Monthly Archives: January 2026

The Flats

It was mid-summer in 1932 Washington DC. A giant shanty town, popularly known as a “Hooverville” had sprouted in an open area on the Anacostia Flats. Veterans from the First World War had made their way to the Capital, bringing their desperate families to persuade Congress to pay a promised bonus for military service in the Great War.

America had hit bottom by 1932, the country devastated by the 1929 Stock Market Crash that drifted into the Great Depression. Raggedly men, women, and children somehow had traveled to the city, all desperately hoping the promised bonus could be issued at once rather than 1945, the date set by the provisions of the law. These people brought little and had nowhere to go except to throw themselves on the mercy of a Democratic House, Republican Senate, and a Republican President.

Scrapped tin, packing crates, chicken wire and other material made up the shacks on the Flats, with folks making homes that were better than nothing. The Hoover administration was not happy a bit with these scruffy people descending on Washington and opposed paying the bonus (dollar amount depending on service records) as it would unbalance the national budget. The “Bonus Marchers” as they were called, roamed around the city, many in bare feet, speaking to reporters while filmed by newsreel companies such as Pathe’ News, and Hearst Metrotone News.

Finally on June 15, 1932 the House approved paying the bonus, but the bill had to find approval in the Senate. Two days later a Republican led Senate rejected the bill, dashing the hopes of destitute veterans.

After the vote Senators exited the Capitol through the underground rail system safely avoiding the stunned marchers outside.

By July 28 President Hoover had had enough of the vagabonds. He ordered General Douglas McArthur to use his troops to expel the marchers from the Flats. At the end of that meeting the President cautioned the General to avoid violence at all costs.

McArthur directed his men, including two young Majors, Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton, to fix bayonets and follow dispatched tanks into the shanty town. Briefing his troops George Patton instructed his men that “If you must fire do a good job — a few casualties become martyrs, a large number an object lesson. . . . When a mob starts to move keep it on the run. . . . Use a bayonet to encourage its retreat. If they are running, a few good wounds in the buttocks will encourage them. If they resist, they must be killed.”

Hmm.

Thinking along the same lines General McArthur ordered tear gas lobbed and setting fire to the rickety camp. In the melee two Bonus Marchers were killed and a 12-week old baby succumbed to tear gas.

The camp burned through the night and with it Herbert Hoover’s reputation. Four months later, In November Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the White House in an electoral landslide.

In America real change rises from us, the people, not from the White House. When citizens of this nation have had enough and demand justice, justice shall be done.

William Hushka of Chicago and Eric Carlson of Oakland, California perished in that long ago assault. Another casualty was infant Bernard Myers who lost his brief life from tear gas related complications. These citizens were indeed George Patton’s martyrs who still deserve to be remembered.

As do Renee Good and Alex Pretti of Minneapolis.

Stay the course my friends, We are The People and possess enormous power. Let us use it.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” co-writer of the screenplay, “Dancing On Air” based on those books. She has penned three stage plays on history topics, “Clay” on the life of Senator Henry Clay, “Wolf By The Ears” examining the beginnings of American slavery, and “Peer Review” where 47 is confronted by specters of four past presidents.

An Old Adage

Newsday 2018

An old adage claimed “elect a Democrat you’ll have a war, elect a Republican you’ll have a depression.” Another maintained that “Democrats care about people while Republicans care about money.”

I suppose I could line up administrations to illustrate these truisms: Wilson, World War One, Coolidge/Hoover, the Great Depression, FDR, WWII, etcetera, but that isn’t where this piece is going. Let’s just say that the two parties had identifiers that each have lobbed at the other for more than a century.

The traditional GOP insisted they stood for small government, morality, the rule of law, a balanced budget, strong security, and principled leadership. However that branding from the early 20th Century has all but faded, the veneer stripped away with the presidential elections of 2016, and 2024.

Criticize what you like about the supply-side economic policies of Ronald Reagan and George W Bush’s foray into Iraq, but there was never any doubt of their fidelity to country. Yeah, the Stock Market collapsed in 1987 and nearly went over a cliff again in 2008, yet Republican patriotism was never in question. President Reagan, in particular stood tall as an anti-Communist crusader, ushering in the collapse of Russian hegemony. Later President George W Bush stood at Ground Zero and vowed to punish the Jihadist attackers following September 11th.

The guiding principle of the Grand Old Party was that through merit, hard work, and talent, every American could participate in a free market without artificial impediments. Still strong among rank and file Republicans was the old notion that one could pick oneself up by the bootstraps and succeed in the game of life. That ethos of individualism had shaped the party since the election of Lincoln, (the epitome of a self-made man). And yeah the wealthy have never liked taxes, but overall as good Americans they generally paid along with the rest of us.

As mentioned above the bedrock of the party stressed government must operate on a balanced budget. As the sun rises and sets campaigning Republicans have forever insisted they are fiscally responsible and have promised to cut pork-barrel spending, lower taxes, and balance the budget from the statehouse to the halls of Congress.

All in all the garden variety Republican has been defined as a patriotic, conservative, morally upright, pro business, pro small government, pro national security, and a person who supports lower taxes.

As I write the national debt has bloomed to over $38 trillion dollars, which broken down to each American comes to around $114,000 per person. Most current federal spending is merely managing mega-accruing interest. In the double-dealing hands of this new Republican Caucus the US Government has teetered on default more than once, with the current President cynically commenting that “debt doesn’t bother me.” And why would he? The man has made around $4 billion since returning to office, despite clear violations of the emoluments clause.

The January 6, 2021 premeditated insurrection by para-military groups who were filmed ripping down US flags and wielding the poles for weapons, vandalized the Capitol, assaulting, and even murdering police officers explains all we need to know about the GOP and their rule of law.

Not one of your party has stepped up to restrain the White House from deploying many of those same rioters, now heavily armed and masked as ICE agents. These men are threatening citizens in their malicious immunity, and yes again killing Americans. This mockery of law and order isn’t limited to offenses across the country. He returned to office a convicted rapist, and guilty of business fraud. By willful indifference he is stalling out the release the Epstein files in violation of your majority passed law, and pardoning countless criminals.

Law and Order Party?

In 2022 over 300 classified documents were discovered crammed into nooks and crannies around Trump’s Mar A Lago golf club, some in his gold-gilt bathroom around the toilet. Sensitive intelligence. He just took them because he thinks he’s entitled. Jim Risch as chair of the foreign relations committee you have done squat. Shame on you. And it appears that Russian strongman, Vladimir Putin already knows what it in those files anyway. Treason in real time.

Attacking Venezuela? Threatening Greenland? These actions are the craziest efforts since Caligula made his horse Proconsul in Rome.

Where is the party of national security?

Clearly the GOP never meant what they stood for, and have lied for decades when professing before God loyalty to the Constitution. America no longer recognizes you as a patriotic, conservative, law abiding, principled party.

Lust for power and greed, (looking at you Mitch McConnell, you could have stopped this in his first term but the payoff was irresistible). Today’s Grand Old Party is no longer that familiar, reliable organization of Buick owners our fathers knew. Today’s elected officials have become nothing more than hand maidens to an unbalanced, corrupt man.

Maybe it is true. Republicans only care about money, but with DJT we get the war and depression to boot.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” co-writer of the screenplay, “Dancing On Air” based on those books. She has penned three stage plays on history topics, “Clay” on the life of Senator Henry Clay, “Wolf By The Ears” examining the beginnings of American slavery, and “Peer Review” where 47 is confronted by specters of four past presidents.