omgwtf!

Whatever the reason, global warming is now a fact of life. Many people believe that global warming is caused by human pollution. Others believe it’s a natural cycle of the planet’s functioning. And there are those short-sighted, arrogant, selfish ostriches parading as human beings…whether due to greed or ignorance doesnt really matter…who don’t believe it’s happening at all.

Personally, I believe it’s a combination of the first two factors, and that most of the humans causing the worst damage are the ones that make up the population I mention in the third factor.

Many of that sort of person could be found in pre-Katrina New Orleans. I lived in the city only seven months, but I am here to tell you that sometimes, seven months can seem like seven decades. New Orleans was one case in point that perfectly illustrated that phenomenon. Now, 12 years later, I still think fondly of New Orleans a surprising amount of the time. The Garden District, mostly, at night, with its twinkling lights and the lush, heady smells of wisteria, honeysuckle, and tropical heat, often comes back to haunt me in dark and pleasant ways, as though I were in an Anne Rice vampire novel. It really is…was…like that, New Orleans, in unexpected pockets of the city. I think a lot of the French Quarter, as well. I spent a lot of time roaming the streets of the Vieux Carre, always finding a hidden nook or courtyard even on streets I’d been down a hundred times before.

It’s the only city I’ve ever been in where you can buy drinks for the doormen on duty at the hotels, or where you can see the police, in full uniform, sitting on the hoods of their cruisers with those ubiquitous plastic drink cups; erstwhile Romeos gesturing to the sparkling ladies leaning over wrought iron balconies to come on down and treat them right for a little while in the back of the prowler. “Hey, nice tits” was a phrase thrown at me so often by unaccompanied males…and occasionally females…that I began to look upon it with a kind of exasperated fondness as a sort of affectionate greeting from one local to another. My snappy “Thanks, asshole,” always elicited a chuckle from these unlikely Shakespeares of the deep south.

There were some good people I met down in New Orleans, and I daresay I would have met more the longer I stayed, but to be honest, the city was so unbelievably corrupt and steeped in racism that it completely washed away any good the people there might have held. I loathed nearly every white person I came across, and I couldn’t understand why the hell the black people I met weren’t furious about the way they were treated.

I pretty much only had black friends in New Orleans. There was one white dude who lived in the apartment below mine on St Phillip’s Street in the Vieux Carre who was a really nice guy; a real southern man, though, in that I found out on the very last day I was in the city that he actually had been attracted to me the whole time I had lived there and had been planning on asking me to dinner eventually. He was shocked and disappointed that I was leaving and that I disliked the city so intensely; then again, the man rarely left the Quarter and was so laid back I had a hard time believing that he had any pulse at all. Still, he was a nice man, though, and I wish he’d have spoken up before the year 5,000, because I’d have been happy to go to dinner with him. He barbecued more than any living human being I have ever encountered.

I made it a point of asking every black person I had the opportunity to hang out with in New Orleans why in the hell they weren’t angry and disgusted with the racism. Basically, all their answers boiled down to the same thing: sure, they got mad, but there wasn’t anything that they could do about it, so why make a fuss? Just live your life and ignore the problems, retire comfortably if you can, and everything will be just fine. I looked, I searched, I asked endless questions, but never once did I find an angry black person in New Orleans…nobody angry enough to actually do anything about the racism that they encountered on an ongoing, daily basis. I was myself shocked and disappointed. These are good people I’m talking about here. Why were they so uninterested? How could they be?

It’s not as if they didn’t care about racism; I dont want to give that impression at all. I never met a single black person in Louisiana that was indifferent to it. It offended and insulted and enraged these folks, and when I say rightly so, that sounds like the understatement of the century. But it never moved them to action, and it never has. You just dont hear about that kind of thing coming out of Louisiana…at least, not until the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

I’m going to say something that most people would consider really controversial here. How, if you never lift a finger to defend yourself on a level where it would really count for something, how, after literally hundreds of years of inaction, can you possibly feel justified in your outrage and shock when you discover you are left to die of exposure by a white infrastructure that has oppressed and discriminated against you since day one? How can you have the gall to have expected something different? I’ve been thinking about this a while, and I have to say that what happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is something that was in large part brought upon the black population of New Orleans by their own selves. For chrissake, people, you voted for David Duke while I was living there! The majority of people who voted for him were black! What the hell is wrong with you?

