It's not even a particularly good minivan. It's been in an accident and it's missing its side windows.
I'm usually a card carrying member of the "look the other way" club. Not because I don't care - I give to charity when I can, but I can't deal with it on a micro scale. I know that thousands sleep on the streets in my affluent city. I see tent camps on the riverside or under the viaduct. They're sometimes almost homely places. Parked bicycles and laundry hanging out to dry. Usually dogs. I know they're not bad people, as a rule, and that, even if they have problems, they bear me no ill will, but I just don't want to think about it.
But when I saw this family of three in a minivan without windows in the middle of the night, parked outside the salvation army center, I just wanted to scream. I wanted to do something for them. They didn't even seem terribly miserable. The young girl on the back seat was chatting away with her mom while dad read something. It was like a suburban dining room scene. Only in a windowless minivan outside the salvation army in the middle of the night.
I wanted to do something - give them a place to stay and a job and a hug. But I didn't do anything. I walked by. What the hell can I do? Who knows what kinds of problems these people have. If our society has so thoroughly abandoned them, how can I possibly save them?
I can't do this any more. I can't live in a society - and I use the term broadly - that discards people with such abandon. We have a responsibility to take care of each other. We cannot discard people the moment they become a burden. It's short sighted and callous. For too long we've ignored the long term benefits of education and compassion and care for the short term benefits of instant gratification. A thousand dollars not spent today on education will cost us ten thousand in lost tax income in just a few years, but who cares? It buys us one third of one second of Iraq war now. A hundred dollars not spent on a check-up today will cost us ten thousand dollars in unpaid medical bills for an uninsured cancer patient in a decade, but what the hell? It'll pay for one four millionth of a bridge to nowhere.
What's the cost of letting families live on the streets?
Our government has led us to the brink of possibly the most serious crisis our nation has ever faced - our government has institutionalized corruption and cronyism and greed on a level not often seen, and whoever we elect in November will not likely be a very popular person. He will have to do very unpopular things to set us on the path to recovery. And that's a best case scenario. The alternative is simply to continue to deny that anything is wrong until we're all living in beat up cars and wondering what happened to our savings, our jobs, our health, and our progeny.
I haven't donated money to charity for the last four months. I've been donating everything I can afford to donate to the Obama campaign. I fully expect my quality of life to diminish over then next years, regardless of who wins the elections. I'll make do, but I'd very much like to think that whatever sacrifices I have to make are in order to make our country whole again and not to kill arabs and enrich oil companies.
We must win this. Not because Sarah is so clueless or because John is so corrupt or because Barack is so inspiring. We must win this because our nation cannot possibly survive if it stays on its current course. If we lose in November, the country may not be easy to recognize in 2012. And last I checked it's hard to register as a voter if your address is "the beat up minivan in front of the salvation army".