(Richard Emmet Field is a graduate of McCaskey High School. Married and father of two, he lives in Budapest, Hungary but visits with family and friends in Lancaster frequently.)
Népszabadság, (Note: Hungary’s leading left wing newspaper): Richard Field watched the fall of the iron curtain in his New York apartment and then quickly packed his bags. The graduate of Columbia University, where he studied history, travelled to the freshly liberated Hungary about which he had learned so much from his university professor, Istvan Deak.
A site-seeing tour became a two decade residence here. The full-bodied American taught English in Szeged and then founded a language school. He met his future wife and mother of two sons in the city on the banks of the Tisza, and in the middle of the 1990s began developing real estate. While most foreign businessmen keep their distance from local politics, resembling “any other Hungarian living here for the past twenty years,” he thinks differently. He reached into his pocket and supports “Politics Can Be Different” in the amount of $55,000—nearly 11 million forints—in three installments. And with this the 43 year old man who grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, famous for its Amish people, became LMP’s largest campaign contributor.
“I consider this contribution an investment in Hungarian democracy and the future of my children. It would be good for Hungary for more parties to get into parliament. It would also be useful for new faces to appear in Hungarian politics”—explained Field speaks Hungarian with an impressive vocabulary. “I support LMP’s commitment to transparency, sustainable development, and human rights, but I also support other grass roots democratic movements, such as Maria Seres’s Civil Movement and the Progressive Democratic Party.”
He traces the origins of the rise of the extreme right mainly to social problems and the poverty and desperation affecting a large segment of the population. He believes the Hungarians have a tendency to blame “external and internal enemies” for their problems instead of doing something about them. They are contemptuous of their government and yet set back and wait for the government to solve the problems.
He met the head of the LMP country list, Andras Schiffer, some weeks ago. Over the course of conversation, Field asked how he might help. Upon hearing the amount of unpaid bills the businessman offered the necessary amount, as well as some logistical assistance.
Field says his father, who is a builder, was a registered Republican for a long time, who registered himself as a Democrat when Bush became… president. He participated in the campaign of his childhood friend, Pennsylvania Arlen Specter, who started as a Republican but later went over to the Democrats. With his own foundation (Common Sense for Drug Policy), his father supports the Harm Reduction Movement whose activists believe governmental authorities should not treat drug use as a crime.
During his Szeged years he founded a rock band named Carpetbagger which twice toured with Edda.
Richard Field believes that public service is the most important obligation of citizens. The businessman, who likes reading history books, names as his most important task not the construction of his new project—the 300 million euro Park City project, presently on ice due to a disagreement with the City government—but rather combating poverty. The foundation set up by his company helps poor families and the homeless mostly with food packages but also provides breakfast to many hundreds of school children. The need is very great, nearly 90 schools have indicated their interest in the breakfast program.
If an American can help feed 1000 people a day in collaboration with the Hungarian Red Cross, then society should be able to ensure that nobody goes hungry in this country. His goal is to increase the amount of food distributed monthly from EUR 10,000 to EUR 1 million by persuading other companies to set up similar programs. He would like to persuade the large hypermarkets and discount grocery chains not to throw out expired food but rather to give it to the poor.
F–k you, american idiot! Get your dirty hands out of our country!