One Vote

Today I will vote.

That's a rather rare act on this planet. Only about 40% of this country votes regularly in national elections and that number often drops to single digits for local elections. In other countries, more people vote, but we have many people living in countries where either they have no vote or their vote doesn't count.

So I will be in the minority today.

I will have a voice.

I will be voting for marriage equality and the education reforms covered by the Dream Act. I will be voting for a President who I believe has served us well despite a recalcitrant and stubborn opposition. I will be voting for a Governor I respect and admire. I will be voting my conscience as I best see it reflected in my options.

I will be voting to honor the women (and men) that fought for my right to vote. 

  

I Just Turned Gay All of the Sudden!

Cary Grant was one of those rather famous underground gays that most Americans loved as long as he never got too explicit about where his heart went. We have always tolerated gays, bisexuals, and trans (gendered and dressing) people as long as they kept it away from Christmas dinner and granny who probable knew more about "alternate lifestyles" than we give her credit for. But there is a movement in this country that we should really not ignore.

Gays are being granted the right to marry.

This is kind of a big deal. I certainly never expected to see it in my lifetime. And yet, I found myself living in the first state (Massachusetts) to grant that privilege. Not only that, but I lived in Cambridge which opened its doors at City Hall at midnight on the first day gay marriage was legal to welcome gay couples who wanted to make their relationships formal and public. The outpouring of support and sloppy romanticism was completely wonderful.

In a way, marriage is a rather silly thing to pursue: it's a dying art. Fewer and fewer people practice it. But in many other ways, it is one of the most important avenues toward equality that same sex couples have. Like interracial couples before them, they are fighting for some extremely basic rights. The right to visit each other in a hospital. The right to create a family. The right to have a partner who has more of a voice than a bigoted parent or sibling.

There are people in this country who have been granted civil unions who have found little benefit from that status. So marriage becomes a goal that perhaps has even more meaning than it might for straight couples in this day and age. Many institutions refuse to acknowledge gay partnerships and hide behind that one term that excludes them: spouse. 

That a person you chose to live twenty years with, to create a home with, and often have a family with, could still find doors slammed in his or her face if you were sick or dying is absolutely disgusting. It shames us as a nation.

This year, in a very close race between our two major parties, the GOP and the DNC have gone in completely opposite directions. The GOP has declared that all people deserve respect and the DNC has declared that a specific group of people deserve protection. That really isn't just semantics. 

Romney has declared that he would repeal DADT and would defend DOMA: one of the least defensible and most expensive federal initiatives in the lifetime of anyone alive today. 

There is a very clear difference in these two parties' platforms. Neither one pledges outright support for our LGBT brothers and sisters, but one of them pledges not to try to destroy them.

I know which one I will be voting for.

Breathe In Breathe Out

I've been breathing in more than breathing out lately. The writing part of my brain seems to have decided to curl up in a corner and take a long nap. But I have just finished a semester of tutoring middle school children in reading as a volunteer with the amazing Reading Partners program that has just expanded to Baltimore, and it has been one of the most moving and rewarding experiences of my life.

62% of our students are reading below grade level.

They are smart, their parents are engaged, they have wonderful teachers and administrators, but they are behind.

That's not so surprising when you consider that 25% of them are homeless. Many of them are dealing with some other instability in their family life. Substance abuse and crime are quotidian experiences for a lot of them. Just getting breakfast and eight hours of sleep is an exception rather than the rule at times. Parents may have to keep their kids at home if they want to make it to work since most of the available work is so far away they have to leave well before anyone is at the school to let the kids in.

And yet. These kids jumped in the deep end with so much energy and determination. They are mostly referred to the program by their teachers who are truly incredible. My favorite (shut up, I can have a favorite in here. Don't tell on me) Big D improved three whole levels in as many months. Their achievements humble me.

I don't remember learning how to read. It was a world that I couldn't stand not having access to so I broke down the door. My mother tells of me at a very young age trying to hide the fact that I could read once I entered kindergarten because I was so embarrassed by all the attention it invited. I would turn a book upside down whenever an adult entered the room.

Part of me was really worried that I wouldn't be able to help these wonderful kids as I have virtually no understanding of what they are going through. But the Reading Partners curriculum is so well designed that even an idiot like me can just follow the lesson plan and make a difference. It didn't matter that I had zero training in education, all I had to do was follow the directions and lo and behold, success!

Nationally, my kids aren't all that unusual. They live in a relatively wealthy state that was just singled out for the fourth year in a row for educational excellence, but they live in one of those pockets that exist everywhere. A little satellite of crappy schools, crappy housing, and almost no amenities. The closest grocery store is further than I could deal with and there are no corner stores to run to for milk or eggs. Transportation to the parts of the city that anyone might want to go to for culture or a job is iffy at best, and the population was purposefully shuttered away to one of the most isolated areas in Baltimore by planners who caved to prejudice at a time when African Americans were just beginning to make some headway in this country. The children of the Great Migration were thriving in the Northern cities their parents had fled to seeking things like the right to vote, or to graduate from high school, or just to see a paycheck instead of owing a sharecropper landlord money for seeds from the spring.

They face logistics I doubt I could navigate. And they are so isolated and cut off from the rest of the city, they must feel decidedly unwanted. Which, to be perfectly honest, they are. The police patrol their streets like an occupying force, never on foot, always in SUVs or helicopters like some sort of alien invasion. And some assholes think they should be banned from any area a tourist might visit. Assuming they could get there in the first place.

They have almost no contact with children from other backgrounds.

This is the thing that I find most depressing. Studies have shown that children who are educated in a mixed environment preform better. The kids with the greatest hurdles to overcome do better, and the kids that one would expect to do well do well without losing any ground academically and are better able to excel in social settings which expose them to people from different backgrounds, a.k.a. real life. The benefits of diversity in schools is one of those things that impacts outcome more than spending, classroom size, or almost any other measurable factor. It is simply the easiest and cheapest way to raise the outcome for all students at the expense of none that any community can exploit. But our schools are becoming, if anything, more segregated and our children less familiar with each other than they have been for generations.

I can't fix any of that. I can vote, I can write letters, but at the end of the day, the only real difference I can make right here right now, is to get in the trenches and sit down with a kid, one on one, and try to help him or her climb over that wall.

American Woman

Today one year ago was the 100th celebration of International Women's Day. I wish I could say that things had gotten better. Perhaps they have, but recent events have me feeling as though I have been torpedoed backwards to a time when women had little say in their own lives not to mention the lives of those they were responsible for. My view is undoubtedly skewed as I am an American woman and this country is failing its daughters in increasingly absurd ways minute-by-minute and day-by-day. Perhaps reality has been kinder to my sisters in other corners of the world. I certainly hope so.

Here, however, the outlook is grim.

It frankly astonishes me that discussions about wealth inequality, access to healthcare, and social justice have been swept off the table to accommodate lunatics who view women as either broodmares or sluts and prostitutes.

And yet.

I am exhausted. I am sick to death of this fight. I shouldn't have to fight it. My mother already did. And her mother before her. I belong to the largest block of voters in the country. I belong to the better educated half of this country. I belong to the majority of this country.

And yet.

Here we are, fighting to protect women when they want to consult their personal physician on matters that matter only to them. Fighting to keep them out of poverty when they become mothers. Fighting the definition of rape. Fighting over who gets to testify before Congress about whether or not biology is destiny.

So excuse me if I'm not feeling particularly festive today. I'm too busy fighting.