And don’t give me the shit about being disenfranchised, either; being disenfranchised doesn’t mean you don’t have a mouth to speak with, or fingers to hold a pen with. Bill Cosby has said this kind of thing time and time again, and you know what? I dont think that it’s fair that just because I’m not black, I can’t agree with the man or believe the same things and not be labeled a racist. I dont think it’s fair that he takes a lot of shit from his own community because he’s telling them to their face what some of the problems are.

There were plenty of disenfranchised black folks making themselves heard during the Civil Rights era. This never happened in Louisiana. Anyone who knows even the slightest thing about me knows that I am not a racist; nor do I tolerate racism in any facet. But I’ll tell you what: dignity and self worth has absolutely zero to do with income level or race or religion or gender or sexual preference, man. It has nothing to do with where you live. There is no reason to remain in the mud and accept your fate just because that’s where you were born…especially if the only reason youre there in the first place is because some bigoted, poisonous society has decided that that’s where you belong. Man, fuck that.

You choose whether or not you will learn to think and speak and read and write. You choose whether or not you will stand up for yourself and for others, or if you will remain silent. I am my own worst enemy; I am the only one who stops me from making forward progress. That is the case for all people, everywhere. You are the only limitation you ever face. There is always a way to improve yourself and your situation, if you have the courage to stand up.

This is a very complicated thing to talk about, and there are all kinds of misconstruals that could be made in what I’ve said already. There is a well known disparity of thought between the rich and the poor, in that the poor believe that they have simply been dealt a bad hand when it comes to poverty, but that the rich believe it’s because the poor are too lazy to better themselves. It sounds so far like I’m toeing that line, but I’m not, and here’s why: So far, I havent talked about external factors. I’m talking about personal factors: whether or not you can read and write and speak and think well enough to make yourself heard and more importantly, make people listen to what you have to say. Burning your neighborhood down and shooting at ambulances, doctors, police, firefighters, search and rescue, helicopter pilots, or each other is not the right way to express yourself.

Like it or not, “Ebonics” is not only not a language, but it’s a great way to make people think youre an ignorant mutt with no self respect or education. Not knowing how to read or write, either well or at all…well, that is something that I simply cannot understand anyone tolerating in themselves at all. I couldn’t live without reading or writing. We are the only species of life on the planet who has either ability. How can you not?

My own sister is almost illiterate, and I have to tell you that because of that fact, I have very little respect for her…but to be fair, I have even less respect for the educational system that she went through which allowed her to graduate without even the ability to spell “hi” correctly. She spells it “high.” This is nothing short of tragic, and even criminal, since our government is supposed to ensure that we all have a chance at a decent education. Anyone who graduates high school without being able to spell “hi” is clearly not the beneficiary of anything even remotely resembling a “decent education.” (Or decent parenting, but that’s another rant entirely…if it were my kid, his or her school would be in some seriously deep shit, and it wouldnt take me until graduation to stir it up, either.)

And this brings me to the external factor that so many people, especially poor black and Hispanic people…have to face: the system. Infrastructure that has had racism built into it since the first brick was laid. This is where the wealthy have no clue; and this is why they believe so firmly that poverty only exists because the people who live in it are shiftless layabouts looking for charity. The majority of wealthy individuals have never seriously come up against the infrastructure. The ones who have, or the people who have managed to break through from starting in poverty, are almost always unique individuals with extraordinary ethics or abilities of some kind: the kind of thing that makes top athletes able to do what they do, for example.

But for ordinary people, the struggle to live day to day…and this isn’t just the rule of thumb for the folks in poverty, either, anymore…is so harried and fraught with the immediate possibility of financial disaster should the slightest thing go wrong that it is all they can do to wake up and drag their asses out of bed every morning. Living paycheck to paycheck is no joke, not even for me…a single person with two roommates and no dependents. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if I were, for instance, a single mother. I’d probably never make it.

When the wealthy say “make an effort,” they are clearly ignorant of their subject: they have no idea what the life of someone living in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans was like. To be honest, I dont have much of an idea of that, either, other than what I saw with my eyes and heard from the people I met who lived there; but that doesnt mean I couldn’t, or never will. I live on that edge of disaster, myself, and could topple over at any moment. I’m trying hard to back away and give myself even a foot or two of stumbling room, but it’s very hard work. If it’s hard for me, how hard must it be for someone who makes half my salary and has two or three mouths to feed?

