Perish this particular thought

Via teh facebooks, I saw an article from Sunday's Post inquiring as to the future of the home library.  Allow me to say, unequivocally, that this assault on culture and learnedness shall not stand.  

At least not in my house. 

You see, anyone who knows me well can attest that I love my books.  I love their look, their smell, and even the words printed in them.  I catalog them and gently arrange them according to my own bizarre sense of logic.  I bought an old fashioned rocking chair so I could sit around and read them for hours while gently relaxing.  And yes, I have a room of my house dedicated to my books, and I'm out of shelf space.  I particularly cherish older editions of great works.  Of course, there are a few that go unread, that I keep for purely quirky value, like that 900 page beast on what the U.S. should do about the Soviet Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall, published about a month before the Soviet Union ceased to be.  I picked that one up at a used book store in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and bought it out of sympathy for the poor schmuck who did all that work.  

Then there are others.  The books inscribed with love by my English teacher from high school, who is one of my personal heroes.  A random assortment of titles about the U.S. Civil War, shelves dedicated to my weird fascinations with Queen Elizabeth I and Eleanor Roosevelt, inspirational pieces from activists of yore, and heavily used books from grad school all have their place.  

I spend far too much time in used book stores, looking for something unique to jump out at me, or hoping to find treasures by favorite authors that may have since gone out of print (I found one just last week).  

I'm not going to be so bold as to say I'll never have some tacky electronic book reader.  I (sort of) see their merits.  But to think that I'll ever be willing to give up that visceral connection you make with a text you hold in your hands and flip through with care seems preposterous.  So I'm keeping my books.  And trying to figure out where to put them all. 

Happy Monday, office drones!

And, uh, to all the passive aggressive micromanaging manwhores out there.  Enjoy the following.

Don't you feel better now?  I know I do.

Money can't buy you class

I'm just back from a 12 day jaunt through Missouri for work (with a little fun tossed in), and am still going through reams of emails.  However, let this entertain you in the meantime. 

Filed under: things I don't understand

As the scandal around the repulsive George Rekers continues to swirl, Sean Bugg over at MetroWeekly raises a question that I share myself:  why is it that in these scandals, the powerful man who falls from grace ends up relatively unscathed, while the sex worker involved gets the short shrift? 

I don't seem to understand why people can't see sex work as legitimate work (ignoring, for a moment, that it's illegal in most places in the U.S.).  Some people do indeed choose this line of work as their preferred means to support themselves, while others find that economic hardship and systemic discrimination have limited their employment opportunities elsewhere.  Clearly there is a demand for people to do this work, and clearly there are dangers associated with partaking in it -- much moreso for the sex worker than the client.  Why can't we focus on making the work safer instead of ostracizing those who engage in it.  Moreover, why can't we do more to end the systemic discrimination issues (towards, say, transgender women of color), that make sex work the only option some folks have?

Obviously I have no answers here.  In the meantime, support groups like these friendly people.

Explaining evangelical higher ed

A friend submitted a query to me just now, and my response was so brilliant, I decided to repost the conversation.

A: ignorance is bliss
A: I just learned there is more than one christian law school
J: yes, there is more than one
A: whyyyyy
A: I thought the jerry falwell one was the only one
J: well, on the 8th day, god said "let's kill all the faggots and beat the womenfolk into submission"
A: hahaha
J: and then the mormons said "we've got just the thing"
J: and then the evangelicals said "we'll see your BYU and raise you a whole system of wackjob 'educational' institutions, and jesus shall be pleased once karl rove gives us the new promised land to run, and we fill israel with red cows"
A: lol....
J: and the lord said, "it is good. a little short on logic, but good"
A: ok that's fun to learn
J: and then the hebrews ran around egypt and there were some wars and some dude was nailed to a tree and then at the end a greek dude in a cave had a wicked acid trip

So there, now you know. Avoid them scary schools of evangelical indoctrination, and stick to the good old fashioned loony left variety. :)

Big dreams brought to you by The Little Man with Big Dreams

The above moniker was bestowed to me by a relative when I was a kid, and deployed whenever I'd get wistful about leaving our dinky little town to save the world, or at least be able to teach a really awesome high school history class. Given that I'm a towering 5'7", it's still basically appropriate. I'm still a big dreamer, but lately I've felt I'm getting a little distracted by life's minutiae, and not focusing on big things. Call it ennui, if you must. Call it "time for change," if you've consumed too much of the Obama kool-aid.

