Eyes Boholding Truth, Facing Those Dead to the State
I am admittedly, at least for the moment, not up to speed on the latest rhetoric circulating around Washington D.C. concerning Medicare and Medicaid. I will assume that little has changed and the issue is barely considered an issue amid allegedly more pressing affairs: the legitimacy of current wars, the urgency of upcoming wars, the denial of yesterday's wars, and whatever fear-motivated political causes our "leaders" consider more worthy of their time and our tax dollars. Domestic issues, such as the health and well-being of our nation's citizenry, don’t seem to garner political support or press attention as maybe they should. Whether this results from politicians' "gold-fleece" health care benefits -an odd initiative that distances our decision-making "men created equally" from participating in a defunct public health care system that they, themselves, mismanage, or from an outright disregard for the non-wealthy, those who are unable to sway the perspectives and affect the hands of politicians, and therefore may as well die, I am not entirely sure. I believe the specifics of the cause is of little significance when we consider the magnitude of its consequence. My assumptions borrow from patterns of previous policy, in a nutshell the systematic fund-slashing which grinds social programs to a halt both at home and abroad. The efforts of government-subsidized humanitarians working to aid the impoverished at fulfilling their universal right to live are crippled by government-sanctioned fiscal starvation. I am confident my assumptions are accurate.
I can account for my unawareness, my being forced to assume: I was a bit cut off from the political world while volunteering at the RAM (Remote Area Medical) event that took place this past weekend at the Wise County Fairgrounds in western Virginia. RAM is an annual, all-volunteer event that provides medical, optical, and dental services to the uninsured/unable to pay, free of charge. Sixty-six hundred patients received services in one weekend that they'd otherwise be forced to live without. Involvement in the event I consider a privilege because I have never, in my life, seen anything like it. A gathering of thousands of strangers in the mountains of rural VA, coming together to provide or receive the goodwill that sustains life, in the physiological and spiritual sense; there are few things in the world like RAM.
Outlining the positive side to RAM is a pleasure, but I cannot distract my thought process from the negative side, the omniscient, ugly reality that has necessitated RAM.
RAM captures, in essence, the largest single piece of America's social programs inadequacies that someone can view all at once. Thousands of people drive from distances sometimes hours away to wait several hours through the night, uninhibited by rain or cold, to receive medical care that they cannot afford and that is performed entirely by volunteers with equipment and supplies that are donated. Why is this necessary in such a wealthy society? Why are provisions of these services so sparsely available to the economically disadvantaged that they have to negotiate such obstacles to acquire them? Why is it necessary for such a tremendous outpouring of selfless goodwill by nearly a thousand volunteers in order for the poor to get basic medical services that the state and the privileged citizens of that state take for granted? These questions have no answers because they're seldom asked; they probably cannot be explained logically and rationally without conceding that this country has become a veritable cesspool of socioeconomic injustice and class over-stratification. These words sound harsh, but there is clearly no other way to rationalize RAM. It exists because a small but growing unrepresented faction of the U.S. populace is literally left to their own meager resources for survival, and they are unable to achieve survival without the altruism of those volunteers acting in defiance to the social/economical schematic of American Society.
This assessment, though appropriate, is too depersonalized to effectively convey the myriad of unforgettable images I confronted and that, indeed, ought to confront the national conscience. I was faced with people, a very great many people, people of a widely diverse spectrum of backgrounds, all with one thing in common: they are the people you never see discussed on the floor of political debate, receiving the needed attention of government. These people were, from epidemic levels of marginalization and apathy, dead to the state.
