Reason #4080 that I love the Internet: it proves that your great grandfather was a socialist radical.

I’ve been in Florida for the past few days, visiting my 93-year-old grandmother Marie. One of my favorite pastimes is hearing her tell old family stories. This trip, her stories focused on her father, August Henkel. Gus, as he was known, was a working artist of German decent who lived in Queens, NY, back when Queens was more farmland than suburb. His lithographs hang throughout my grandmother’s house — beautiful, emotive scenes from another era. To his family, he was a gentle, wise, hard-working father of three. To the government, he was an enemy of the state.

Turns out my great grandfather was a pacifist and a free-thinker, at a time when war and conformity crushed dissent. He left his church, my grandmother told me, during World War I, when the hawkish pastor of his Lutheran congregation invoked a blessing on the guns of American soldiers. “The pastor literally had guns on the altar,” my grandmother told me, “and Gus watched him as he prayed that the guns would ‘find their targets and destroy their enemies.’ And Gus said to himself, ‘Can this be? How can this same man, who preaches about Jesus Christ, peace on earth and the brotherhood of men, how can he bless killing and destruction?’ Gus left and never came back.”

And that’s where my grandmother’s memory left off. But not the Internet’s.

A Google search on August Henkel reveals that Gus joined (or at least attended a service at) the Church of the Social Revolution in 1917. Remember, this was during the height of America’s war fever. Woodrow Wilson was ramming through the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, to stifle dissent in a time of war. Socialist, Communists and Wobblies everywhere were getting their heads cracked or spending time in jail. Not a great time to be a peacenik.

On a dramatic June Sunday in 1917, Gus participated in a peace ceremony at the Church of Social Revolution. The ceremony included boiling a cauldron of water and dumping in it flags from all over the world — literally, creating a “melting pot.” Gus thought this symbolized the common blood and brotherhood of all men. The US government thought it was treason.

Gus was tried, found guilty of desecrating the flag, and sentenced to a $100 fine and 30 days in the workhouse. He accepted the sentence with characteristically good cheer. “Oh well,” he apparently said. “That’s what happens when you have a capitalist press teaming up with a capitalist government.” And he managed to stay out of the headlines for the next 20 years.

In 1939, Gus was working for the Federal Art Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration. The FAP was a Depression-era program that employed thousands of out-of-work artists, including giants like Jackson Pollack and Mark Rothko. Often, their jobs were to decorate public buildings with large-scale murals. Gus’s charge was Floyd Bennett Field, New York City’s first big airport. Inspired by aviators of history and mythology, Gus started in on a 900 square foot mural depicting the Wright Brothers, Lindbergh, Icarus, Earhart … and a man that looked a lot like Stalin. Oh, and a very prominent red star.

Was he trying to make a pro-communist declaration of hate against America? Or were the mustache’d strongman and red star simply artistic choices gone awry? My grandmother thinks the later. The US government thought the former. Once again, Gus went on trial — this time, primarily in the press — and was declared a red, a commie, a subversive, and any number of colorful invectives reserved for those who did not fully support America and its war effort. The murals were ripped down and burned. Gus never held a government contract again. The FAP was disbanded within a year.

My wife and I asked grandma Marie to describe the murals. Aside from their dimensions and general composition, and what we could all read in the press, there wasn’t much to say. Her memory didn’t reach back that far.

But the Internet’s did.

After just a few seconds of poking through the Smithsonian’s Archive of American Art, we came upon three amazing old photographs of the Floyd Bennett Field murals in progress. One depicts Eugene Chodorow, Gus’s junior partner, painting the side of the enormous airplane hangar with an imposing propeller in the foreground. Another shows Chodorow standing at the same mural, with a young boy reclining on a plane’s wing and a hunched figure in the lower left corner. And the third shows Gus. Brush to the canvas, his intense eyes are set on the camera, somewhere between weary and determined. An artist at work. My great grandfather, the radical, at work.

I wake up every day and use the Internet for business, for play, for friends. I rarely use it to travel back in time. Today I did. And frankly, I’m relieved that the Internet has a better memory than me.

A few months ago, I realized that my generation will be the first for which
no history will be lost. All our records are digital. Barring a catastrophic breakdown of society, our progeny will be able to trace our digital footprints for centuries — indeed, for millennia — to come. After finding mere traces of my great grandfather, I’m left hungry for more. And also left glad that my great grandchildren will be able to find these exact footprints, the ones that I am leaving right now, on this peculiar time machine we call the Internet.

