In wonderland, flowers grow to a 12-inch diameter and birth a second, guided by misty grey morning light and their DNA.
In another part of wonderland, homeless families hang back on the periphery of the Farmers’ Market, looking for whatever they might get from the kindness of strangers and merchants.
In a different quadrant, a man and a woman sit at a table outside the entrance with a sign, a jar, some flyers, and a lot of hope. They were the reason I happened to be there this morning. Today was a National Day of Service, and the nearest event to me was a collection for Ventura Foodshare at the Farmers’ Market. The purpose of the service day was to raise awareness and dialogue around health care reform.
I am convinced that if we don’t get out in our communities and start talking to each other like we did during the election last year, we’re going to get an insurance-company version of reform that’s no reform at all. And if we don’t get some kind of serious reform that pushes back on the insurers, we’re all going to be on the street. I mean that. Just look at the stories people tell.
Here in California, the budget crisis has reached the point where Gov. Ahnold is poised to strip those least able to afford it of the meager benefits the state has to offer. This is devastating to some. Here’s an email from a young man who suffered a spinal cord injury earlier this year, with no medical insurance. (He is a friend of someone I know…this isn’t fiction, it’s real)
i’m having issues with MediCal. my disability checks are over the limit for me to qualify for full coverage, so now i have an extra cost of $862 a month… this means i have to pay that each month before they pay for anything. that’s 3/4 of my disability money each month, which doesn’t leave me much to pay my expenses. please pray that i’ ll be able to work something out, because there’s no way i can afford that every month…
That young man can’t work. He is just now learning to use leg braces to compensate for his injury, but that will take months. In the meantime, MediCal has not yet approved his wheelchair, so he has no way to get around. His final appeal:
please pray for the State of CA… it’s scary for me to have to rely on the state for my medical needs when it’s on the verge of bankruptcy…
Yes, it is scary. His story isn’t all that different from so many others. And yet, rather than increase taxes a little bit, our disabled and sick in California may face losing all services and care they currently receive.
Beyond the wonky specifics of health care reform, there is this: A significant block of people in our country do not place any value on community. They are living in a wonderland world where they are the only one who matters, where as long as they have their 3 square meals a day, work for a living, pay as little tax as possible while grumbling all the time about it, where they can demonize “government” as something evil instead of something that can be used for the collective good, they’re happy. The idea of citizenship, of being a group that as a collective whole is greater than the sum of its parts is flatly missing.
In my world, which is not wonderland by any stretch, we all live side by side in a community, and communities see to each other’s needs. In my world, government isn’t simply some authoritarian monolith created to hammer us when we do 70 in a 65 mile an hour zone, but it’s an institution that is intended to help us find our full potential when we’re faced with situations where we cannot.
This stuff isn’t new. I can find evidence of it going back to the Civil War, when it was resolved that widows and disabled veterans should be cared for at government expense. The healthcare debate is hardly a new one — it’s been raging for well over 100 years, with virtually no change to the opposing arguments. The only thing that has changed? We’re in far worse shape than we were even 30 years ago.
Somewhere it seems that purpose has been drowned in a sea of invective and misconceptions. The only pathway I see to restoring it, and a sense of community, is to get out and start talking to people. So I am, not because I want to be right, but because I am depending on the basic good nature of people to overcome that invective and misconception and step back to being a community again.
We live across the street from Constitution Park. In the summer, the park is a gathering place for the community — all ages. There are free concerts, movies, and other events. People gather. They talk. They laugh. They eat. They revel in music and mild summer weather. Tonight Sticks, the Pug, and his girlfriend were there. They came home laughing and full of energy from being part of a larger whole.
That’s the gift of community. The collective energy, forgetting for a few minutes one’s own problems in order to be in the company of others. It’s a good thing, not evil, but for me, it means a sacrifice of time, effort, money, or whatever else there is to give. Right now it’s dealing with the health care crisis. Hopefully in happier days it will be something more compassionate on a one on one basis.
All I know at this point is that I am restless from being at the mercy of the financiers instead of the compassion-bringers. I find myself daydreaming about walking cross-country or something drastic to make the point. The frustration I feel daily at seeing the news media and naysayers reduce humanity to a dollars-and-cents bottom line is growing for me.
Right now, it’s small things, like a morning at a farmers’ market and a contribution. But I’m restless and want to up the ante to something more. I’m just not sure what.
I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!
- Alice (Alice in Wonderland)
