This is the time of the year when those who make more money in a year than four families earn in an entire lifetime – who spend the rest of the year blocking an increase to the minimum wage, refinancing student loans, immigration reform, tax reform (the list goes on and on) get to feel noble by giving to the poor – buying a turkey for a family’s table or helping stock a soup kitchen which even as the economy has rebounded, is being taxed beyond its means.
They shield their guilt behind the mythology of “The American Dream” – the notion that begins with the notion that America is exceptional because it affords equal opportunity and anyone who works hard enough can achieve success.
The corollary is that those who are poor are somehow deserving of their misery, while those who are phenomenally wealthy are equally deserving, rather than their success the result of being born into an advantageous zip code to a well-connected family, who from the very first moments, had all the resources to position this person for success, fostered by a system that is very literally rigged in favor of a lucky few.
The so-called American Dream has come to be the American version of Social Darwinism – not the fact that the mechanisms for success are institutionalized – which serves to justify (and ignore) the great and growing gap between rich and poor. (America now has the largest gap among industrialized nations and ranks the worst in mobility.)
This is the season for stories with “A Christmas Carol” being one of the most emblematic of the holiday. Charles Dickens depicts the rehabilitation of Ebenezer Scrooge, a confirmed Social Darwinist, who comes to embrace the spirit of Christmas.
The lesson of “Christmas Carol” was taught by three spirits, but as fantastical as Dickens’ story was, his genius is that he so accurately described the inequities in society, not in macro terms, but as the result of the decisions people make in their lives that impact the people around them, and by extension, to larger and larger groups of people.
In that same spirit, we offer two stories that illustrate the difference in choices of how people live their lives and affect the lives of others. Instead of spirits, they are real people who provide the moral of the story:
The first is Donald L. Blankenship whose rise from poverty to being one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in West Virginia could stand as the epitome of the American Dream.
Except it was more like a Mafia gangster’s rise: Blankenship, who was raised in a trailer in one of the state’s poorest counties, rose to become CEO of Massey Energy, the largest coal producer in Appalachia.
His pathway to success was by virtue of being the guy who was so amoral, so ruthless he had no thought or care of the lives he exploited or destroyed.
“Early in his career, Mr. Blankenship became famous for breaking the grip of unions at Massey mines. Investigations described a climate of intimidation at Upper Big Branch in which miners were afraid to report unsafe practices, and two sets of books were kept to conceal hazards from inspectors,” Trip Gabriel reported in the New York Times (Dec. 1).
“Mr. Blankenship overrode managers who sought to strengthen roofs to prevent cave-ins or install ventilation systems to prevent explosions, ordering them to ignore ‘construction jobs’ and instead to ‘run coal.’
“After a passageway flooded four-feet deep and a federal inspector shut it down, fearing miners might drown, Mr. Blankenship ordered mining to continue, scolding the mine’s president for ‘letting M.S.H.A. run’ the mine, referring to the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
“When Upper Big Branch did not make its quotas or cut costs deeply enough, Mr. Blankenship threatened the mine president. ‘You have a kid to feed. Do your job,’ he wrote. In another note scolding the executive for not producing enough coal, he wrote: ‘I could Khrushchev you. Do you understand?’”
But Blankenship managed to evade all responsibility – criminal and otherwise – by basically buying politicians, including judges.
“A prime example was the $3 million that Mr. Blankenship contributed to defeat a justice on the state’s Supreme Court in 2004, replacing him with one sympathetic to Massey at a time when the company was appealing a $50 million judgment against it.”
Hopefully, there will be a happy, “Wicked Witch is Dead” ending to this story because Blankenship is now under indictment for the deaths of 29 in the Upper Big Branch mine disaster.
“Levels of coal dust were so high — a threat to human health as well as a fire accelerant — that autopsies of the dead men found 71 percent had black lung disease, compared with an industry average of 3.2 percent.”
“The 43-page grand jury indictment paints a portrait of Mr. Blankenship, 64, as a mine boss out of Dickens,” Gabriel wrote.
Blankenship made his deal with the devil and hopefully, when it is his time, he will rot in hell.
Then there is another story of the American Dream. This one is about the rise to success by Gerard Leeds – a member of our own community, who passed away on Thanksgiving Day, at the age of 92.
Leeds escaped the Holocaust, emigrating from Nazi Germany in 1939, at the age of 17.
Starting with virtually nothing, he became a sales manager and assistant to the president of a Westchester electronics firm, and in 1953 (two years after marrying Lilo, who also escaped Nazi Germany), he struck out to form GG Leeds Corp, representing makers of electronics components. “After four years of soaring prosperity.. Leeds formed Lumatron Electronics to manufacture a new oscilloscope,” according to LI Daily Commercial Review (Feb. 16, 1965).After merging his company, he again had the call to start his own company and in 1963, started Data Device Corp., which manufactured components for automatic test equipment, control systems and analog computers.
Six years later, he put this expertise in the electronics and nascent computer industry in forming yet another new company, CMP, which became a major publisher of trade magazines for the electronics, computer and travel industries.
1971 coincided with the emerging Women’s Revolution, and the Leeds’ pioneered “work-and-life” balanced approach at CMP.
They established policies and programs to remove the obstacles that were holding women back from advancing in their careers. Fortune and Working Mother magazine repeatedly listed CMP as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For.”
I can testify to who Gerard and Lilo Leeds were as employers because I worked at CMP. They were pioneers in making a workplace a welcoming place – among the first to open fitness center on the premises; holding seasonal parties (not just the annual Christmas party).
