What Kind Of World Are We Building?

This week, we take a look at the most vulnerable in our society. How does it define us as a people if we treat those who are powerless or without privilege with contempt? How are we made "great" by in turn making others "small"?

"The Doctor" from the BBC's Doctor Who hits the nail on the head with his above comment. How much value do Americans place on a human life? Even more unsettling, why have we allowed ourselves to become so mercenary? Why can't we show our fellow human beings compassion?

Your thoughts and feedback are required. Leave them in the comments below and share this blog with others to get the dialogue going. Start out by asking yourselves the following question:

What Kind of World Are We Building 
For Future Generations?
by C.A. Matthews 

The little revolutionary in the photo above was present at last January's Unity March. The day itself wasn't half cold, and the numbers of marchers were great and enthusiastic.  As this year's planned Unity March is coming together, I wonder what kind of a turnout can be expected. The weather will probably be colder and snowier than last year, but will the events of 2017 have an even greater dampening effect on the hearts and minds of progressive marchers and tempt them to stay home?

This beautiful photograph of a tiny marcher got me thinking about the new grandbaby in our family. My brother and sister-in-law have recently become grandparents. As I enjoy looking at photos of their little bundle of joy, a sadness comes over me. What sort of world are building for my great-nephew and his friends? Will there even be potable water or breathable air by the time he reaches adulthood? Will he and his friends curse us for the gutted and polluted planet we've left to them? Will they shake their heads at our selfish stupidity for burning fossil fuels until they ran out, wasting valuable time we could have used for transitioning to green energy systems?

If we allow nuclear brinkmanship to continue, will there even be a world left for anyone to worry about? I'm told I take a lot of things too seriously. But I have to ask myself over and over again, "How have we become so complacent and flippant about these potential horrors? What do we gain as a people by remaining silent? Why do we place so little value on human life itself?"

Our children are our future. Why are we okay with bankrupting their futures through our selfish and destructive behaviors? Why do some scream "Don't kill the babies!" outside of women's clinics, yet do little to nothing to take care of the needs of these children once they're brought into the world? Is it all some sort of horrible game to them, a game of who can yell the loudest but make the least amount of difference in the lives of the very young and vulnerable? Why is sentencing children to a life of poverty and hunger preferable to providing everyone with free access to birth control? Sister Joan Chittister, O.S.B., sums up the hypocrisy in the so-called "pro-life" movement in this statement:

 I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.

What does it say about a country that cannot provide even the bare minimum in health care for its little ones? It's bad enough we have an orange buffoon in the White House bragging about his "big nuclear button" like a spoiled toddler, but we can't deny we've also elected a legislative branch made up of members willing to accept millions in corporate cash from the health insurance industry and Big Pharma lobbyists while allowing our children to go without health care. Are Americans saying children aren't important in the scheme of things?

That's something to be real proud of, huh?

A recent U.N. survey gives the U.S. the lowest marks in the

modern world for how it addresses the needs of its most vulnerable populations.  Sorry, but we don't get any points for how good the top 1% have it at the expense of the remaining 99%. We are the laughingstock of the planet for giving wealthy corporations "welfare" instead of our own people who are homeless and hungry. 

I know I'm not laughing.

That's the kind of world we are building. How can some shout "We're making America Great Again!" while allowing it to fall into an abyss of greed? It makes no sense. If greed is our country's creed, we were never truly "great" in the first place.

I'm sorry to express such dark and depressing thoughts, but a very long, cold winter and a very dark, cold outlook for ordinary Americans has something to do with it. I'd like to help build a better world for my great-nephew to live in. I want our children to be loved, well-fed, well-taken care of (health care for all) and have a chance to make something of their lives without falling into massive college loan debt like their poor parents' have. Their parents' generation deserves a break, too.

We can't continue to sit at home, trying to keep warm this winter. We're all needed in the streets, in the town halls, in the vaulted halls of our state houses and Congress, pressuring those in power by telling them we will not allow our children's future to be stolen by mostly older, super-rich, white males. We need to march, unite, call, write, and fight back against the immorality of our current culture.  Agreed, the stakes are high, but the end will be worth it.

After all, a child--a whole generation of children--is a terrible thing to waste.

Some related articles that might be of interest:

https://talkpoverty.org/2017/12/12/u-s-eliminate-child-poverty-cost-senate-tax-bill/

https://www.nationofchange.org/2018/01/05/f-35-jet-program-budget-exceeds-406-billion-yet-universal-healthcare-costly/

https://splinternews.com/time-to-make-life-hard-for-the-rich-1821384779

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21228-americas-real-welfare-queens

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Ways you can help to build a better world this week...

From 314 Action:

EMERGENCY PETITION: Demand Congress PERMANENTLY fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program →

We need your immediate attention:

4.9 million children are about to lose their healthcare. 4.9 MILLION.

Congress refuses to permanently fund the critical Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

And unless they do something by the end of the month, states will have no choice but to cancel the healthcare of millions of kids.

This is a public health EMERGENCY.  So we’re gathering 25,000 signatures to demand Congress permanently fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program →

SIGN HERE: Tell Congress to fund Children’

Top medical groups -- including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians -- say funding CHIP is absolutely imperative.

Healthcare that kids need and deserve hangs in the balance. It’s despicable that Congress would play politics with something as fragile as children’s lives.

That’s why we’re launching this petition to Congress. As pro-science activists committed to ending attacks on healthcare, it’s up to us to stand up for children everywhere and ensure they get the care they need.
 
