Last chance to take back the earth. (Channeling the spirit of Rosa Parks)
We need to get angry a Hell of a lot more than we do right now.
The lobster in the pot doesn’t feel as if it is in any kind of trouble: a gradual change in temperature will not be registered at all. If the lobster were American, it would quite probably not even bother to vote on changing it, if it could. But it is getting hotter – and we’re not talking global warming here. It’s human on human all the way - and we are still not angry enough about it, as of yet.
The human heart, without checks and balances, is not a pretty sight. We need good education, strong families and tight communities – and we can’t rust governments and bureaucracies: that’s where the human heart goes to hide from its own responsibilities, where it hides behind excuses and Orwell-speak. And we can’t trust unbridled capitalism, because that’s where all our darkest impulses flower like cancers and grow beyond all control, eating all and destroying all.
In an introduction to one of his short stories the writer Dan Simmons notes:
“But it is the evenings seen from the front stoop I most remember: a brick canyon rich with human noise, the long sweep of Bringhurst Street’s rowhouses illuminated in the sodium-yellow glow of “crime lights” while children jumped Double Dutch and played the dozens in the street, the endless parade of people strolling and laughing and chatting and making room on the step for visitors. To this day, confronted with the privacy-fenced sterility of suburban back-yard patios, I wonder what lunacy made us turn away from the front porch and the front step, the communal ownership of the street, to flee to these claustrophobic plots of isolation.”
That’s what we have done in the West: we have turned away from this communal ownership. We have become irresponsibly narcissistic. We have become vulgar and cheap, condoning, and aiding and abetting the worst that the human heart has on offer.
We need to get angry about this more. We need to take back that communal ownership – from that front porch up again, bit by bit, vote by vote.
And here are five simple resaons why all of us should be very angry, and finally get our act together – or keep doing the lobster thing till we are done:
1) A Rockford, IL woman with no arms is suing McDonald’s, claiming that employees refused to serve her food because she has no arms and was too “disgusting” to serve.
She says McDonald’s offered her a $10 gift certificate as compensation.
Dawn Larson was born with Holt-Oram Syndrome, a genetic disorder which causes abnormalities in the hands, arms, and heart. Her tiny hands are about 6 inches from her shoulders, so she does most things with her feet.
Dawn says her disability’s never stopped her from leading a normal life. “I do everyday things like everyday people.” But on November 3rd, she says that changed. Larson pulled up to the McDonald’s drive through on Kishwaukee Street and ordered food for her and her sons. She drove to the first window, gave the cashier her credit card with her foot, and pulled up to get her food. Dawn says, “The first girl said, ‘Girl, you ain’t got no arms’ and the manager said she couldn’t hand me her food and she just kept sticking to the fact that I didn’t have no arms and she was disgusted by it.
2) Habana Health Care Center, a 150-bed nursing home in Tampa, Fla., was struggling when a group of large private investment firms purchased it and 48 other nursing homes in 2002.
The facility’s managers quickly cut costs. Within months, the number of clinical registered nurses at the home was half what it had been a year earlier, records collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services indicate. Budgets for nursing supplies, resident activities and other services also fell, according to Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration.
The investors and operators were soon earning millions of dollars a year from their 49 homes.
Residents fared less well. Over three years, 15 at Habana died from what their families contend was negligent care in lawsuits filed in state court. Regulators repeatedly warned the home that staff levels were below mandatory minimums. When regulators visited, they found malfunctioning fire doors, unhygienic kitchens and a resident using a leg brace that was broken.
“They’ve created a hellhole,” said Vivian Hewitt, who sued Habana in 2004 when her mother died after a large bedsore became infected by feces.
3) A management consultant branded his wife with a hot steam iron because she had failed to press his shirt.
Cambridge graduate Colin Read, 25, also slashed her with a knife because she had forgotten to make his sandwiches.
But the £90,000-a-year executive walked free from court - with just a £2,000 fine.
He was spared even a community punishment because the judge ruled that “special circumstances” suggested he was unlikely to reoffend and his job meant he was too “busy” to find the time to complete any order.
4) A gravely ill woman dependent on an oxygen machine died after a power company confronted her over an unpaid bill for £62 and cut off her electricity supply.
Folole Muliaga, 44, who suffered from heart and lung disorders, begged the contractor to switch the electricity back on. But, with the alarm of her oxygen machine sounding, he told her that he was only doing his job.
Within ten minutes she began to suffer a severe headache and said that she could not see. She died within two hours.
5) A Hartlepool man is facing jail after he urinated on a disabled woman who lay dying in the street.
The 27-year-old shouted “this is YouTube material” as he degraded Christine Lakinski, 50, who had fallen ill, magistrates heard.
So, yes, we need to be very angry – enough so that, like Rosa Parks, in reverse, we will finally speak out – and mean it, when we say:
“Enough is enough: we will now move…!”
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