Here’s the thing, though: protest is free. Letters? Free, if you use email. Don’t have a computer? Libraries. They’re free. Incidentally, so are the books…and the knowledge contained therein. Was your school too violent to learn properly? Libraries are rarely known for outbursts of violence…at least physical violence. Libraries are frequently known, however, for mental outbursts of all kinds, because knowledge is the most powerful tool any human being can possess. With enough knowledge, you can do anything. There are definitely libraries in New Orleans…I know, because I was in them. And they’re nice libraries, too. If you can’t read, any librarian would be…or should be…delighted to help you find the materials you need to learn. In fact, they should even be able to point you to free literacy classes in your area, no matter what state you live in. If your librarians can’t, or won’t, help you, complain about it. That’s what they are there for!

For a lot of people, poverty is a fact of life and will remain so, if for no other reason than it is so very difficult to get out of and stay out of. But there is never a reason for anyone to remain silent in the face of intolerance of any kind…apathy is far too expensive a luxury for anyone to afford, much less for the poor. Look at what it did to New Orleans. It wasn’t a storm that wiped out that city. It was apathy. It wasn’t a conservative, Republican, mostly white majority that elected George Bush president for two terms running…it was apathy.

The only reason intolerance and corruption have grown to be so rampant and ongoing is because we are too apathetic to do anything about it. Then, when disaster strikes, we find our outrage, but only because it has hit us on a personal level, and that’s what it takes to move us into action. Even then, as long as we get our free $2,000 debit cards, we are made happy and even feel good will towards the very people who now believe that a $2,000 debit card will make all the pain go away. You know why they believe that? Because to a large extent, it’s true.

Tell me something: if someone came up to you and said hey, I’m going to wipe out everything you’ve ever had in your life, including your entire city, kill a bunch of your relatives by torturing them slowly and making you watch, and then I’m going to take you and leave you stranded on a 10′ by 10′ desert island for five or six days with no food, water, or shelter…and if you live, I’ll stick you in a big arena in an unfamiliar state with 25,000 strangers and no privacy at all, give you ice, water, some food, and $2,000 in exchange, would you say okay, that sounds great? Or would you be fucking outraged? This was the tradeoff that lots of people seem pretty happy with right now. Do you begin to see now why this infrastructure has absolutely no respect for the poor? Do you have any respect for people who would take that deal, either? Why should you have respect for them ? It’s abundantly clear that they have no respect for themselves.

There are times when money is an insult. There are times when it becomes worth it…even necessary…to lose a job to make a point. There are times when, no matter our personal plight, we have to make room for the time it will take to stand up for ourselves and force change against all odds. Apathy is a serial killer; let it have its way for too long, and it will kill you if it can, just for the sheer joy of it. Apathy was responsible for those levees collapsing. Apathy was responsible for FEMA and for Mayor Nagin and for Governor Blanco. Apathy was why Condoleeza thought it was a good time to be buying shoes, and why Georgie thought it was a good time for guitar lessons, and why Dick thought it would be all right to leave the country in the capable hands of the absent president to go have some medical tests taken, prepatory to his subsequent surgery just a week or two later. Apathy is why we allowed the Supreme Court to elect our president in 2000, and why we allowed the votes to stop being counted in 2004 after John Kerry conceeded the race. Apathy is why none of these fuckers are in jail yet for the atrocities they have so far committed, both at home and around the world.

Apathy is killing this country. We are fat, apathetic, lazy, ignorant, xenophobic, and belligerent. We don’t care about anything at all unless it happens to us, or it happens in a big, big way to someone else…and even then, we buy it off, or allow ourselves to be bought off…anything, as long as we don’t have to actually make too much of an effort. As long as we get our bling, we’re willing to forgive and forget even the worst crimes, the deepest insults, the most critical failures. We have traded ourselves for money without a second thought, and with each debit card we accept, we dig our hole a little deeper and a little wider. The government does this to us because they can, because we let them. It is too late to be outraged once you have been left standing naked in the middle of a wasteland. Too late.

And so, New Orleans is in a shambles. An entire American city lies ruined at the feet of the rest of the country. Another storm is coming; turns out that now, it’s the worst Atlantic storm on record. And people once again are being told that they have to evacuate. Just tourists so far, but this storm is fast and mean and huge, and the Florida Keys have the bullseye right now.

