All Over the Place: Do What You Can
Issue 32
"…(he) cannot frighten me by exclaiming, ‘My country, right or wrong.’ In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."
U.S. Senator Carl Schurz, 1872
Odds are you’ve noticed that a lot has happened in the last several weeks. Allies that helped us fight the Taliban have been stranded and abandoned in Afghanistan, lifesaving U.S. humanitarian aid has all but disappeared from the world, our president has dreams of empire building and appeasing foreign dictators that also seek to do so…I could go on, but that would take a very long time.
If you have been keeping up with the news and are happy with it, then enjoy. The first part of Schurz’s closing is for you. But I’m willing to bet that it’s more likely that things don’t look like how you expected (or hoped) them to be. I can’t think of anyone happy about how our humanitarian aid freeze means a stop to programs that remove unexploded bombs and landmines that we left behind in Southeast Asia half a century ago. I can only assume that there is a general consensus that children stepping on landmines is a bad thing, and that if we left explosives unattended where kids might stumble upon them, then we should remove them. And yet, here we are.
One option would be to try and ignore things and hope they go away on their own. (I’ll pause here for laughter.)
But it feels hard to figure out what exactly to do at this moment. Certainly, I am exercising my freedom of speech much more than usual with frequent messages sent to the offices of elected officials. It is cathartic in a way and allows a person to succinctly summarize how they feel while yelling at people in power to do something about it. But it can feel more like simply going on record that you support or object to something than directly changing things. We can shout at the White House to continue funding mine removal programs (click here to contact the president), but we can’t shout a warning to the second graders that may be playing soccer among unexploded ordnance.
Tax season is in full swing, and many of us are getting refunds. One thing promised among the many actions pursued by this administration is tax cuts. If this holds true, we might have even bigger refunds in the coming years. It’s money that has already left our pockets, so its return feels like a bonus.
But we can decide what to do with that bonus, and for the purpose of righting the ship, I pledge to donate all of my tax return this year to worthy causes, especially those that the current administration seems to think don’t matter.
America’s government has stopped helping a lot of people, but Americans still can.