Vote for Joe

I was in Danville, Ohio, where I talked with a woman who had traveled to Pakistan several years ago.   She said among a good number of people there, she experienced a distinct “coldness toward Americans.”   One of the reasons is we have been sending unmanned, drone planes into the mountain regions of Pakistan/Afghanistan and bombing suspected Al Quieda and Taliban targets.   The problem is the bombing runs are also killing innocent civilians (men, women and children) in these remote mountain villages.   This would be akin to another country bombing in our Rocky Mountains to eradicate, say, terrorists; but at the same time killing some of our innocent men, women and children in places like Aspen.   I mean, how would we react?   Note:   A recent Green Party news release explained that Pakistan Green Party leader Liaquat Ali Shaik, in a tour of American cities, met with American Greens to discuss major points of agreement, including the need to “end drone attacks.”   The release said some 900 civilians have already been killed in these attacks and villages have been left in ruins.   What’s more, almost a million people have apparently fled the area for other parts of Pakistan, many ending up in refugee camps.   The Green Party calls for immediate relief and resettlement programs, including compensation for those who have been affected.   Our administration would agree with that.

I talked to Chris Knestrick who is  part of a  Christian Peacekeeper Team  in Columbia, South America.   He said it is not uncommon for subsistence farmers there, and their families, to “disappear” at the hands of para-military groups.   Some big international corporations want the land these farmers have been on for generations and will apparently go to any length to get it — including funding these para-military terror campaigns.   Since Chris (who is from Cleveland) has been back in the states, he’s traveled about giving talks and trying to raise peoples’ awareness of this issue.   Note:   Our administration would work stridently to help allow these farmers to keep their land, including aiding them with Peace Corps help, and the like.

According to National Geographic, Haiti is “dirt poor.”   That is, hunger is so bad for many there now that they have taken to eating cakes made of clay, salt and shortening.   Even though people realize these are terrible for their systems, the cakes “quell the hunger pangs” in the short term… As I read this, I couldn’t help thinking about all us “people of faith” who  each day go to  the corner store for pop, chips, cookies… and all sorts of other totally non-nutritional junk food in the face of such potentially relievable human suffering — and think nothing of it!   What’s more, we then ask God to “bless our   nation.”   Note:   Mother Theresa once said the United States of America  was the “most spiritually poor country” she came across in all her travels.   Trouble is, we’ve been so blinded by each of the seven deadly sins, like for instance: gluttony, that we can’t see it.

For the last week I’ve been doing some final editing on a book I’ve written about our time in Cleveland.   It’s titled:   America’s Best Urban Neighborhood.   The following is an excerpt:     “At the time of this writing, I have traveled some 200,000 miles through America doing extensive research for our presidential platform.   And never, and I mean never, have I come across a better urban neighborhood.   At the heart of this neighborhood are people who have moved here from various suburbs and small town America.   They moved here to live side-by-side with the poor in solidarity.   They moved here to fight to maintain affordable housing.   They moved here to welcome refugees.   They moved here to coach inner city recreation teams made up of youth who don’t have fathers and/or mothers at home, much less in the stands.   They moved here to reclaim nature in the midst of practically wall-to-wall concrete and broken glass.   And they moved here to speak peace to the violence.”

        I was an adult volunteer faciliator at John Marshall High School in Cleveland yesterday for “Challenge Day.”   This was a day-long event that included 100 high school students, some 20 adults, and a couple staff members from Challenge Day, which is a non-profit group out of San Francisco trying to change the growing culture of hate in our country’s schools.   One of the facilitator’s, Sean, said America is in a tremendously bad state because of  the anger, resentment, violence… that is escalating in the culture in general.   He said it comes from years of repressed anger, sadness, fear… that builds up in people from dysfunctional family environments, dysfunctional peer environments, etc.   He said the key is to start to tap into and vent these feelings in a supportive and loving environment.   And that’s the kind of environment these Challenge Day people created this day, as students (and adults) talked — sometimes for the first time — about parental abandonment, physical abuse, sexual abuse, peer intimidation, fear of the streets…   During one exercise, students were asked to acknowledge how many live in an environment where they hear gun shots.   Half of the hundred students did…   Sean pointed out that people who are abused have a strong tendency to turn around and abuse others — which is at the root of a lot of the problems playing out in our schools today…   Our administration would look at just increasing the security presence in the schools as tremendously myopic.   But rather, we would promote projects like Challenge Day (and Challenge Day ongoing peer support groups) as the real answer to changing a youth culture that seems almost spinning out of control.