Do you know what is disturbingly, disgustingly, outrageously, egregiously, despicably, disastrously, immorally damning?
It is the game of public trust. We liked what you said before we voted you into one of those chairs, and we gave you the benefit of the doubt. Let us blink and believe that you sincerely and seriously cared. Your campaign brochure said so, I still have them on the coffee table and clamped by a magnet on the ice box.
We even turned our heads the other way when it seemed that you were going back on us. Oh, it is just politics, we thought. Just another backroom deal to keep everything well-oiled, we told ourselves. Those politicians are all alike. But that is life, the constant little uncolored lie we too frequently tell ourselves.
We don’t just need to change our minds; we need to revisit some ol’ fashion common sense:
It is not what you say that counts, it is what you do: Actions always speak louder than words. What we see is what we get. And right now, it is a capital triple F, as in: you are failing, fooling and flimflamming us.
We need to stop unethical loophole deals filling someone’s pockets and the appearance of bought and sold ballot boxes. We need to stop eminent-domain ousters, evictions of apartments, tent cities.
We need to ensure the establishment of available, accessible, affordable housing.
We need emergency revamping of shelters. There should be no such thing as homelessness.
We need to do a better job of connecting people with wrap-around services and getting rid of the limitations within “core services.”
Our problems are not unique. They are the same to various degrees across the country and around the world. But this is not an excuse we can accept. The terms are different: the displaced, refugees, immigrants, dislocated, political asylum-seekers, the exiled, the shunned in some countries. It’s all the same. They are homeless, disconnected and isolated for the same and different reasons: hard times, civil unrest, war, manmade and natural disasters. Do not let the variation of the names and definitions fool you!
The emoji smiley face with the blink of an eye and a heartful kiss, is a clue and a cue to immediate and strongly suggested emergency action: Do the hard work. It is not about color, gender or party, it is all of us, as one, as implied by my fellow Street Sense vendor, Denise Hall, in her monologue in the theater production of “Timone of D.C.” produced by Leslie Jacobson and Roy Barber:
“We can do leaps and bounds better. And we the people, must use the most powerful ploy in our
free world: Vote them out!”
Get to work!
Angie Whitehurst is an artist and vendor for Street Sense.