No, I dont think that New Orleans should be abandoned; the idea is ludicrous. Something is going to be built on that area; eventually, it will become a city again. The right thing would be to demolish all of it and leave those areas to return to wetlands; but that will never happen, because it will cost someone somewhere vast amounts of money, and while we fancy ourselves a democratic republic, we are and always have been a theocracy under God Money. We are a capitalist nation, and along with that goes the most vile aspects of that sinister word. See what capitalism has done to New Orleans, after all. See what capitalism did to the World Trade Center…in itself a target simply because capitalism was exactly what those buildings were a monument to.

New Orleans will be rebuilt…but I bet you a beignet that nothing will change. They are worried that it will be a city where the wealthy whites will come to live, because only they can afford to rebuild. If that’s the case, then you can be assured those levees will be rebuilt to withstand category a thousand hurricanes, much less five. You can be assured that there will never be a white Ninth Ward in New Orleans. What I want to know is this: where are all the wealthy blacks? Where are the prominent black community leaders? Now that the cameras are largely gone, guys like Al Sharpton, that carpetbagging loudmouth, has seemingly left the building. Why isn’t the black community mobilizing in force to help these folks in need? Where are they? Once upon a time, the black community was all about solidarity and brotherhood and taking care of one another. What happened?

With all the jobs that need to be filled right now, there will be plenty of people who are not white or wealthy that will be returning for the opportunity of perhaps getting a decent job and some inexpensive housing, and so it is virtually guaranteed that not only will nothing change, but things that have become worse will remain so, and deteriorate from there. Why? Because it will cost a staggering amount of money to rebuild the city the right way, and that is not money that anyone in power is remotely interested in paying out to protect or serve a bunch of apathetic poor people…especially black people.

So pollution will continue to worsen steadily, hastening the global warming that was initiated by the natural cycles of the planet we live on, and the storms will grow worse. New Orleans will be devastated again, and how many times will we be willing to rebuild it, especially since we have to give out all that disaster aid to a growing number of other places, both here at home as well as around the world? We thought Katrina was bad, but here comes Wilma to prove that we ain’t seen nothing yet. And still the ostriches refuse to come up and have a look around.

How much has to happen before our apathy is broken, and before money becomes an insufficient bandange for the grievous wounds that are being inflicted upon us by the very people who are supposed to be protecting us, helping to make things better? Why do thousands of soldiers have to die in illegal wars before people begin to say, maybe that war was a bad idea? How many diasters and examples of appalling incompetence do we have to endure before we say, maybe we shouldn’t have reelected this president? How many times do we have to go through this? Infants learn at a faster rate not to put their fingers into a fire than the average American adult, who not only pokes the fire, but keeps their hands in there until the skin is charred and the meat is cooking.

Does New Orleans really stand a chance? Yes, it does this time around…but can it survive a repeat? Not if the infrastructure isn’t profoundly changed. So far, there are absolutely no signs whatsoever that this will occur. There are plenty of people talking, but that’s all they ever do. Are we ever going to wise up and realize that just because politicians say they’re going to do something doesn’t necessarily ever mean that they actually will? It doesnt look very hopeful from where I’m standing, I can tell you that much.

Why so pessimistic? Levees aren’t being rebuilt. They’re being repaired. Small business owners in Louisiana who were either wiped out or who suffered damage are being referred to places like the SBA to get rebuilding loans; for those who don’t know, the SBA has some extremely tough, rigid guidelines when it comes to handing out loans to people. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as a general rule, but it certainly isn’t what disaster victims should ever have to come up against.

Landlords are breaking the law by evicting tenants, often throwing what few possessions they have left out onto the street, so that they can begin renovations. Price gouging, contractor scams, the police are out of control, FEMA getting in the way and blocking all kinds of aid, as well as their really quite fantastic incompetence at actually handling emergency management; all these things and more are facing the returning population of New Orleans. Some stalwart folks are getting in there, digging out, spraying their walls with bleach and hoping for the best, or just knocking everything down and starting over. There will always be people who call New Orleans home, and good for them. I will always call New York home, and wherever I am in the world, that’s where I live. I know how those people feel.