Anywho, when I read Prince's call for us all to dream big, I decided to ponder it for a bit, and then take him up on it. These aren't resolutions, per se, and if things don't go off in the calendar year of 2009, so be it, but I do like the idea of having some big life goals and a few measurables to work from. The big dreams, in no particular order:

• Be more theoretically informed about the world around me. At the very tail end of 2008, I discovered something called the Africa Reading Challenge, wherein participants agreed to read any 6 books by African authors or about African issues over the course of the year. Since I missed that boat, I would like to expand it to African issues and authors plus works on conflict resolution, peace studies, and the like. My goal for this year: 10 books.
  
• Be more dedicated to getting my thoughts out into the world. I tend to blog in spurts, and my friends' and my endeavor over at Practical Peaceniks seems to be hitting a quiet patch. I would like to revitalize this blog, perhaps including more non-international and local content, with a goal of 10 posts per month. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it's something. Also, as I start to think about graduate study again, I would like to pursue getting at least one piece -- even if it's just a book review -- selected for publication.
• Be more engaged with my community. This year I started getting involved in the work of the DC Trans Coalition, and that has been incredibly rewarding after a too long lull in my activist adventures. I would like to continue that work, as well as find volunteer opportunities related to engaging local youth in international affairs and/or promoting peace and social justice issues.
  
• Dramatically improve my level of personal and professional fulfillment. I think doing all of the above will help with that tremendously. More generally speaking, I need to stay on top of new opportunities as they develop, and I need to be more intentional about making sure my needs are met. Apathy is not a virtue, and I'm not going to get over my recent slump by sitting on my duff. I am, by nature, an optimistic and active person, with no particular fondness for sleeping too much (ok, sometimes). I need to get back in touch with that, daily.

Sounds modest enough, right? Let's see how it plans out. Perhaps I should file monthly reports with myself. :)

Yes, sometimes it's personal

I was reading this article (sub req'd) the other day about the major contributions gay people made to American culture during the middle of the 20th century. The authory, Michael Sherry, dealt quite deftly with the painful-to-beneficial relationship between great gay artists (like Copland, Bernstein, etc) and the mainstream media. Society recognized that their work was brilliant, while concurrently abhorring the [real and imagined] lives these men and women lived. Thus these individuals existed in a tenuous position. Revered on one hand, reviled on the other. Indeed, many commentators feared what having a strong, yet gay, artist community would have some sort of disastrous consequences on the moral fiber of American society as a whole, and there was a sort of Lavender Scare in the early sixties as a result.

Most students of U.S. history and politics recall that various Red Scares took place during the 1920s and again in the late 40s-50s. These scares were particularly hard on both the arts community and the foreign and security policy communities, for different reasons. The common thread, of course, was that gay and lesbian people got scooped up in each of these scares. The natural resilience to societal pressures that artist communities usually possess brushed this off relatively easily. In the policy community, though, where conformism is essential, the effects were devastating.

Fast forward to today. You still can't legally be gay in the military. The military, being one massive tool of foreign and security policy, and an apparatus that interacts with almost all other segments of the policy community, clearly has an effect on culture. The current leadership at the State Department has often harped on promoting freedom and human rights. Yet it is conspicuously silent on LGBT issues. With these combined influences, it's still a pretty lonesome place for LGBT people in that community. Other oppressed groups have been able to make more visible inroads in these areas. Yet given a culture of forced invisibility, it's pretty hard for LGBT people to make the same kind of advances. Thus for an individual such as myself, with a passion for working in international affairs and a strong desire to influence policy and thus positive change, I tend to feel disempowered and silenced, because to find gay people in that world, one basically goes on a quest for the Northwest Passage. It's not completely impossible to find out LGBT people in foreign and security policy land, but you're not going to find a lot.

