Dear Friend, You got mugged. Two men, a gun and the threat of violence. You felt weak, insignificant. The world seemed more unfair than you had imagined. More ruthless. More cruel. And you asked: why me? Why this violent injustice? You felt helpless - and angry. You want to do something. The world is unfair. But not in the way you imagined. It is not unfair because you got mugged and lost your phone, it is unfair because millions of children do not get sufficient nutrition and medical care to grow up healthy and intelligent, it is unfair because so many children never attend a day in school, it is unfair because mothers cant feed their kids proper food while working 60 hours a week, and fathers cant build a decent home struggling all their lives. Yes the world is unfair. But it is not unfair to you and me. Privilege is a vague idea - it can mean anything from a caravan of security cars following you around as the rest of the city stops to let you pass by, to having enough to eat to live a healthy and happy life. But - isnt it their problem to earn a decent living, to get an education, to take care of their children? Why should the society bother with helping the poor? Isnt it enough that we give what we can as charity? Our system is structured to make people poor. Lets say you live in a house where 9 out of 10 people will always be poor. And poor means not enough to eat, no books to read, dirty water and no sanitation. Poor means a life which has no chance to reach its potential, and is lost as a side-note to the march of history that celebrates a Caesar, a Napoleon or a Newton - but forgets the poor man who died of starvation. Our personal challenges are small compared to the larger problem of our nations inability to provide for a large majority of our population. These problems are opportunities to contribute. To make things better. To impact the lives of over 100 million poor who live in our country. And the only real way to fix it in a sustainable way is to hold our leaders accountable, and influence systematic change in the way government and citizens engage with each other. Im hosting a roundtable of concerned citizens - people who write, tweet, blog and do things to make things better - to create a social media driven advocacy initiative: Citizens for Better Leadership. Tag yourself and share this status with friends who you think can contribute - because government is what we do together - and we have to start someday. Sha
Posted on: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 08:08:59 +0000
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