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The Extended Family Politically, Noam's parents were "normal Roosevelt Democrats," although many members of the next level of family ­ cousins and aunts and uncles ­were part of a Jewish working class with ties to various strains of communism. Chomsky remarks that "several were seamstresses, but these were the days of union building. They were in the ILGWU, which was then finally getting people out of sweatshops (when they had work, that is; they were usually unemployed). Others were involved in everything from ordinary labo[r] to petty commerce to school teaching (for those who managed to work their way through school themselves)" (13 Feb. 1996). Many were involved in the radical political movements that thrived during the Depression. Chomsky explains: "Some were in the Communist Party, some militantly anti-Communist Party (from the left), some Roosevelt Democrats, and everything else from left-liberal to anti-Bolshevik left (whether the Communist Party fits in that spectrum is not obvious, in my opinion)" (31 Mar. 1995). That such diversity of political affiliation should exist within a single family was not unusual among Russian emigrés of the time, and Noam and David undoubtedly benefited from being exposed to a wide range of opinion. Within the extended Chomsky-Simonofsky family, issues were not resolved according to a narrow, status quo set of principles, which meant that Noam and David were given freer rein in their own choices. Their environment as a whole ­ parents, relatives, school, community ­ encouraged the brothers to engage in careful observation and analysis; no single approach to an issue was deemed adequate. Chomsky was further marked by the socioeconomic situation of the period. He came of age in Quaker Philadelphia during the Depression; he told Wachtel that his early childhood memories included "seeing people coming to the door and trying to sell rags or apples," and " travelling in a trolley car past a textile factory where women were on strike, and watching riot police beat the strikers" (64). And the neighborhood in which the Chomsky family lived was inhabited mainly by Germans and Irish Catholics, who were, for the most part, anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi. Not all children raised under such circumstances develop a social conscience, but it is fair to say that Chomsky, who was immersed in an alien cultural tradition within a community of immigrants, had many occasions to stare hypocrisy and violence in the face and wonder about their sources.