They Are All Our Children

No analysis, just commentary in this post. I hope that you don't mind.

One of the best parts of my job is that I get to travel around the state and listen to people talk about their communities. At a recent forum in Baltimore about half of the attendees were middle school students. I learned that the drinking fountains in their schools are shut off due to lead in the water and that the windows are covered with plywood (because many of the windows had no glass).

The problem isn’t just in Baltimore; all around our state some of our kids are going to schools that have major physical problems (leaky roofs, mold, overcrowding, etc.).

Last night I attended another forum in Chevy Chase/Friendship Heights–one of the wealthiest parts of our state. They were a group of committed, passionate and compassionate people who care about our community.

They were horrified to learn that for the coming year our state chose to remove 4,000 kids from the Medicaid program to save $5.5 million in state funds (and to help pad our $270 million budget surplus for the year). Or that our state’s commitment to rental housing assistance amounts to about 32 cents per month for every low-income person. But will they be moved to do something about it? Will there be lasting outcry? Will this cut and others like it be restored next year? What if it means paying more in taxes (say, foregoing the "sales tax holiday" passed by the General Assembly this year, or giving back some of the income tax cut passed in the 1990s)?

My experience in these two communities reminded me of a story told by former Senator Bill Bradley. It went something like this:

A reporter was in Sarajevo covering the war in Bosnia, where he witnessed a young girl being shot by a sniper. He dropped his camera and rushed to the aid of the girl and the man who was holding her. He helped them both into the back of his car and raced to the closest hospital.

On the way to the hospital, the man in the back called to him in an exasperated tone, "hurry, hurry my friend, my child is still breathing." Shortly after, the man urged "hurry my friend, my child is still warm." And finally, as they were approaching the hospital, "hurry my friend, my child is growing cold."

The child was dead when they arrived at the hospital. As the reporter and the man were washing the blood off of themselves, the man shared that he had a horrible task in front of him. "I must tell the father that his child has been killed."

The reporter was confused. He looked at the grieving man and asked "She is not your child?" The man responded "They are all our children."

Would we tolerate sending our children to schools with boarded up windows? Would we demand that our government enforce the law if our children’s employers stole their wages?

One challenge for us–-as we seek to build and sustain healthy communities--is to broaden our view of what our community is. So that we care about the experiences of our neighbors–the elderly in nursing homes, the young families struggling to afford housing and health care with their low-wage jobs, the 700,000 Marylanders (and 45 million people in the U.S.) who don’t have health insurance–with the same concern that we would have for our own children.

Thanks for reading.