If you’re with us, sign our petition right away and help us reach 25,000 signatures to SAVE children’s healthcare:

SIGN HERE → https://secure.314action.org/Fund-CHIP

Your help is needed,

314 Action

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From Friends of the Earth:
 As families gathered to celebrate the holidays, Trump was busy making it easier for Big Oil to attack the environment.

Trump’s administration overturned regulations to protect communities from fracking. It weakened rules that were designed to prevent another Deepwater Horizon spill. And it announced that it will no longer hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for harming protected migratory birds -- all while Congress was standing by.

Meanwhile, Trump took to Twitter to mock climate change after a record-breaking year of hurricanes and wildfires. And EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is ramping up his efforts to destroy our protections for the air, water and climate.

2017 may have seemed like a long year. But Trump’s advisors say that 2018 is when he will really pursue his radical agenda. We need your Senators to stand up, not stand by, as Trump increases his attacks this year. As Senators return to Washington to start the new year, we need your help to push them to act! 

Tell Congress: Stop the Trump administration from letting polluters poison our communities!

Scott Pruitt is a climate denier who has spent his career suing the Environmental Protection Agency. Now that he’s leading that same agency, he’s spent his first year in office remaking it to the benefit of Big Oil.

Pruitt pushed out more than 700 agency staff and started monitoring the emails of anyone who expressed concerns with the agency’s direction. He took steps to gut the Clean Power Plan. And he is spending more time courting fossil fuel industry executives than holding them accountable for destroying our air, water and climate.

Together Trump and Pruitt pose the gravest threat to our environment and public health that we've ever seen. We need your help to fight back.

Tell your Senators to stand up to Trump’s attacks on our environmental protections!

Trump has stacked his government with anti-science extremists, billionaires and fossil fuel industry shills. Now, they’re using their positions to advance their corporate interests -- not the interests of the American people.

Trump is already poised to further gut our environmental protections in 2018. Congress could stand up and stop him, but instead, it’s standing by while he destroys our environment to help corporate polluters.

We need you to urge your Senators to do their jobs and stand up to Trump!

Tell your Senators: Stop Trump’s anti-science, anti-environmental agenda!

Standing with you,
Ben Schreiber,
Senior political strategist,
Friends of the Earth

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Donald Trump is at it again. On Tuesday night Trump took to Twitter to threaten North Korea and, by consequence, most likely the rest of the world, with nuclear annihilation:

This rhetoric is extremely dangerous. This is not how the person controlling our nuclear arsenal should speak -- we don’t know how the North Koreans or our allies will perceive Trump’s reckless tweet, and it undermines the diplomatic efforts being made by our own State Department.
 
We should all be extremely worried and concerned about what the President will do next. It is time to act.

Urge your Members of Congress to take steps to prevent Trump from launching a nuclear war. 

Right now, two members of Congress, Rep. Ted Lieu and Sen. Ed Markey, have introduced legislation to prevent the U.S. president from launching a nuclear war without a declaration of war by Congress. While the President would still be able to defend from an attack against America, he or she could no longer launch the deadliest weapons ever invented just because they wanted to.

We can not overstate the destruction of a nuclear war, and we are closer to that horror today than we have ever been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. We owe it to ourselves and to future generations to take action now to step back from the brink of nuclear war.

No one person - and definitely not someone as erratic and reckless as Donald Trump - should ever be able to single-handedly start such a deadly war. Please sign today.

Thank you for working for peace,
Erica, Ben, Amy, and the Win Without War team

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In June the Trump administration took Yellowstone-area grizzly bears off the list of animals protected by the Endangered Species Act. But there's been a big problem with the legality of that decision that's at last being addressed — and it could save these bears from dying in cruel, state-sponsored trophy hunts.

Tell the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to act on this evidence and reverse its earlier decision to stop protecting grizzlies.

The Service is asking the public to weigh in on the legality of its delisting rule because of a recent case in the D.C. Court of Appeals. The D.C. court rightly voided a rule stripping protections from Great Lakes wolves because of the harm that rule would cause other recovering wolf populations. The flaws are identical to those in the grizzly bear rule.

Take a minute to tell the Service it can't paper over these legal flaws and must restore protection to Yellowstone's grizzlies.  

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EMERGENCY: In a matter of days, the House will vote on whether to turn the internet into a massive spying tool for the Trump administration. This is not a drill: Click here to demand Congress close the "backdoor search loophole" in S. 139.

We’re only just days into the new year but already, Congress is moving to turn the internet into a giant spying tool for Trump to snoop on Americans.

And both Republicans – and some Democrats – are on board with this.

Call Congress right now, and tell them to vote to close the "backdoor search loophole" in S. 139 that would let Trump use the internet to spy on Americans.

This is not a drill. Last year, Congress had a deadline to re-authorize Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act that uses the internet as a massive spy tool to snoop on Americans without a warrant or probable cause. Activists just like you signed petitions and called Congress to block this and push for strong reforms to protect our privacy from the prying eyes of government.

Now Trump-aligned Republicans – and some turncoat Democrats – want to force this through in the new year. There’s a not a lot of time to fight back. We need to use our voices now and tell Congress not to turn the internet into a giant spy tool for an unstable Trump administration.

Call Congress right now, and tell them to vote to close the "backdoor search loophole" in S. 139 that would let Trump use the internet to spy on Americans.

Thanks for taking action,

Reuben and the team at Demand Progress