I must have tacked her card on my office bulletin board because I liked the Van Gogh reproduction. Lost among the calendars, Post-it notes reminders, recognition certificates, and pictures of friends, family, and Jim Morrison, this card got lost in the shuffle over the years. Now as I reread it my mom came back to me as clearly as the air on spring day in Kansas — when ranchers aren’t burning the fields.

Mom must have written the note in the late ‘80s or 1990, long before the Alzheimer’s turned her into someone I didn’t recognize. In it, she talks about a visit I’d made a week earlier. She mentions her arthritis and how it interferes with her activities. Also, she writes about the grand kids, their wives, and her great-grandson, my grandson.

Then she turned her attention to taxes and the burdensome new tax code implemented by the first Bush administration.

“I expect you’re one of a million who doesn’t like the new withholding rules,” she said. “It’s so silly to try to stem the economy with this method! Name of the game seems to be ‘sock it to the working people and protect the rich even more.’ Bush needs to be out!”

I read that paragraph several times, wondering at my longtime Republican mother. I’m not quite sure what withholding rules she was referring to, but I know for her to make this amazing turn-around in her thinking was nothing short of a revolution. She and my Republican father eventually changed their party affiliation from Republican to Democratic and supported not only Bill Clinton, but also the Democratic candidate for Congress from their area.

This declaration coming in the middle of a letter about family and other domestic matters was surprising enough. What is even more surprising and in a way disheartening is that so little has changed in the twenty-some odd years since my mother wrote that letter. All we have to do is look at what is going on in Washington, D.C. right now. Republicans are doing their best to end safety net programs for children, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled, as well as take away health care for women, union bargaining rights for public employees, and funding for public education and public broadcasting. This at the same time they want to give even more tax breaks to the wealthy and to corporations.

We live in a country involved in two wars, maybe three, depending on how one defines efforts in Libya. We live in a country in which people have lost their homes and their livelihoods, thanks to the economic policies dating back as far as Ronald Reagan and carried forward to this day. President Obama was going in the right direction when he gave stimulus money to schools, communities, and other public entities, but he seems to have dropped off the radar screen when it comes to defending the programs that have made life livable for the middle and lower classes. In fact, the evidence is that the middle class is losing ground every day as corporations move their companies out of the country, leaving a trained labor force without job and workplace safety guarantees, and leaving behind environmental protections.

My mother was angry enough twenty years ago to change her party affiliation and work for a Democratic candidate. I have been a registered Democrat all my adult life, but even I didn’t have the influence on her that the failed policies of the first Bush presidency had.

My question now is what will it take for people to get as angry as my mother and begin to work for change. I don’t mean just a change in party affiliation. I mean a change in taking action, standing up, speaking out, and putting people into power who will understand that our obligation is to all the citizens of this country, not just to the wealthiest.