No Urgency Needed - Just Lives at Stake.

 

No Urgency - that is the one thing I detest when working with or advocating to anything dealing with the government. There is no urgency to fix...rectify...own responsibility ...etc, unless it benefits them. 

When I was a special education advocate, I used to get extremely frustrated with the system that took advantage of deadlines by waiting to the last minute or beyond to make decisions or follow through with what the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Often, and it seemed like if they suspected the parent didn't have the financial resources to battle them, they'd move their chess pieces to a due process through the state board, and then, we were looking at even more time, lengthening the battle. 

Those battles were often over simple things such as assistive technology and/or other related services. 

The entire time I would stress that a half a year to them meant almost an entire school year for the child. What seemed simple, those needed services, meant the difference of a positive educational experience vs quite often torture to a child who was going without and all because they didn't fit into a cookie cutter education/classroom. 

The same is true for other efforts I've taken part in where bureaucracy is the playbook - for example a coalition of government agencies and departments forming a coalition to address and focus on domestic violence and sexual assault. Most communities have them and they are called a coordinated community response team (CCR) and local DV advocacy agencies are they facilitator as many receive government  funding for doing so. 

The ones I've sat in on always were excruciating for me. They were almost always over lunch, once a month, about an hour or so long, and not too much happened there other than agency updates, perhaps a bit of discussion to have a table somewhere with information but I usually walked away knowing more about who liked french fries over onion rings and whether or not the soup of the day was worthwhile. I was tolerated as a voice of the victims - sometimes not too well, especially if I started asking questions of why. I was there as a volunteer, they, were there as paid employees having lunch. 

We waste too much time talking, dissecting, trying to be nice -up against a broken machine 

We waste too much time sitting in meetings that go nowhere - smiling at one another and then complaining behind each other's back instead of being direct with the needed passion of people concerned about the lives of fellow Americans. 

It would weigh on me, especially if I was contacted by a victim after one of those meetings...a victim with the same concerns and complaints that I kept trying to address, such as "You're a domestic violence agency, why are you not returning calls. I am a private party, I should not have to do your work!"  Yes, that happened and it continued to happen for over a decade. Other agencies knew about this failing but they would never address it at the meetings, they left it to me so that they could be safe in their paid positions. 

Imagine sitting across from a victim trying to get services, someone with bruises on them or worse, in them, and all the dominoes that should have fallen into their favor, fell in the other direction, leaving them in a dangerous if not deadly situation. 

This really does happen - and it happens in every state in this nation. 

It happens because of the lack of urgency to understand lives are at stake, every second. 

Then - and this gets to me more than anything else -just as you think you're making progress, people change positions or an election happens and you have to start all over again. 

Covid has been the same type of thing - a lack of urgency to appreciate the lives of strangers. We are over 6 months out, over 215K DEAD - many more suffering long term health consequences, people out of work, people who can't work because they're high risk, kids losing out on an education while possibly going without needed things at home because their parents are trying everything they can do to pay those bills and keep a roof over everyone's head. Six months out and really, there's been no urgency to run to the aid of our fellow American. 

This failure has given way to conspiracy theories -  anger - frustration and despair. While those of us trying to make it through the muck, those making the decisions draw a paycheck, have the luxury of their full benefits, and heck - they even still get to take a vacation in the middle of it all, while acting like superiors to all of us, their employers - the American Public. 

While they played their ego driven bullshit political games people have died. Children have lost grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, and parents. Parents have lost children. Families and futures forever changed while our lawmakers sit on their hands, like the Senate taking a week break as surges kill Americans and the president was hospitalized after catching Covid and infecting others. 

We say we value life, but we don't -our actions prove that. 

We are in a literal mess. Civil unrest in the streets. Racism continuing as people scream shut up and sit down to those hurting. 

There are people, like me, without health insurance, already in medical need and trying anything I can do not to catch Covid because my children need me in their lives.  It is urgent! 

Instead of truly addressing this issue as it should have been, we allowed ourselves to sit back and watch the soap opera of a reality show play out before our eyes. 

We're held hostage not by the social issues and the pandemic we face, we are held hostage by our own failures, our lack to truly understand what patriotism is... Being a patriot is not walking around with our chest flared, wielding a gun and screaming in the face of someone wearing a mask. Patriotism is when you place your country and your countrymen over your self interest, running to their side -offering assistance in helping them, empowering them without expecting gain and because in the end, it benefits all of us. Patriotism is saving lives, not taking the lives of our neighbors because we don't want to be inconvenienced and sacrifice. At least, that is what my father taught me. 

Yes, I am frustrated - 

I am worried - 

And I fear as I wrote this, waiting for someone to take action in getting us on track, people became infected, and someone just lost a mother, a father, a brother and a sister...an aunt, and grandparents and all because we failed to take notice and move forward with an urgency that truly each of our lives matter - 

You can scream it in response to refusing to hear the pain and pride another person has, but unless you act upon it and prove it - ALL Lives Matter are just empty words from people who don't want to face facts - 

There's my vent for the night. 

May you all be well - 

And try to remember, we're all Americans and we need to be Good Samaritans working to keep one another safe, at all times. That is what a family does, at least a healthy one. 

Excuse typos - I'm flaring again!