So why is it so much more difficult for LGBT people to feel any sense of place in the policy realm? For one, as Sherry puts it so much better than I ever could, "the labels 'gay' and 'American' do not yet readily collapse into one." There is still a lot of stigma (particularly moral stigma), and much of this is perpetuated at the highest levels of society (just think about how George Bush got elected in 2004). I once talked with a former employer of mine, a woman who was advising members of Congress on foreign affairs in a day when such women were particularly rare. She described a lot of challenges that I feel myself (I'm not trying to appropriate her experience, I'm just noting similarities).

I guess my point is that I feel stifled a lot of the time. Granted, I'm young, and part of that has to do with insufficient experience to match aspirations. But part of it is a genuine concern that making even a mention of my personal life could preclude me from work somewhere. Admittedly, I wouldn't want to work somewhere where that would be the case, but still, knowing that it could occur is still troubling. I've certainly got being white and male going for me, but not fully fitting into that archetype is a problem (in some eyes) nonetheless.

Bottom line: yes, I can talk about decorating, but I'm trained to talk about force strength, strategic planning, transitional justice, and corruption (among other things). Don't think I'm "soft" because I'm a homo. And you, yes you with the ugly blue suit and the same tired comb-over everyone else in your building is sporting: I can play ball in your court, I just happen to prefer a flashier uniform.

American exceptionalism, the Constitution, and Madeleine Albright

This past weekend Two weeks ago, I had the chance to explore the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. I also recently finished Madeleine Albright's The Mighty and the Almighty. Both the center and the book place an emphasis on the concept of American exceptionalism, and the more I mulled over each, the more I realized their claims in this regard are related. I personally find this notion of exceptionalism to be problematic -- sometimes it is troubling, egotistical, and imperialist; and other times the concept seems right on point, at least in theory.

The Constitution Center's main argument (to the extent that a museum can have an argument), seems to be that the United States, being the first rights-based democracy on earth that has endured into the present, has had a tumultuous relationship between the values enshrined in its founding documents and the reality of the practice of governance. In other words, based upon a simple reading of the Constitution, one would expect that the U.S. would have a far less discriminatory history and encompass a far more egalitarian society than it does. Because this country is the home to these documents, it is inherently held to a higher standard, as far as justice and human rights are concerned, than most every other nation. Thus it is the documents, and not how various elements of our government have adhered to them, that makes the United States unique, and living up to those documents has become our national challenge.

Albright, obviously, takes a different focus but ends up with a few similar points. While she focuses much less on founding documents and more on foreign policy activities, she comes to a similar conclusion about how the U.S. should act in the world that the Constitution Center arrives at for the domestic front. Namely, because the United States chose to make promoting respect for human rights a foundation of its foreign policy during the Carter administration (of which she was a member), and because much of today's current foreign policy is informed by the idealism of the Wilson and FDR administrations (remember that neo-cons started out as frustrated liberals), the U.S. has a special obligation to ensuring that human rights are protected around the world. She points to the old (yet resonant) rhetoric that the United States is to be a "shining city upon a hill" and though she critiques some of the underlying assumptions that come along with that, in the end she seems to agree with the core premise.

Yet it is these very arguments that make American exceptionalism such a problematic concept. I do tend to agree that certain documents and certain leaders in our nation's past have seen to leave us with a national charge to better ourselves and our fellow human beings. However, our very failure to realize the dream of these core principles at home and the hubris and hypocrisy with which we sometimes conduct our affairs abroad (under administrations of all political persuasions) makes me wonder if it's not just a pile of malarky. Perhaps the the United States, writ large, isn't terribly special. Maybe we were just blessed with a series of particularly visionary leaders who had enough rhetorical skill and popular appeal to ingrain themselves in the national memory, to the extent that one exists. If this is indeed the case, then the U.S. isn't terribly exceptional at all, and may well just be an ordinary country that is just wealthier and larger than most and thus more noticeable. But that potentially cynical perspective still fails to fully answer the question, because failure to live up to an exceptional charge does not necessarily mean that the country and its society (which admittedly is not a unitary, monolithic creature) is not exceptional, but just struggling along a particularly tough road where perhaps the end is still not in reach. This is view is more accepting of a history of oppression at home and arrogance abroad, as these elements become natural obstacles on a path to some enlightened future.

