LOADING

Type to search

Community, Places and Environment Featured Stories Shared Stories Work and Career

Dusting is Required

Andy Sitison August 20, 2018
2423 Views 01 Comment

 

After watching yet another bodycam video of two young men of color trying to manage through a racially biased police stop, I found myself writing this story. It is not the full exhaustive list of change we must prioritize in our country, but it gets at the most simple first step, which is to enable a change in perspective. Join the journey in your own way. Share and collaborate to help affect change.

—-

I am pretty sure if my white son was treated like this by civic organizations and businesses that he came into contact with, he wouldn’t be the accomplished young man he is, striving to make a difference in our world. Trama is not productive, even in low doses. The level of stress this would put on him, would reduce his success and limit his potential to improve things like our energy sources, fertilizers, medicine, or create a new mathmatical algorithm. It would likely impact his social relationships, and change who he will be as a father. Having the general trust that your community sees you as an asset to develop, instead of a scurge who’s impact must be minimized, has a profound effect on your perspective and the productivity of your life. There is systemic baggage that limits the success in segments of our population. Those lazy, no-count people who just don’t try to better themselves. The same ones with mental scars from war, or childhood abuse. The ones with 2 jobs, but have bills beyond their pay checks. There are many “toe-trips” that accidently or intentionally heed progress, enabling their fall back towards the bottom. I need only mention that a prison with a profit motive is a freaking scary proposition, to show how far we [haven’t] come. America has perfected the ability to personally attain wealth, but we haven’t figured out the basic concepts of how shared interests make a community, and thus our country.

Our youth need us to provide them a better environment. Not just a safe environment, but a cultivating environment, one that assesses their strengths and enables them to learn how to make the most of themselves. Build disciplines, not punishment, as scaffolding. Slow down, teach them how to passonately learn, not how to pass a test. This sustainably creates happiness and productivity. It will also decimate crime over time. It’s tough, complex, hard to do. You can think of a million reasons why it will never work, but there is no path to a higher society without it. Times of great enlightenment came from great ideas, and a lifting of the majority to accomplishment. We need only start, to be on that journey.

Our cities must be a part of it. Our leaders need to communicate and demonstrate the value proposition of “community”. This needs to be a bipartisan, aracial initiative of our country to improve the civic goals, responsibility, and interaction with all citizens, of any color. We need to shake this American dust out of our mechanisms. There is no place for it anymore.

Tags:

You Might also Like

1 Comments

  1. James Warren August 23, 2018

    Thanks so much for sharing. I agree – a refocus on community (shared goals, shared values) as a way through might be helpful, to say the least.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *