in my taste in music which is wide ranging from heavy metal, to gangster rap, and back to some classic rock all representing different environments I have lived through.  Speaking of music that has always been my one constant, my escape from my world of insecurity.  From my earliest of years just put me in room of records and I would probably never leave the room ever!  This constant moving on one level is tragic for a young child, but in the end it was a gift and blessing beyond what is apparent on the surface.

I naturally through this upbringing learned to communicate in different languages (that has helped my success in the business, I catch alot of people off guard, never see it coming!).  While we all speak English here in the U.S., the communities are diverse, all white people aren't the same, all black people aren't the same, as true for this nation of many ethnic nationalities in terms of language dialect, comprehension and cultural customs.  You can take a word and that word would have different meanings in different communities.  If you say "bomb" in some communities the people coming to lock you up.  You can say "bomb" in other communities then you looking for the female attached to that statement (Lls).  In short my upbringing taught me to have the ability to understand precise meanings across cultural lines.  I could listen to a Harvard professor and break it down into a form that a third grader in the worst of neighborhoods, in the worst of schools could understand.  That makes me a very DANGEROUS individual to some.  The ability to unite by bridging the gap of communication and comprehension/understanding.

Another positive out of a negative situation is my ability to detach.  Because we moved around so much I never learned the art of emotional attachment to others.  It was too painful for me to do so because just when I got comfortable we moved again and the process started all over again.  Overtime almost on auto pilot I have the ability to detach in times of sorrow, pain, failings, anger and disappointments.  To many it comes off as cold and uncaring, to others its comes off as shrewd.  The root of it all is a survival and defense mechanism that has become a part of who I am.  The quickness in which I am able to detach.  The negative is personal relationships are hard to maintain and the ability to stay in one fixed situation is difficult.  The positive is that a KEY INGREDIENT in being a successful representative of people is the art of detachment. Because of my upbringing it comes natural as the green on grass.  Many talk good game from the pulpit to the streets, but how many actually deal with despair, desperation, failure, disease, poverty, shortcomings, and life altering circumstances for a living with true compassion not found often these days without passing a basket?  It was my upbringing that to some maybe be tragic, but to me gave me tools you can't buy from a university (as stated before you got to buy the book for the gut level details).

More next article "so you think you have it rough" coming soon.  Thanks for reading and if there is a lesson in this article its this "often out of very dark circumstances comes a great positive, it all depends on our perspective, which takes years to properly form". 


Cjl

Too Much Comfort?

Wednesday morning, while meditating on the proper moment to zip over and get my dusty automobile washed, I discovered in the morning LA Times that a Southern California car wash had chosen to unionize. I confess that my previous thoughts about the men who wash my car had rarely exceeded wondering what constituted a sufficient tip, lest I end up in the hell of bad tippers for eternity. According to the Times, this drive toward unionization came to Bonus Car Wash in Santa Monica because workers were not permitted to go on the clock until customers had actually arrived. Union organizers argue that--probably as a result--many car wash workers receive less than the minimum wage.

If I had not glanced at the morning paper Tuesday, I never would have given a thought to alleged injustices perpetrated on the quick-moving men who wash my car. Fortunately, at my house of news junkies, two daily newspapers lie on the breakfast table, NPR plays in the background and the evening network news is a command performance. But I know just as many people who avoid the news like a plague of tragedies. For untold millions, whatever they know of the world depends on 10 minutes of the Daily Show, office gossip or the headlines from Brian Williams' NBC newscast anchored by his flawless hair and exemplary jawline.

None of us would choose to oppress the local carwasheros, but few feel they have time and energy enough to linger on their plight. I think of this as the "couch potato dilemma." How do I let the world in enough to care without the stress leaving me with migraine headaches? I mean, really, who could blame somebody for wanting to relax rather than meditate on the latest victims of the service economy?