There are certainly other views on American exceptionalism beyond the two I just laid out, but clearly, neither of the ones I have here can really satisfy the questions of 1) is the United States fundamentally unique and 2) if so, why and if not, why not? If we've failed to live up to expectations, that doesn't mean that something better does not lay ahead, and that we should just give up. Likewise, if this is just a particularly difficult chore with which we've been tasked, there is too much room there to excuse too much of the past that are a disgrace to morality and basic human dignity.

I thought both the book and the center were quite well done. Nonetheless, I would have liked to see a greater framing of these particularly complex complexities in both places. The question of exceptionalism gets to the very core of this country's identity (to the extent that social and political constructions can have identities independent of individual perceptions). I certainly do not have the answer to these questions, but they do make for a particularly challenging discourse and precipitate an incredible range of thought.

[Note: I initially started writing this at the end of my trip, but ended up neglecting the draft and the rest of this blog while I dealt with some particularly challenging work events. Hopefully I'll be back up to pace soon. Otherwise, just blame my quietness on a slow, hot summer.]

Finally, some progress in the AU president search

The Post gave us this little teaser this morning saying that the recalcitrant American University Board of Trustees might actually bother to pick a president tomorrow, and that it will probably be the interim president the University has already had for two years.

Well gee guys, it's about damn time.

My woes with AU governance started just shortly after I enrolled there as a graduate student. I watched in horror as President Moronic Asshole Thief stole a lot of money, was caught, and then was given severance pay. After all, I was a student rep to the Board of Trustees when I was in college, and I got a nice tutorial in college and university finances. I also enjoyed, and helped improve, a fairly open and transparent system of governance back when I was a lowly undergrad at liberal arts college. That hey day ended as soon as I got to AU, and I realized how good I'd had it before.

I also got really damn pissed off. And I said so. And it got me nowhere. So I shut up. Anyway.

I think Neil Kerwin will be a fine president at AU. He hasn't had a lot of leverage in the past to years, as he's basically been seen as a caretaker, and as the Post reveals, hasn't really been taken seriously by the Board until just recently. But he seems to be an amiable guy. He actually can be seen walking around on campus, smiling and saying hi to people, which is something his predecessor didn't do (probably because his fat ass was being driven around everywhere).

Nonetheless, this search has been run in a smoke-filled room, with as little transparency as humanly possible. Indeed, there were student, faculty, and alumni reps on the search committee, but no one was allowed to talk about anything. The only public forums on the subject dealt with characteristics various constituencies would like to see in a new president, which of course led to a lot of "we'd like someone who isn't a crook, please." I understand being sensitive to candidates' needs to keep things quiet, but I don't think it's unreasonable to at least name the finalists and bring them to campus for general ogling (sans press).

Even this process would have been more tolerable if the Board had been more transparent to begin with. In spite of going through a big governance reform process during 2006, it seems that most changes were cosmetic. Although a student and a faculty member were added to the Board (without vote), the process of selecting those individuals was done completely in private, after the initial solicitation of applications. In short, who the hell knows what the AU Board will do, except the Board itself. It was telling when, after completing its so-called reform, the Senate Finance Committee wrote back and said "not good enough," to which the Board basically responded "tough." Frankly, inviting a couple more people to your meetings and publishing a very, very brief summary of meetings doesn't quite make Board operations transparent. There needs to be actual effective communication back and forth, and in that regard, the AU Board is still seriously lacking.

