I don’t have one friend (and I have a lot of friends) who is not deeply committed to making a difference in our society today! Pick the issue – hunger, poverty, education, environment, racism, sexism, homophobia, homelessness, disease, AIDS, orphaned children, animal rights, etc… We are all interested in doing something. Unfortunately for us, we grew up in the shadow of BABY BOOMERS and Civil Rights folks who are obviously going to take every baton with them to their graves. I CAN’T WAIT TO start my tee-shirt company so I can sell shirts that say something like “THE BABY BOOM WAS A BUST!!” – I am still working on the language but you get the gist J . I say it is unfortunate for us because a lot of us grew up listening to stories of all of the work that they put into making change and saw many things go backwards. At the same time, they wanted us to WAIT for everything (you know… 40 is the new 20, etc.) and they didn’t want us to go through what they went through.. So, a lot of us followed the rules and are sitting here as adults wondering how we could have left these issues to be addressed by the “me” generation.. Yikes, I have such a huge blind spot with respect to that generation that I am letting it affect my ability to stay ‘on point’ – sorry for the digression.
Anyway, I am struggling to find a way to get us all together and working effectively towards our collective end – a safe and equitable society where everyone is valued and no one falls through the cracks!! The one thing we always hear is that we would like to do something but we just don’t know what to do…. By the way, we can’t look to politicians and our so-called leaders… This has to start with us.. The dirty little secret in this country is that most folks have more in common with each other than they do with any of the people we call leaders. We often find ourselves distracted by arbitrary differences like race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, geography, etc. This is no accident – what if the country woke up out of its collective slumber and recognized that 98% are fighting over 2 % of the crumbs??? – there would be mayhem and madness!!. Or would there be?? EVERY DAY, something happens that should be driving the majority of us out into the streets ready to burn this mf down! We can start with fighting a meaningless war - a war where most of us CHOOSE to ignore how many people we are killing every day and focus on its cost (and, somehow, despite Mr. Cheney’s ulterior motive behind this war, we are sitting by watching gas prices soar over $4 per gallon). We should be livid that we are able to fund this war but we can’t find $$$ to educate our children (oh, that’s right, if we educated everyone equitably, who would fight our wars??). We should be freaked out by the fact that there are still homeless people and countless empty homes. We should be terrified that jobs are disappearing and people are losing their homes in record numbers. Is this the perfect storm that they talk about before the end of an empire?? What about global warming? We should be sick to our stomachs (well, we are but you know what I mean…) that we are sitting by and idly watching our planet heat up because of our neglect – we can change this and we are sitting on our hands (screw the debate about whether we are impacting the earth negatively – either side you come out on- you can’t conclude that we shouldn’t change our behavior)..
The list is seemingly endless.. WE can change the direction of this story.. I know we can but it is going to take all of us- seriously!! I am going to start blogging about my ideas and the ideas of my friends – I would love to hear what you think about how we can get together and affect real change. (don’t get me started on how folks like Gates could make very real change if they were so moved….. ).
Sorry to rant.. I promise to go back to more coherent posts soon.
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