Comfort is a real human need--to replenish our zapped physical, emotional and spiritual batteries. Comfort salves the wounds of traffic, health insurance bureaucracy, unemployment and toddler crimes and misdemeanors. Only the most devoted puritan would blow up my cozy recliner or cut the power to your television just as the B-list celebrities begin to dance and the police detectives pick up the trail of the killer (with or without crime scene investigators, coroners, novelists and fake psychics).

The problem is: the rest stop of comfort easily turns into the eternal vacation of bourgeois ease. Comfort food like cheeseburgers, macaroni and cheese or Styrofoam ramen may temporarily relieve sorrow, but as a daily bread they would ruin the palate and harden the arteries. In short, comfort can become an opiate of the masses that dulls our attention to the world around us or even the normal challenges of daily life. Too much ease, and we stop growing as human beings. Our horizons shrink.  Or worse, we simply stop caring. The mass of humanity (not to mention the environment they depend on) remain off the radar screen. We all know about this--the hospitalized friend we did not visit, the gas guzzler we opted not to trade in, the granola bars we hoarded from the homeless man with the cardboard sign at the intersection.

Maybe it's time for me to find out where that unionized car wash is located.

Brett C. Hoover is the author of Comfort: An Atlas of the Body and Soul (Riverhead, $16) and a university professor in Los Angeles.

The Making of the Union Man Part 1

This series of Articles is what I vision to become the blueprint for a larger body of work that I will eventually publish as a book.  The natural starting place for this work is the question I am asked the most from those who desire to know how did Clifford Lowery ever rise to be one of the most dynamic, controversial, explosive Union Presidents on the scene.  Given where I come from in life, how did I get started in the Union movement?  These questions I believe come from admiration in some and from others of a place of envy (read the story of Caine and Abel).  For those who want to know from admiration I hope this series will provide you with a deeper knowledge of the making of this Union Man.  For those who come from the line of envy, well I can expect nothing less from this writing than adding fuel to the eternal flame of envy.

I didn’t know until later in life that my great grandfather on my mother’s side was a Union President down south during the pre civil rights days (in fact according to the time they were the genetic starting point for the "Martin Luther King" days).  My Grandfather on my mother’s side was an entrepreneur in Washington, D.C. for many years (he did very well in the strip/nightclub market, in fact he ran a club I affectionately call the aftercare for my older brother and myself in our school days that was located on 14^th and Irving Street N.W.).  My father was I guess you can say a very militant man coming out of the civil rights era.  My step father was nothing short of a very rebellious soul.  My mother and my entire immediate family were government workers.  With that as my basic make up it becomes very simple to understand that the ingredients in the making of the Union Man are deeply ingrained in me both physically and philosophically.

I started my government career in 1987 straight out of Woodrow Wilson High School.  Back in those days we moved around so much (including a few years in near Orlando, Florida as the only black family in that community and one of very few black students in my early school years there), it would take several paragraphs to name all the schools I attended.  If anyone can remember it was during the mid to late eighties that brought a steep rise to the crack and PCP epidemic, gangster rap, gold chains, fancy cars, homicide, guns and the general lifestyle that is most often described in popular urban music today.  While my involvement in the said may not have been as deep as others (my brothers included), those who were heavy in that lifestyle nevertheless were my friends.  I was very much a product of my environment and during those days it was nothing less than toxic. 

Upon entering the government I was actually studying to be a computer programmer and did exceedingly well at the college level, but my associations with the urban element of society had a great pull and influence on some of my early choices upon entering the workforce.  Furthermore, starting at the age 17 in the D.C. Government I found myself dead center in the middle of two worlds, the aging “good old boy network” where Blacks in general (my immediate environment at that time) were low paid wage earners (I started as a DS-Grade 2 at about 175.00 every two weeks compared to my “hustle” friends who made that in a matter of minutes) relegated to the lowest jobs even in the “Barry” era.  Then came the emerging “new school network” who were progressive minorities who in many instances was worse in the treatment of the low end government workers than the good old boys.  All of this being thrown at a 17 year old looking back was a lot.  To understand the above general circumstances is imperative to understanding how I became the “Jay-Z” of the D.C. Government Union movement. 

More to come in Part 2 of this series of articles.