Nonetheless, I'm excited about tomorrow's announcement. AU left a bad taste in my mouth at the end of two years. While I think it's a fantastic institution academically, the fact that it's managed by idiots/assholes at the highest level rather casts a negative light on the whole thing. If we could get a forward looking president with the genuine best interests of the University in mind, and a Board that is willing to exercise its responsibilities while neither grandstanding nor micromanaging, then things will be in good shape. If Neil Kerwin is given the authority to do that, then I'm all for it. I guess now we wait and see.

Things to think on

Re: nationalism and patriotism.

Thing one, by Howard Zinn (thanks Daniel).

Thing two, by Anne-Marie Slaughter (thanks to Passport).

Read both things in the order I posted them here, like I did this morning. They inadvertently play off each other, I think. I lean towards Slaughter's position, though Zinn certainly brings up some valid points. Both leave out a few things. Nonetheless, you be the judge of that. I'm just passing on things that made me ponder.

On Memorial Day

I was reading this piece this morning, and I was reminded of some of my not so distant research on the creation of historical memory after conflict. Admittedly, I haven't looked at much on the importance of memory during conflict, but I was estimate that memorial efforts create more of a public stir when the whole society is engaged in the conflict, which is not the case with the U.S. in Iraq at present.

It's funny how Memorial Day has taken on so many different meanings in it's 150 year or so history. It went from commemorating a moral victory, to remembrance of all war dead, and is now basically an excuse for selling discounted stuff. And yet in some ways the day hasn't lost any of its original meanings, but has rather gained a more multi-faceted identity. For some, the conflict between pro- and anti-slavery forces isn't quite over. Indeed, one could argue that the victory of the Civil War has yet to be consolidated in the form of a truly just and equitable society, given the continuing persistence of economic and social inequalities based upon race. Yet for others, the violent horrors of something so long ago don't really effect them much, and thus it's a good time for a barbecue and some discount shopping. Still others have attached new meanings to Memorial Day to commemorate the loved ones they lost in more recent conflicts. Sadly, a new group has this day, and likely all others, to remember the loss of someone close to them within these past three years.

But if Memorial Day really is about remembering the suffering of war, then how good are we at living up to that mandate? How many of us really stop and think about the U.S. service personnel that have given their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially if we don't really know anyone who's died there? Sadder still, how many of us really think about the innocent civilians that have died in these wars and in others? In today's wars, something like 90 percent of casualties are civilians, which is the complete reverse of 100 years ago. Perhaps the continuing evolution of Memorial Day and similar commemorations will lead us to think about these newer questions.

In any event, memorials are essential to any society's dealing with conflict. As Martha Minow (1998: 121) puts it: “what’s needed, paradoxically, is a process for reinterpreting what cannot be made sensible, for assembling what cannot be put together, and for separating what cannot be severed from both present and future.” Memorial Day, along with other days and monuments, will likely continue to give voice to this ongoing struggle.

Post-graduation survival guide

Congratulations! You've just finished an overpriced and underuseful graduate degree. Here's what you do after the whole walking for the family thing:

That day (Day 0): Have picnic, fly kite, send family back to little circle of hell from whence they came.

Day 1: Sleep, do silly things, update resume. Toy with the idea of putting initials behind your name on every piece of paper, ever. Drop that idea when you realize you're still just a schmuck. Greet successful, well educated friend at airport and take her to successful, well educated person conference. Help another college friend move and listen to her talk about her job (among other things). Realize you should find one of those job things.

Day 2: A little more sleep (this is a high maintenance mom visit you're recovering from, after all), inform temp service of new availability. Clean out school bag and place in closet. Find tie you've been missing since December in secret pocket of once and future everyday bag.

Day 3: Go to new temp assignment. Come home to find first loan bill in mailbox. Shit pants. Call loan company that you never borrowed from but swears you owe them money right now, and inquire "where the fuck is my deferment, bitches?!?" Defer loan. Proceed to panic, but realize you just deferred your loan, and are again in the clear.

Day 4 (tomorrow): Begin job search for serious. Contemplate retail therapy, but recall that you're almost out of money. Do more temp work instead.

