As we gaze out at the landscape of our town and our nation, it is easy to become demoralized.
Here in our own community, we find ourselves with schools that are still essentially segregated. We see a core of tremendous poverty surrounded by a ring of relative wealth. This injustice is perpetuated by our maintenance of boundaries that needlessly divide York into 16 school districts and 72 municipalities.
Both locally and nationally, we see corporations like Harley Davidson preaching rugged individualism on the one hand while taking massive government handouts with the other. We grimace as our forests are mowed down and our air and water are polluted while shortsighted leaders call for an easing of environmental restrictions.
We watched in horror recently as an American minister cavalierly burned a copy of the Koran on his barbecue grill, an un-Christian act that has resulted in numerous deaths and a ratcheting up of tensions among millions of human beings on this fragile planet. We see the dramatic economic hardship in our nation that resulted from deregulation and corporate greed and shake our heads in disbelief as the pundits and the privileged blame the American working class for the economic collapse.
We see the Supreme Court decide that corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money on elections without any disclosure and wonder to ourselves if in ten years there will be any elected leaders who aren't quietly sponsored by a corporation.
We look out at the all this dysfunction and feel powerless. We fantasize about the emergence of leaders who will help our community and country change course. Ironically, it is this very fantasy that is the root of our troubles. For it reveals our mistaken belief that citizenship is a spectator sport and that someone else will come along to make things right.
The truth is that we citizens already possess all the power we need to reset our course. If we get off our sofas and engage actively as thinking citizens rather than loafing as passive consumers, we can move our community and our country in a new direction. We know kindness must be at the heart of any effective change, but we often become paralyzed because we mistakenly equate kindness with inactivity. Love is an active verb.
Collectively, we hold the power. One need only to google "2005 citibank memo" to see how nervous that power makes those who benefit from the unsustainable status quo. It is not outside forces that are ultimately responsible for our recent decline. It is our own failure to act and engage as citizens. Our community and our country evolve as we allow them to.
Earn your citizenship. If you don't like our essentially segregated school system that originates with municipal and district boundaries, then call on your political leaders to tear down these walls. The only solution to a declining tax base and inelastic borders is no borders at all.
And if you agree that homogeneous classrooms make for a mediocre education, then demand redistricting, a redrawing of the lines that determine the building in which a student learns. If you agree that maintaining a core of poverty surrounded by a ring of relative affluence is not only unjust but also unhealthy for our community, then call on your municipal leaders to enact common sense zoning reform that encourages and incentivizes affordable housing throughout our county.
If you are tired of religious intolerance, speak out loud against it. Let the citizens of other countries hear the kind voices of millions of Americans drown out the divisive speech of zealots.
If you're sick of corporations like Harley preaching rugged individualism while regularly extorting taxpayers by threatening jobs, then consider this when you're making purchases. The same goes for those corporations who pollute our environment. Vote with your wallet and watch how fast change can occur.
If you agree that it's absurd to blame American workers, teachers and the middle class for the economic hardships we face, then say so out loud to your political leaders. While you're at it, demand that key Wall Street criminals who stole from American taxpayers are put behind bars.
And if you agree that our democracy can't survive corporations spending unlimited funds on political campaigns, then contact your congressman and senators today and tell them to enact sensible legislation limiting the influence of corporations in elections and requiring full disclosure.
This is your country. Your elected leaders work for you and can be fired by you. Those who benefit from the unsustainable status quo have always worried there would be a day that you and your fellow Americans would arise from the sofa and act like citizens. Now is the time to justify their fears.
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