At a personal level, I can share one of those images that may help give my assaults some grounding context. The most disheartening thing that I saw was a young adolescent girl, perhaps 15 or 16 years of age, in tears, in pain, and unable to speak because she had recently had teeth pulled. I couldn't tell how many; her mouth was full of blood-soaked gauze. I think some must have been front teeth, judging from how the gauze was arranged in her mouth, but I can't be sure. The expression on her face spoke of a girl whose life was changed, permanently and regrettably, for the worse. I was awestruck and unable to think of anything else for a while after. At such a young age, she has lost her natural adult teeth, her appearance altered and her hopes of growing into adulthood with a naturally beautiful smile were compromised. The question I could not stop asking myself was why had this happened? Why was this not prevented? I couldn't understand; I still cannot understand. I believe she doesn't either, or anybody else for that matter, but she is the only one who paid for this indiscernible injustice; I have all of my teeth even though my grasp of this is no better than hers. Are her teeth merely an expense of free-market capitalism? Perhaps they're an abstract and unusual casualty of the Global War on Terrorism? Maybe the protection of her dental hygiene is in conflict with the right of grotesquely overgrown international corporations to expand uninhibited by the needs of individuals to whom they're not responsible? (Devil’s advocate for a sec) Her parents should just be more economically successful, I suppose. The provision of her proper growth and development as a child by social programs would only stagnate her parents' efforts to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and contribute to the consumption-driven economy. We, the affluent members of society, would have to work harder; better to let her teeth rot. (Devil’s advocate, stop!) These perspectives, though never overtly stated, express what must be the nation's collective thought-process. Of course they're unstated, they self-discredit immediately when spoken aloud. The idea that our economic system is anything even resembling a free-market is illusory and quickly unravels when critically examined; the GWOT cannot logically be tied to domestic social issues by any freethinker that has averted the Bush-indoctrination suggesting any injustice is tolerable provided it brandishes the label "combating terrorism". Lastly, it is important to reconsider the rights we presume entitled to corporations. Corporate right does not supersede individual right; the idea that corporations even have rights at all is a fallacy. Corporations are not people, so when we justify the suffering of people as an inevitable but acceptable consequence of protecting the rights of corporations to grow and prosper, we are speaking an entirely different political language, one alien and not interpretable to the idealisms of American Democracy.
Grassroots activism is, as in nearly every other case, desperately in order. Acting in the interest of others in this case is actually, in the long-run, acting in one's self-interest . You may consider yourself non-poor if you have that luxury, but consider this: poverty may never be more than arms-reach away. What I have learned so far from the speaking forums at the National Coalition for the Homeless is that homelessness affects only one group of people along with their children: those who never expected it. If you think you're safeguarded from the unfathomable trials of poverty, you'd be well advised to think again. And if you’re curious to know whether or not someone with privilege will advocate for your cause should you discover poverty first hand, the answer is easy: ask yourself, will I advocate for the cause of someone in poverty? If you don't follow reading this blog post with conscious activism, I guess you have your answer. Good luck avoiding the far-reaching claws of disenfranchisement/disempowerment; they've been known to affect some high-flying, unsuspecting individuals. If you do, however, become active in reversing the struggles of so many unsuspecting and undeserving victims, then you will come to know the adventurous joys that I have experienced and referenced previously as a privilege, "few things in the world like it".
I can account for my unawareness, my being forced to assume: I was a bit cut off from the political world while volunteering at the RAM (Remote Area Medical) event that took place this past weekend at the Wise County Fairgrounds in western Virginia. RAM is an annual, all-volunteer event that provides medical, optical, and dental services to the uninsured/unable to pay, free of charge. Sixty-six hundred patients received services in one weekend that they'd otherwise be forced to live without. Involvement in the event I consider a privilege because I have never, in my life, seen anything like it. A gathering of thousands of strangers in the mountains of rural VA, coming together to provide or receive the goodwill that sustains life, in the physiological and spiritual sense; there are few things in the world like RAM.
Outlining the positive side to RAM is a pleasure, but I cannot distract my thought process from the negative side, the omniscient, ugly reality that has necessitated RAM.
RAM captures, in essence, the largest single piece of America's social programs inadequacies that someone can view all at once. Thousands of people drive from distances sometimes hours away to wait several hours through the night, uninhibited by rain or cold, to receive medical care that they cannot afford and that is performed entirely by volunteers with equipment and supplies that are donated. Why is this necessary in such a wealthy society? Why are provisions of these services so sparsely available to the economically disadvantaged that they have to negotiate such obstacles to acquire them? Why is it necessary for such a tremendous outpouring of selfless goodwill by nearly a thousand volunteers in order for the poor to get basic medical services that the state and the privileged citizens of that state take for granted? These questions have no answers because they're seldom asked; they probably cannot be explained logically and rationally without conceding that this country has become a veritable cesspool of socioeconomic injustice and class over-stratification. These words sound harsh, but there is clearly no other way to rationalize RAM. It exists because a small but growing unrepresented faction of the U.S. populace is literally left to their own meager resources for survival, and they are unable to achieve survival without the altruism of those volunteers acting in defiance to the social/economical schematic of American Society.