But most important of all, they were pioneers in facilitating access to daycare (they actively supported CLASP Day Care Center as well as the Manhasset-Great Neck Child Care Partnership). They created a summer day camp on the premises (my happiest days at the company), while they worked for years to overcome the obstacles to opening one of the first (and still one of the only) corporate onsite daycare centers.
They recognized the vast social and economic implications of having access to child care: as Lilo Leeds told me, “We wanted to make it easier for women to become managers. We wanted to change the world in little ways.” Except they weren’t “little” at all, but big ways.
The Leeds did not just help chip away at the glass ceiling that held women back in their careers – with the implications for families’ financial security and advancement – but by working to increase the availability of quality, affordable child care, they improved the lives of our children, as well, at a time when pre-school programs were (and still are) woefully scarce. Great Neck’s own CLASP Children’s Center was one of the first of its kind and became a national model for early childhood programs.
I think of the Leeds all the time when I consider the opportunities my sons had because they were in quality, affordable, accessible day care – what it meant to their success in school and ultimately their careers because of this excellent head start they had at CLASP.
The Leeds proved that contrary to the myth perpetrated at the time to keep women out of the workplace, that children were disadvantaged in day care, our children thrived because of it. The difference, of course, is the quality of the program.
Think about the Leeds’ approach to women in the workplace in context of the Supreme Court case being heard this week, where UPS refused to accommodate a pregnant woman whose doctor restricted her to lifting no more than 20 pounds. She was put on unpaid leave, meaning she not only lost her income but her health benefits as she was going through her pregnancy. How cruel. How absolutely Dickensonian (UPS has since voluntarily changed its policy).
As Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values @ Work, Milwaukee, noted in a letter to New York Times (Dec. 1), “the lawmakers who drafted New Jersey’s temporary disability insurance legislation back in the 1940s….excluded pregnancy from coverage, lumping it in with ‘injuries that are willfully self-inflicted or incurred during the perpetration of a high misdemeanor.’ Until women stop inflicting pregnancy on themselves, we’ll have to rely on reasonable accommodations: a stool, a glass of water and a few bathroom breaks.” (Congress refuses to take up legislation that has languished for a year, which would correct the problem.)
The Leeds sold CMP in 1999 to what became United Business Media for just under $1 billion.
It is not uncommon for fabulously wealthy people to be philanthropists, but the Leeds went beyond merely their resources (Gerard used to say simply – and modestly – “How many pairs of skis do I need to own?”) and devoted themselves to the betterment of others – they practically invented the term “social entrepreneur” creating institutions that would fundamentally become engines for progress.
Recognizing that access to education is key to breaking the cycle of poverty, they created institutions to support public education for disadvantaged communities and at-risk students, as well as continuing to support efforts to make child care more accessible, affordable and available.
They also founded the Caroline and Sigmund Schott Foundation, headquartered in Boston, Mass., named for Mrs. Leeds’ mother and father, which works on early childhood education and care, gender equity, and education financing issues.
And they founded The Alliance for Excellent Education (all4ed.org), a Washington, D.C.-based national policy and advocacy organization dedicated to ensuring that all students, particularly those who are traditionally underserved, graduate from high school ready for success in college, work, and citizenship. The Alliance focuses on America’s six million most at-risk secondary school students—those in the lowest achievement quartile—who are most likely to leave school without a diploma or to graduate unprepared for a productive future.
The Leeds also launched the National Academy for Excellent Teaching at Columbia University’s Teacher College, which brings together prominent faculty, experts, researchers, and outstanding teachers to reinvent how the nation can upgrade the skills and knowledge of high school educators for higher student achievement.
But well before they sold CMP and became near-billionaires, in 1990, the couple launched the Institute for Student Achievement, which works in partnership with low-performing school districts to help at-risk middle and high school students.
I met one young woman during the shiva for Gerard at the Leeds’ house. Joy said she was 14 years old when she first met the Leeds, and was in the inaugural “class” of their Institute of Student Achievement. She had no family – was in foster care – and said that the Leeds’ effectively “adopted” her into theirs. She has gone on to become a school psychologist, working in the same district she attended all those years ago (“Coming full circle,” she told me), her own daughter now in college.
Now I factor in the numbers who have been able to fulfill their potential because of the work the Leeds have done to create scholarships and educational opportunities for children who happen to be born to less advantageous circumstances.
And I multiply the number of families like Joy’s and mine, the number of children who now have families of our own, as just a small measure of the lives the Leeds have touched in a positive way, to put people on a path toward the American Dream, so that their scion would not require the momentary beneficence of charity in this brief season of giving, but who can provide for themselves.
Poverty will never be eradicated. And there will never be – nor should there be – a situation where the owner and the janitor are legislated to make the same income.
But poverty should not be a capital sentence, either, and it shouldn’t be perpetual, unto the generations. There should be a situation where the janitor, if he has the talent, skills, motivation and perseverance, has the ability to rise out of his situation, and create the opportunities for his children to make their own choices based on their ability and motivation.
That was the American Dream before it became corrupted. We need to restore the means for upward mobility which is the essence of the American Dream.
Gerard Leeds was a man who lived the American Dream and made it possible for others to, as well. He has left a mark on this world. He has truly left it a better place. What a legacy he leaves. He is a man who will be missed and remembered for a blessing.
People generally take from Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” the lesson of Christmas charity – that Scrooge loosened the grip on his coins to spread them around the street urchins and into the coffers of charities that provide for orphans.
But the lesson people should more appropriately focus on is that he raised the salary of his clerk, Bob Cratchit, and gave him the means to provide a better life for his family.