I think Time missed a few

I was browsing Time's list of the world's 100 most influential people, and I couldn't help notice a gap. In the "scientists and thinkers" section, I counted only two non-scientists, one of whom was Al Gore. If they're going to do that, why not just name it the scientists section, and move on? I don't mean to discount the work of the individuals who made the list in that category. Each seemed to be engaged in incredibly remarkable work that will have a lasting impact in the world. Yet I wonder about how we value the hard sciences over other disciplines.

It seems (and I read about or watched something on this somewhere, but who knows what or when) that our society places a huge value on the sciences over and above other academic pursuits. Maybe it's because scientists often talk about things that most of us can't grasp, and thus we just assume they're smarter. But what about in other fields?

There are the historians who uncover new information about times long past, and thereby change our perception of our historical narrative. There are the anthropologists who help us to understand how our cultures function and how various dynamics swirl all around us. There are religious scholars and philosophers who explore the world's burning and potentially eternal questions with the same vigor as their scientists colleagues. There are political scientists who help us conceive of new concepts aimed at ensuring that our common humanity is respected and revered within the global community. There are writers, artists and musicians who craft their works in ways that move us. There are the peace scholars who show us how our world can grow, change, and be better for us all.

All of these endeavors are just as important as scientific studies, and, some of the resulting concepts are just as difficult for newcomers to grasp. This work should be recognized, valued and celebrated just as much as the sciences. Understanding our world is far too complex a task to be left to just a handful of disciplines. It's a common journey that requires an array of approaches in the hopes that maybe, just one day, we'll figure it out.

In which I temporarily become a 60 year old man

I played tourist tonight, and hit the Tidal Basin for some sunset cherry blossom excitement (pics to come). I did the usual bit -- walking down the mall, around the TB towards the Jefferson Memorial, and continued on. It wasn't too terribly crowded, though it was hairy in a few spots. It was starting to get dark by the time I got to the FDR Memorial, which, being one of my two favorite memorials in town, I perused again -- from the beginning, not the end, like a good person. The quotes and stones and water features tell a story, and you can't really read it backwards. After snapping a few shots of some of the fountains and falls, and taking a moment to sort of sink into the gravity of the end of the Second World War and the weight of the Four Freedoms engraved in the wall, I continued on my way. I decided then to visit the Korean War Memorial, my other favorite. Both my grandfather's were in the military during that conflict, one in the Navy and one in the Army. Fortunately, they never actually got deployed to Korea proper (though the one in the Navy did patrol the East China Sea a lot). In their honor, I wrote my senior thesis in college about the ceasefire negotiations during that war. The best compliment I ever got from anyone was when the two of them agreed, "that's pretty much how we remember it."

Anyway, my point...

By the time I got to the Korean War Memorial, I had encountered the hordes of middle school spring break trip groups. Near the pool near the top of the memorial, I saw a park ranger sit down and look sullen. He was probably about 60 or so, and just looked down. Indeed, one lady even asked if he was OK. I sat on the same bench for awhile, staring in a different direction, losing myself in thought. The kids were atrocious. One group was being led by a teacher with a toy light saber. "The statues are creepy!" The photos etched on the wall "look like ghosts."

Of course they look like ghosts. The people in those pictures (though slightly altered) represent the service members who died in that war. The statues of soldiers marching up the hill look scared because war is scary. It's not all pressed uniforms and shiny medals and big planes. It's people slogging through mud and dust killing and getting killed. It's the worst of humanity. Too often these days, wars are fought by children, and the dead are civilians, not soldiers. Just when we thought we'd hit our lowest point, we keep going lower.

And these kids don't get it. I fear they never will. Hell, my own generation doesn't get it, and some of us are being sent to fight and die for a ludicrous cause as we speak. But it doesn't touch us, really. Sure, the price of gas has gone up, but most of my friends don't have cars, so that doesn't really have much effect either. In a way, it's good that young people in America don't know what war is like. Not the huge, commit the country to the fight kind of wars of years past. But these privileged, sheltered kids don't get it. They're running around, trampling over things, screaming, yelling obscenities, and are completely untouched by trouble. For the most part, the kids tonight were white, looked relatively affluent, and probably suburban. It's not so much bothersome that they've never been touched by war, it's that they don't seem to know hardship at all.

