Looks like what drives me crazy
Don’t have no effect on you –
But I’m gonna keep on at it
Til it drives you crazy too
(“Evil,” Langston Hughes)
Though I
have read and studied many of Langston Hughes’ poems, I had not heard this one until
a few weeks ago when Rev. William Moore, a prominent African-American pastor and
community leader in Philadelphia, recited it at the Philadelphia Poverty Summit,
where he spoke about the continuing to address
economic inequities in the city, the state and the nation
In Philadelphia,
as in other cities, huge tax breaks are given to corporations like Comcast and
Verizon, and yet people working service level jobs march for a living wage and
their demands are regarded as economically infeasible. People work full time
for minimum wage, and go home to families they can’t adequately feed or provide
for. Corporations like Walmart hire people part time so they don’t have to pay
benefits, and tell folks to go on welfare. The CEOs and corporate leaders earn
hundreds of millions dollars each year, yet turn around and say $15/hour for
their workers is not feasible.
Looks like what drives me crazy has no effect on you.
During several
of the Tuesdays in May and June, I have joined dozens of others with the
interfaith social justice network POWER on a trip to Harrisburg to advocate for
funding increases in our public schools. In urban and small rural districts
across the district, schools are operating on less than a shoe string. Class
sizes are overcrowded, buildings are physically unsafe and unhealthy, books and
materials are outdated and in short supply, and teachers must purchase their
own supplies from their own money. Nursing staffs are cut, libraries are
closed, extra-curricular activities are eliminated. When I talked with some
legislative aides (despite there being “representatives” in those offices, they
never seem to have time to see their constituents), I am told that such funding
increases are “politically impossible.” What is so impossible about adequately
funding schools, so that kids can get the decent education the Pennsylvania
Constitution in mandates them to provide? If it there were
their kids or grandkids in those schools, you can bet they would find a way.
Looks like what drives me crazy has no effect on you.
Then of
course there is the tragic shooting in the Pulse night club in Orlando by a
young man, Omar Mateen, who just a few days before went into a gun store and
purchased an assault rifle and a pistol. At last count 49 people had died, and
countless others were injured and traumatized when this man went in and
executed people on some sort of imaginary mission from ISIS. Yet when the issue
of how easily his guns were purchased, the Senate has to have a filibuster to
even be forced to talk about it and then of course with the NRA lying in the
background, nothing gets done, guns are still as available as before, and the
world outside the US looks at us and things we are violent and crazy --- and all for something called the 2nd Amendment.
Looks like what drives me crazy has not effect on you.
I could go
on: the refusal of many states to help resettle Syrian refugees, the callous
and inhumane treatment of undocumented immigrants, the lack of clean drinking water
in places like Flint, the refusal of conservative politicians to admit that
climate change exists, the growing imprisonment of young men of color in the
school-to-prison pipeline, and so much more. It drives me crazy.
I often despair
of our system. I march, write letters to my representatives, I call for change,
I talk to my friends and associates, I write this blog, and for what? But then
I remember that substantive change does not come in a week, or a month or a
decade, or even in a lifetime. Many times others reap the benefits of those who
have gone before. Maybe I am in that “gone before” group on some of these
concerns; I hope not, but perhaps I am. So I will keep calling these and many
other injustices crazy, and maybe someday those with the power to change the
laws, the culture, the system, will get crazy too, and do something.
As I
Iistened to Rev. Moore at the Poverty Summit, I realized he had been at it a
lot longer than me, and he was still pushing.
Looks like what drives me crazy
Don’t have no effect on you –
But I’m gonna keep on at it
Til it drives you crazy too
You can count on it!
No comments:
Post a Comment