But those people are going to be victimized again and again and again if they continue to be as apathetic as they have been in the past. The attitude that our government and the nation’s infrastructure has always showed them in the past will not go away by itself; nor will a hurricane blow it away, nor will 20 foot flood waters dilute it. It is there, stronger than ever, because now they know that no matter how badly they fuck up, no matter how incompetent they are, no matter how racist, no matter how many people die at their hands, they can make it all go away with a handful of $2,000 debit cards. They dont even have to give them to everyone! This is itself a toxic mold, and the only way to keep it at bay is through constant vigilance. People must stand up now, at the new beginning, and demand change. It will only get worse from here.

In Ohio last Friday, there was a small neo-Nazi march planned by about 20 racist Aryan imbeciles who wanted to march through a black neighborhood and spout their particuliar venom at the inhabitants thereof. As the Nazis assembled, neighborhood gangs emerged out of the woodwork, and events rapidly grew out of hand, resulting in a small but intense riot that caused the mayor to put a curfew into effect for the weekend. The people in that neighborhood were outraged that a bunch of Nazi fuckheads could freely parade down their streets and shout insults. I understand and share that outrage…but I disagree with the way it was expressed. Why take it out in violence on your own neighborhood? Why in the hell would you throw rocks at the police, for fuck’s sake? What kind of thinking is going on here that makes anyone believe that would be either a good form of protest or an effective argument? Doesnt anyone remember Martin Luther King Jr?

Residents expressed the belief that the Nazis had “no right” to march in their neighborhood, and that’s another area where they are absolutely wrong. The Nazis have every right to march down any public street in this country; they also have the right to say anything they want, and not only is that a Constitutional right that is one of the basic tenets of this country of ours, but every American citizen should protect that right, regardless of how abhorrent the message is. Sometimes I feel that there is such a thing as too much freedom of speech, but who am I to pick and choose what is right and what is not? If I can pick and choose, so can anyone else, and I would never, ever want anyone to tell me what I can and cannot say. Therefore, I will protect, when given cause, everyone’s right to freedom of speech, whether or not I agree with what they have to say. That is one of the things freedom is all about. It’s not just freedom as long as you personally agree with it. It’s freedom for all.

I am glad to say that the mayor came out and said that the Nazis did indeed have a right to march where they chose and express whatever opinion they wanted to express, but I feel that the warning signs that there would be trouble were present well before the march, and that the marching route should have been changed. The police and city authorities have it in their power, and indeed it is their job, that when there is evidence…and there was…that people could get hurt if a march is allowed to continue as planned, they must change the route or postpone or even cancel the march, if necessary. The city is claiming it didnt realize that the situation would get so out of hand. That seems pretty ignorant to me. The people in that neighborhood practically sent these guys a memo outlining exactly what would happen if this march was allowed to take place.

The point in bringing up this incident is that the people in that Ohio neighborhood were outraged. They did not express themselves in a conducive, well reasoned manner, but they sure as hell weren’t apathetic, and they sure did make their opinions known. They did this before the march, and they weren’t listened to. The march, as it turns out, never took place, and so their ultimate goal was achieved, but it was achieved through violence, and that’s just going to make those in authority believe more firmly that “these people” are more trouble than they’re worth. Why bother helping out folks like that if all they can do is erupt in a violent tantrum that hurts their own neighborhood every time something happens that displeases them?

This isn’t my opinion, mind you; this is the way things are. Potholes simply last longer on the streets of black neighborhoods. If they won’t fix a pothole that wasn’t your fault, do you really think they’re gonna break a leg rushing to fix that grocery store you burned down your own self? It takes forever to rebuild black neighborhoods for any reason. It’s just a simple fact: black people are not important enough to to this country to be really concerned about, and never have been. Just knowing this makes me angrier than I can express, and I am not black. I am a woman, though, and overweight, to boot, so I totally know what it means to be shunted aside, disregarded, discriminated against, and regarded as a second class citizen. I cannot imagine how anyone who is black can possibly be apathetic about this government. I know I never am.

If I were a city leader, the kind of uproar that happened in Ohio, much less a disaster on the scale of New Orleans, would be a flashing, glaring neon sign to take a good hard look at what I’m doing wrong, and to sit down with community leaders to discover what kind of outlets and decisions and action were needed to prevent this sort of thing from ever happening again. Clearly, when people are mad enough to set shit on fire at the least sign of trouble, something, somewhere, has gone very much awry and needs to be addressed. Now.