I saw a book at the bookstore the other day entitled The "Me" Generation. I don't want to be a part of that. My grandparents grew up in the Depression in rural Tennessee. They had nothing. Literally nothing. Food was grown in the backyard, and what you couldn't grow or raise yourself, you couldn't have. While my childhood was leaps and bounds beyond that, there was still struggle involved. As a teenager, I worked after school and on weekends, and my single mother worked two jobs. We still had trouble making ends meet. If not for a scholarship, I wouldn't have gone to college. And yet in spite of that, the notion was still pounded into my head, primarily by my grandparents, that I needed to serve. There's a world out there bigger than me or anybody else, and I need to do my part, even if it's something small.

When Tom Brokaw released his book, The Greatest Generation, I was pretty incensed. I was young, idealistic, etc, (OK, I'm still those things), and thought perhaps it was premature to proclaim the greatest generation. But maybe it wasn't. Maybe it's time for the "Me" generation. Maybe there was a time when the country came together to do something big and with broad perspective, and maybe that just won't happen again. But I hope not.

Hurricane hits me

In the Target parking lot today, I encountered a woman who had lived in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit back in August. She was pregnant, looked dead tired, and had some sort of bruise on the side of her face that had been stitched up. She carried a manila file folder, and in it she had her medical records for her and her children, and a few photos. She had several children, one of whom she described as having been swept out of her window by gushing water before she could get to him. She managed to find his body, and showed me the death certificate. She had thought her mother was dead too, but apparently got a call a few days ago to let her know that her mother was in fact alive, and living somewhere in Texas, I think. This woman was simply asking for $5 to help buy the bus ticket to get her mother up to DC so she could be reunited with the family. I didn’t have any cash on me, and felt horrible. She was so sweet, and so tired, but at the same time so respectful and calm. She had been through a huge catastrophe, and was just trying to survive it.

As I said, I felt horrible for not having anything on me. I don’t usually give money to people on the street, but she had a legitimate need, and even had the paperwork to back it up. I hope she can raise enough. She only needed a few more donations to get the ticket.

But as I roamed the aisles of the grocery store across the street, I grew increasingly angry. Not at her, because I could never do that. I was angry at my country.

The United States is the richest country on earth. The State of California is, by itself, the fifth largest economy in the world. The U.S. Department of Agriculture actually pays farmers to not grow anything.

And yet this woman who lost everything, including one of her children, in a massive natural disaster on our own soil, has to beg for money. That’s an injustice if I ever saw one. But it’s not just hurricane victims this country neglects. Veterans, people with AIDS, senior citizens, and even teachers struggle to get by, and government assistance is insufficient. The unemployment rate has declined only marginally. There are whole families that spend the night without food or shelter. There is a whole swath of the population, including children, that is simply neglected by our government and our society.

It’s not just wrong. It’s criminal.

Granted, there isn’t much I can do about it. In spite of the tremendous privilege I enjoy – I’m currently sitting in an air conditioned, fully furnished apartment typing on my relatively new computer with my car parked right by the door of my building – I go into debt at a huge rate each year, and can’t give to all the causes I would like to give to. In fact, in the past year, I don’t know that I’ve really helped anyone with anything. I guess I should be careful to not be hypocritical. But still, one day I hope to be able to give back tons to the world, and not just monetarily.

We need real relief for those who survived the Gulf Coast hurricanes last year. And we need real social programs that actually help people. Paying farmers to not grow corn so the price can be kept low for corporations is ridiculous. We could pay those farmers to grow that corn (or something else), and use it for humanitarian aid, while still keeping prices down for the corporations.

Instead, this country takes its wealth and blows stuff up. What a painfully childish use of resources. We can and must do better.