As a New York City resident, I rarely get to do meaningful on-the-ground political organizing. Our Democratic margins are so wide here, there’s no real point. It makes me miss being out on the campaign trail.

Which is why I spent Saturday canvassing the sub- and ex-urbs of Bucks County, Pennsylvania for Barack Obama. It was a beautiful spring day in a well manicured part of the country, full of flowering dogwoods and magnolia trees. But more invigorating than the weather was being face-to-face with swing voters in one of PA’s most hard-fought battlegrounds. Three interesting lessons:

1. There’s upside to a long fight. Republicans in Bucks County have had a majority in voter registration for as long as anyone can remember … until 2008. This year, due to the protracted Obama-Clinton fight, Bucks has had a surge of Democratic registration. The Blues now outnumber the Reds by 27,000 voters, a significant margin. This, I think, is the hidden gem of our stretched primary — new D voters flocking to the primary, who will stay D for the general.

2. Age is it. A voter’s age was the most predictive measure of whether a voter would choose Obama or Clinton. The voters we met this weekend in the “young” areas — subdevelopments filled with strollers, dogs and minivans — leaned heavily towards Obama. Those in the “older” areas leaned Clinton, despite being more wealthy. There’s been a lot of talk recently about race and gender splitting the electorate. This weekend reinforced for me the primacy of age.

3. Persuasion ID makes for bad data. Human beings hate to say no. At least half of the voters I spoke with told me they were still undecided. For some, that’s probably true. But I KNOW that many of them were Clinton supporters who simply didn’t want to disappoint the nice young man with the Obama sticker smiling on their doorstep. Thus, when I marked down the voter’s preference and reported it to the campaign, I know I was handing back imprecise data, at best. It makes me question the value of “persuasion ID” — the practice of trying to identify a voters preference at the same time as you try to persuade them to vote for your candidate. In a GOTV environment, its pretty crucial to not pull out your opponent’s voters. If your tactics are giving such shady data, you are wasting critical resources … or worse, helping your opponent. A better tactic might have been IDing through repeated phone poll attempts, and then a wider knock-and-drag strategy. It’s not like the Obama folks didn’t have the money to spend on live phone calls!

Overall, a great experience. Days like Saturday make me wish I lived in a swing state. Especially one with such good weather!

ABC should be ashamed.

Last night’s Obama-Clinton debate was an unmitigated serious of disgusting, substance-less gotcha questions from hosts Charles Gibson and George Steppin-off-his-gus. They tried every angle to ensnare both candidates, from sniper fire in Bosnia to Rev. Wright to flag pins on lapels. The most outrageous moment was when Gibson asked Obama, “Do you think Rev. Wright loves America as much as you do?” Really? That passes for a debate question?

Not surprisingly, ABC’s website was slammed with negative feedback, from supporters of both candidates. As of 11:20 on Thursday, 13672 angry comments — an avalanche by any standard — and after reading 5 pages of comments, I didn’t see a single one defending ABC.

The blogosphere is equally offended. The fine folks at Crooks & Liars have put together a highlight reel of the most offensive bits. But be warned — if you have any faith left in mainstream political journalism, be prepared to shred it.

An afternoon adventure movie, just for fun. See if you can spot Adrian Brody. (Hint: gesturing towards him with a potato chip in mouth is the height of subtlety.)

This morning, less than 20 seconds after my alarm went off, the radio news told me something completely depressing. NY State Assembly leader Sheldon Silver has blocked Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan for New York City. Bloomberg quickly unleashed a torrent of angry statements towards Silver. I’m adding mine to the pile.

Congestion pricing was a smart, bold plan that would have made New York a leader in reducing traffic and pollution, while investing billions more in public transit. That’s the future. By not even allowing the plan to come up for a vote in the Assembly, Shelly Silver kept us firmly in the past — for the sake of his own political clout. He did it because he doesn’t want to lose favor with the Assembly members from suburban communities; they are the ones that vote to keep him in leadership, after all.

The irony, of course, is that the Republican leader of the Senate, Joe Bruno, was in favor of the plan. So the major hurdle that most progressive legislation has to clear — the Republican State Senate — was a non-issue.

If Silver was in a competitive district, this never would have happened. Too bad he’s so entrenched. I’m sure he’ll deliver more wins for progressives in the future, as he’s done in the past. But this time, he traded the public trust for political gain. Cowardly is the nicest word for it.

What a crappy way to wake up!