I have been fighting with Trump actively or inactively since the early 1990s.
In 1995, I was introduced to a 150-year-old parish in a very poor section of Philadelphia, Germantown. I went there on a sort of bet with a girl I was dating. I said to her, “Why would you leave Bucks County and drive down to Germantown to go to Mass?” She said, “Come this Sunday and find out.”
Masses there were 75 to 90 minutes. When the Mass was over, I just sat there completely stunned. I had never in my life attended a Mass this good. This section of Philadelphia is now a ghetto. They paid a man to watch our cars while we were in Mass. Long story short, I joined and started to donate my Wednesdays for the next 15 years to rehabbing houses for the poor of Germantown with Brother Al Smith, a brother in the Order of St. Vincent.
I had never been in an area of Philly like this poor area. It’s strange in a way; I never looked down on these poor people, not once. Now I am faced almost on a daily basis with MAGA. I see their racism, greed and hatred of the poor. Just like 99% of you, my family immigrated from the starvation in Ireland in 1848. People here looked down at the poor Irish immigrants the way you MAGA look at the poor Hispanics.
After going nose-to-nose with MAGA for 10 years, I have found them to be racists, bigots, greedy and certainly not the kind of Christians that we had at St. Vincent’s in Germantown. So, if you MAGA did not know what drives me to go nose-to-nose with all of you poor filthy people, now you have an idea.
Ed McGinty is a resident of the Village of Hadley.