Vote for Joe

A couple weeks back, I gave a talk at the Christopher Program, an Alternative High School in downtown Columbus, Ohio.   The class I talked in was doing some tremendously creative “Service Learning” projects.   One student was doing an education program about “Environmental Awareness in the Work Place.”   Another student was working with a local social service agency to help further awareness about domestic violence and sexual assault.   Yet another student was doing a form of street theatre to raise awareness about safe driving habits…   As a spin-off, I said I’d interviewed a man who owns a Driving School in Loudonville, Ohio.   he   told me there are 33,000 traffic fatalities every year in America, one death every 13 minutes.   That’s almost five deaths every hour, or 120 traffic deaths a day.   The man said that would be the equivalent of a half-full airliner going down every day   in this country!   America has lost a little more than 4,000 Service people in Iraq over five years.   We’ve lost some 165,000 motorists during that same time.   Our roads have become “war zones,” it’s just that we don’t look at it that way, I said.   Among  a number of  things,  I said our administration would push to have highway speed limits go back to 40 mph, like  they were  in 1941.   This would significanlty save on gas, cut down, just as significantly, on  carbon dioxide gas emissions,  and make the highways tremendously safer.   Several students indicated I might not get a lot of votes with that stance…    Note: Several days later,  I got an e-mail from Jonathan Renard, one of the Christopher Program students.   He wrote:   “I especially found it interesting when you said: ‘Do you want to vote for a president that says what you want to hear, or do you want to vote for a president that challenges your thoughts?’ I have been thinking about that all weekend,” he added.

I gave a talk  to a high school “Justice Group” in Cleveland this week.   It is part of the Catholic Schools for Peace and Justice (www.cspj.net) network here.   I learned the group has sponsored such events as “Dance for Darfur,” which raised some $7,000 for Darfur, explained CSPJ coordinator Augie Pacetti.   These high school students have also done events to promote “Fair Trade” and  help the “Invisible Children” of  Uganda.   They help with tutoring at a neighborhood “Arrupe House” program.   They do street outreach to the inner city poor…  When senior Nick Drosos was asked why he’s involved, he simply replied:   “I just think it’s right.”   Enough said.   Note:   Our Education platform calls for a paradigm shift, if you will.   That is, we would like to see one-third of school curriculum be “Service Learning” projects  — like the ones this Cleveland “Justice Group” is involved with –out in the local community, and in the world at large.

I talked in several Government Classes at St. Ignatius High School today.   One of the issues that came up was global warming.   A student asked what we could do about it.   The instructor, Tim Evans, said that we currently generate most of our power from coal and oil — which produces huge   amounts of greenhouse gases.   Mr. Evans went on to say that God must be shaking His head.   That is, from about six in the morning until nine at night He sends this big, yellow sphere over our heads — day in and day out — from which we could generate all kinds of non-polluting energy.   And the same goes with wind that blows around us, for the most part, day in and day out.   Yet we continue to dig deep into the earth to extract stuff from the ‘Dark Side,’ if you will.   Again, tremendously polluting coal and oil. It’s almost analogous, if you will, to God continually tugging at us to look up, while Satan is continually tugging at us to look down. Note:   Just after the class, I came across a book titled The Party’s Over.   It is about declining supplies of coal and oil and the coming calamaties that might well cause.   The book notes that it is inevitable we’ll have to sacrifice considerably and switch over, as soon as possible, to clean, renewable energy sources, like, oh, that big yellow sphere.

The Salem News in Ohio did a front page story about our campaign last week.   The story noted that I believe [in the short term] that it would be good for our country to go beyond Recession and actually slide into a: Depression.   (Whew…   there goes a few votes, huh.)   In reading about the Great Depression in the 1930s, I learned that many people moved out of urban centers to rural settings.   They moved in with relatives, friends, etc., there  to be closer to food sources.   As a result, these urbanites reconnected with the land, learned to live simply, and generally shared on a  considerably heightenned level with their neighbors… So, do we want to continue to be ‘consumed alive’ in our current culture; or would it be better to  shift to a much more centered, simple and sharing culture?   And while I’m sure many would want to choose the latter, I don’t think many of us can get from here to there — without a crash.   Just like alcoholics often have to hit “bottoms” before they truly decide to change their lives.

Buckeye Back Road Tour cont.:    We stumped at the Steel Trolley Diner in Lisbon where a man from East Palestine, Ohio, told me he was out of work for a year (actively looking the whole time) when he finally got a job at the local steel mill.   “There doesn’t seem to be a middle class anymore,” he sighed… We drove on to Scio, Ohio, stopping to talk with people in little villages along the way.   We talked with George at “George’s Automotive” in one of those villages.   I asked him how he came up with the garage’s name…   In Scio our son Joseph, 10, was allowed to practice with a Little League Team. We cheered Joseph on and passed out some flyers in the stands…   The next day it was more back road stumping on our way to Steubenville, Ohio, where I talked to a group of Franciscan University students at an “average Joe Politics in the Backyard Barbeque.”   I said that in a speech to the United Nations, Pope Benedict said we must “…eliminate inequalities between countries.”   To put a face on this, I said we had done research in Juarez, Mexico, where 200,000 people — many of them families — live in one room, cobbled together shacks the size of the porch I was talking on this night (about 15 ft. by 15 ft.).   If we want to bring “equality” between nations,  shouldn’t the average American family go to “house sharing” with one, two, three… more families, and take the savings so that many  people in Mexico (Haiti, Uganda, Nigeria…) had at least the basics in adequate shelter?   Of course we should.