This assessment, though appropriate, is too depersonalized to effectively convey the myriad of unforgettable images I confronted and that, indeed, ought to confront the national conscience. I was faced with people, a very great many people, people of a widely diverse spectrum of backgrounds, all with one thing in common: they are the people you never see discussed on the floor of political debate, receiving the needed attention of government. These people were, from epidemic levels of marginalization and apathy, dead to the state.
At a personal level, I can share one of those images that may help give my assaults some grounding context. The most disheartening thing that I saw was a young adolescent girl, perhaps 15 or 16 years of age, in tears, in pain, and unable to speak because she had recently had teeth pulled. I couldn't tell how many; her mouth was full of blood-soaked gauze. I think some must have been front teeth, judging from how the gauze was arranged in her mouth, but I can't be sure. The expression on her face spoke of a girl whose life was changed, permanently and regrettably, for the worse. I was awestruck and unable to think of anything else for a while after. At such a young age, she has lost her natural adult teeth, her appearance altered and her hopes of growing into adulthood with a naturally beautiful smile were compromised. The question I could not stop asking myself was why had this happened? Why was this not prevented? I couldn't understand; I still cannot understand. I believe she doesn't either, or anybody else for that matter, but she is the only one who paid for this indiscernible injustice; I have all of my teeth even though my grasp of this is no better than hers. Are her teeth merely an expense of free-market capitalism? Perhaps they're an abstract and unusual casualty of the Global War on Terrorism? Maybe the protection of her dental hygiene is in conflict with the right of grotesquely overgrown international corporations to expand uninhibited by the needs of individuals to whom they're not responsible? (Devil’s advocate for a sec) Her parents should just be more economically successful, I suppose. The provision of her proper growth and development as a child by social programs would only stagnate her parents' efforts to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and contribute to the consumption-driven economy. We, the affluent members of society, would have to work harder; better to let her teeth rot. (Devil’s advocate, stop!) These perspectives, though never overtly stated, express what must be the nation's collective thought-process. Of course they're unstated, they self-discredit immediately when spoken aloud. The idea that our economic system is anything even resembling a free-market is illusory and quickly unravels when critically examined; the GWOT cannot logically be tied to domestic social issues by any freethinker that has averted the Bush-indoctrination suggesting any injustice is tolerable provided it brandishes the label "combating terrorism". Lastly, it is important to reconsider the rights we presume entitled to corporations. Corporate right does not supersede individual right; the idea that corporations even have rights at all is a fallacy. Corporations are not people, so when we justify the suffering of people as an inevitable but acceptable consequence of protecting the rights of corporations to grow and prosper, we are speaking an entirely different political language, one alien and not interpretable to the idealisms of American Democracy.
Grassroots activism is, as in nearly every other case, desperately in order. Acting in the interest of others in this case is actually, in the long-run, acting in one's self-interest . You may consider yourself non-poor if you have that luxury, but consider this: poverty may never be more than arms-reach away. What I have learned so far from the speaking forums at the National Coalition for the Homeless is that homelessness affects only one group of people along with their children: those who never expected it. If you think you're safeguarded from the unfathomable trials of poverty, you'd be well advised to think again. And if you’re curious to know whether or not someone with privilege will advocate for your cause should you discover poverty first hand, the answer is easy: ask yourself, will I advocate for the cause of someone in poverty? If you don't follow reading this blog post with conscious activism, I guess you have your answer. Good luck avoiding the far-reaching claws of disenfranchisement/disempowerment; they've been known to affect some high-flying, unsuspecting individuals. If you do, however, become active in reversing the struggles of so many unsuspecting and undeserving victims, then you will come to know the adventurous joys that I have experienced and referenced previously as a privilege, "few things in the world like it".
posted by Daniel Black | 8:17 AM
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