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Where’s the Sacrifice?

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ride with hitler Where’s the Sacrifice?

Artist: Weimer Pursell, 1943

This weekend I was visiting one of the many free museums in Washington, D.C. (a perk of living in this city) and found an incredible poster at the National Museum of American History.

Weimer Pursell’s color illustration depicted a well-dressed man behind the wheel of a 1940s convertible — with the ghostly outline of the Führer sitting next to him; it implored Americans to save gas during World War II by joining a car pool.

“When You Ride Alone You Ride With Hitler!” the letters scream. It is one of the war’s most famous posters and, while it has been copied and parodied since then, its message of national sacrifice resonates to this day.

Imagine that: During World War II  Americans were told that riding alone in a car was like riding with Hitler. Saving and conserving, and helping others, was lifted up — in this and many other posters — as the greatest of American commitments to country and community. And this poster was one of an entire exhibit of government posters that lifted up that American commitment to self-sacrifice and conservation.

the frying panWhat happened to that self-sacrifice and commitment to conservation? Imagine if our government sponsored ads now likening riding alone in a car to taking a big old diesel engine, and dropping it onto the Alaskan wilderness, or a child’s face? Or — even more apropos – riding alone in a car being likened to riding with BP, Shell or Chevron oil companies, who are greedily extracting dirty oil from our precious waters.

Why is it that the ideas of conservation and caring about community are only invoked during a time of war? I believe that if the American people were asked — as they were by FDR and John F. Kennedy — to care about others living in poverty and suffering from hunger and not having sufficient healthcare or a living wage, they would see that as a patriotic request. Imagine if Americans were asked to care about the health of our communities and the health of our planet, and to conserve and recycle and take public transportation — and to care about those things as acts of patriotism. What a different country we would be living in.

This poster reminded me that it can be done, because it was done. Since I’ve been in D.C., I’ve been gloriously walking everywhere or taking public transportation. But when I get back to L.A. and pull my car out of my garage, I think I’ll have to imagine Hitler sitting next to me and then start thinking about my responsibility to stop polluting the air and to take the bus the two miles to work every so often.

madeline janis

And when I throw away something that could be recycled, I think I will just have to imagine that I’m throwing away a piece of raw material that could create something new and life-saving. Or when I pass another homeless person on the street, I won’t just be saddened and outraged, but will remind myself that it’s my patriotic duty to do something to make this country a better place for everyone.

Madeline Janis
The Frying Pan 

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About Madeline Janis

Madeline Janis is co-founder and executive director of LAANE. Under her stewardship, LAANE has become an influential leader in the effort to build a new economy based on good jobs, thriving communities and a healthy environment. Combining dynamic research, innovative public policy and the organizing of broad alliances, LAANE has helped lift tens of thousands of working people out of poverty and has won major health and environmental victories for communities throughout Los Angeles County.

In 2002, Ms. Janis was appointed by the mayor as a volunteer commissioner to the board of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, the country’s largest such agency, and then reappointed to that position by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in 2006. She is also a Senior Fellow at the UCLA School of Public Affairs.

Ms. Janis led the historic campaign to pass L.A.’s living wage ordinance, which has since become a national model. Over the past decade, she has provided training and assistance to community organizations and unions in dozens of cities across the country, and is widely regarded as an innovator in devising strategies to create good jobs and healthy communities. She serves on the boards of directors of Good Jobs First, the Partnership for Working Families, Brave New Foundation and the Phoenix Fund for Workers and People for the American Way.

LAANE and Ms. Janis have received many honors, including the UCLA Law School’s Antonia Hernandez Public Interest Award and the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese’s Empowerment Award, awards from the Liberty Hill Foundation and Office of the Americas, and numerous commendations from the Los Angeles City Council and the California Assembly and Senate.

Prior to founding LAANE, Ms. Janis served as executive director of the Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN) from 1989 to 1993, where she helped lead a successful campaign to legalize and regulate the activities of the mostly Latino immigrant sidewalk vendors. During this time, she also headed efforts to combat civil rights abuses of Central American immigrants by the L.A. Police Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and helped tens of thousands of Central American immigrants achieve legal immigrant status.

Before joining CARECEN, Ms. Janis, an attorney, represented tenants and homeless people in slum housing litigation, and advocated for homeless disabled people who had been denied government benefits. She also worked for two years at the law firm of Latham & Watkins on commercial litigation and land use matters, representing many large companies throughout Los Angeles. She received degrees from UCLA Law School and Amherst College in Massachusetts.

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