I dont see that happening in New Orleans. All I see is a lot of finger pointing at every level, from the president of the country on down to the lowliest New Orleans city employee. I see a lot of laid off firefighters and cops and other city employees. And I see a lot of very silly cheerleading on the part of Mayor Nagin, who does have a great deal of heart, ’tis true, but who also seems to be rather a lot of flash and very little pan. The Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA are down their picking their asses and taking all the best parking spots and hotel rooms, while residents of the city are left to fend for themselves. A good way to keep up on what’s going on is to keep an eye on the Interdictor site; they were the only business in New Orleans who experienced zero downtime throughout Katrina, and never left the city.

I certainly hope Wilma, the latest threat to the Gulf Coast, fizzles out or at least gives any landmass enough of a miss to avoid more devastation, but what about next year? It’s going to get worse before it gets better, you know; global warming doesnt go away in a couple of years, especially not with us pouring as much filth into the atmosphere as fast as we can go, especially not with our government (and the governments of other countries ) slashing as many environmental laws as they are as fast as they can go; especially not with China and Brazil and all these other countries (including us) cutting down their forests…rain or otherwise…as fast as they can go.

We have millions and millions of people on this planet who truly believe somehow that our resources are infinite. There are countless people who believe that oil will last forever, that pollution and the dying oceans and the dwindling oxygen factories that are our woodlands and forests are all made up by pinko liberal treehuggers who are out to cause a ruckus…why they’d cause a ruckus for no reason is never addressed, though. Neither is the fact that those pinko rabble rousers are almost always backed up by solid science, which is something that the fundies and the wingnuts can almost never claim truthfully. We have so many problems now that how can we possibly stop to address one small city, long considered the asshole in a nation of assholes?

Well, we’d better come up with something, because it’s not only poor, black New Orleans that’s getting it. New Jersey just had a visit from the deluge department, and Florida routinely gets smacked pretty severely…indeed, Wilma is coming to cause more trouble, if she can. In fact, the entire eastern seaboard and the Gulf Coast are regular victims of nature; what’s going to happen when Miami is wiped out? What’s going to happen if Port Elizabeth gets wiped out, or if we have that long-awaited major earthquake here in southern California and all the levees around Los Angeles go?

Yes, there are levees here, and yes, they are in shockingly bad disrepair. In fact, there’s something of a panic over it in local government, although either it’s not interesting enough for the media to report or they are being cajoled into not reporting it; there has been very little mentioned about it, but what has come out has been…interesting. Apparently, turns out nobody really pays any attention at all to the half dozen engineers who have been going “uh, we really need to take care of this, you guys” for the last umpteen years. Hell, California is Disaster Town anyway, with all the shit that’s constantly being rattled apart, collapsing, sliding away, or bursting into flames over here. If the levees break, the water’ll probably just put out a wildfire somewhere else. Why worry? This same indifference is the reason that all the forests are burning down.

Apathy, people. Apathy is the key. Get rid of apathy…if we push it back even just a little…things will change in a big way. When you’re squatting in the middle of a whirlwind of chaos, your first instinct is to cover your head and wait it out. There is simply too much going on around you to be able to choose a starting place. The problem is, you can only duck and cover for so long before the world begins to collapse around your ears. The collapse is happening. We have to start somewhere. The first step is standing up and making the determination that you will cower no more, no matter how many times you get knocked down. Stand up.

September 11, 2001 should have been our breaking point, and it wasn’t. We did nothing when the Patriot Act was passed, when we went to war, when it came time to change the regime and begin to repair the damage we’ve done and that had been done to us. Hurricane Katrina is a disaster a thousand times worse, as far as human impact goes. This time, the incompetence and corruption and disregard were writ large for all to see. There isnt a single country on this planet who can understand why we are tolerating what is happening to us…except us. And we dont understand it; we just tolerate it because we’re too fucking lazy to do anything to change it.

We have to choose a fight from the maelstrom of too many choices. Still, we must start somewhere. I say, let it be New Orleans. Since they are the ones at this moment who need it most, let the change begin there. Great things could happen if only we demanded dramatic, sweeping changes, and accepted nothing less. It could be the start of something huge.

Will it be? I dont believe so. In fact, I know it won’t. But it could be.

It could.