I saw a sign in a store that read, “I can’t wait for the day when we have an education budget that can’t be cut and have to hold a bake sale to fund our weapons program.”
As the landscape of the 2012 Presidential Race starts to take shape, I’ve been thinking a lot about our society’s priorities and how backward so many of them seem. This sign popped up in my life as if to encourage this train of thought. Why is funding for education so susceptible to cuts while re-engineering our defense budget is always off the table? Too many kids have too few options. In several neighborhoods only blocks from where I live, kids have two choices of how they spend their time: the classroom or the streets.
Why do we have such a hard time taking the long view? Why can’t we see that healthcare and a good education are the fundamental building blocks for every productive member of society?
Why are social services seen as expendable when they are literally a matter of life and death for far too many Americans? Does that mean we’re saying those people are expendable, too?
Why does the personal wealth of a candidate have more to do with the viability of their campaign than their ability to empathic and charismatic?
And why is it that we have a possible candidate in the running who says on national television, “let other nations fend for themselves”?
If we want our country and our world to change, we need to change our own communities first and that will require shifting our priorities. The focus has to be on what we do for our children. We have to have their best interests in mind if we hope to have a country and a world we’re proud of.
Christa Avampato 