Three years ago, Detroit started the process of shutting off water to residents behind on their payments. That typically included the city's poorest and most vulnerable people. Many people around the country, including the UN, called the practice a human rights violation. Despite that, the practice continues today.
Fulbright scholar Rasha Elendari came to the US from Syria seven years ago to study archeology. She planned to return home to Syria to participate in an archeological dig that summer but escalating violence in her homeland made that trip impossible. Missing her family, Elendari stayed in the US to finish her degree, then moved to Toronto for graduate school.
Meanwhile, Syria's war and the Elendari family's situation went from bad to worse. They had stayed in Syria to fight the devastation caused by the Assad regime and provide humanitarian support.
Educated professionals, Elendari's parents, two sisters, and two brothers-in-law volunteered in community programs in their home region in Syria to help war widows and orphans. Two years ago, their own safety and that of their toddler-age children was threatened. They fled to Turkey.
After making contact with the Canadian officials there, the Elendari family was contacted by Jewish Immigration Aid Services (JIAS) of Toronto. JIAS was coordinating the efforts of three Toronto-area sponsors who offered help: Supper with Syria, Temple Har Zion, and Imam Mahdi Islamic Centre. The Temple and the Mosque share a parking lot, and had agreed some time before to sponsor a family's immigration. The Elendari family was the perfect choice for their combined financial and logistical support.
So the plan is in place for the family to arrive from Turkey next week. Details on housing are sketchy, but a job awaits Elendari's pharmacist brother-in-law.
What a great start to the new year - a family reunited in safety.
Millions of us spend December shopping for gifts. Malls and online stores offer great deals, coupon and member discounts, and a host of other enticements to get our dollars. Those dollars go into the pockets large corporations whose execs make big bucks and whose employees work their tails off and barely squeak by.
I recently found a number of websites which promote gift-giving with a social conscience. Forbes created a list of companies which donate 10% or more of their profits or match purchased items one-for-one. Some companies provide education, others clean water. Worth checking out.
American Express has promoted Small Business Saturday for years now, and they provide an online guide to help shoppers find local businesses with unique goods year round. This type of shopping allows jobs and dollars to stay local. Small businesses with their personalized service and unique goods provide a diverse, interesting landscape to our towns and cities. Without them, America would be one boring big box store.
Our Better World website provides links to unique goods made mostly overseas. Proceeds from the sales of these handmade items create a living wage for families below the poverty line.
Don't want to buy 'stuff?' Consider giving a gift certificate from a non-profit.
A personal favorite, Heifer International , takes your monetary gift and turns it into a flock of chickens or a goat. Those animals provide eggs or milk which can then be eaten or sold, creating both food and business opportunities for an impoverished family.
Kiva gives donors a chance to invest in a small business enterprise anywhere in the world. They coordinate micro-loans which can be used to purchase the goods needed to start a business. When the loan is repaid, the donor can choose a new business to support, so the same money is recycled over and over.
Interested in helping fellow Americans? Check out Society of St. Andrew's Potato and Produce Project. They organize teams who glean fields after the harvest. The produce gathered is then donated to food banks and shelters to feed the hungry fresh nutritious food.
Another site that shares great stories of personal integrity and courage is the Unsung Heroes Project. Not only does the site give story overviews, it provides resources for educators and collaborates in project-based learning opportunities for students, teachers, and parents. The project even offer cash-prize awards to students whose art communicates these untold tales to a greater audience.
Many of their featured projects, that is, stories which have been brought to the public through the arts, involve people who chose to do One Right Thing. One which struck me in its simplicity deals with the difficulties faced by the Little Rock Nine during the 1960s Civil Rights era. Those black students were the first to break the race barrier and be integrated into the all-white Little Rock School District. They had to walk through lines of jeering students and adults just to enter the school, endure untold threats and horrors in an attempt to receive an education. I'm sure they all remember those horrible days well.
And yet, even decades later, Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Nine, still remembers the names of two white students who showed her kindness during her ordeal, Ken Reinhard and Ann Williams. These two unlikely heroes didn't stand by when Elizabeth and the new students came to class. Ken repeatedly offered to walk with Elizabeth despite the verbal and phoned threats he received. Ann saw Elizabeth sitting alone in class and sat beside her, chatty and welcoming. The story of these small acts of standing up for what's right has been immortalized in this short film.
As this New York Times article relates, the conflicts which underscore our country are in plain view at the Republican National Convention. If we give in to our differences, it would be easy for us to become a divided people, us vs them, those with authority vs those who feel powerless.
Thankfully, some people don't focus on differences. They focus on peace.
I'm so grateful for people like these. Sometimes, all we can do in the face of tension and anxiety is join hands and pray for peace.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not naive enough to believe that our nation's problems will be solved by holding hands and singing Kumbaya. But I'm realistic enough to know that if we face a potentially difficult situation with an attitude of peace, we can move forward and hopefully be that peace.
Amazing changes have occurred in my lifetime, changes in just about every aspect of daily life. When I was born, the minimum wage was $1 an hour. Our parents made us drink whole milk and eat liver because it was good for us. Smoking was considered chic, and cough medicine with codeine was available over the counter. We had no child car seats, and I don't think we had a car with a seatbelt until the early 1970s. Our family was like most - one black and white TV centrally located in the living room, which had to be shared by all family members. I could go on, but you get the idea.
I was recently reminded of just how different our society is another way - our attitude toward children with disabilities. I know something about this first hand. You see in 1958, my younger sister Joyce was born with hydrocephaly.
In those years before shunts were medically available to manage the excess cerebral spinal fluid, the parents were either (a) not told what might be wrong and the newborn was just sent home, or (b) told the child was hopelessly retarded (ah, terminology, another huge change in my lifetime) and should be institutionalized. That way, it was explained to the shocked parents, they could move on with life as if that child were never born.
If parents decided to raise the child at home as my parents did, God bless them, they got little or no support. Back then, many people believed that giving birth to a child with a disability was God's punishment for the parents' sins. There was no agency providing guidance or intervention, no child-sized adaptive equipment, no clinic or moms' groups giving support. My mom sewed together cloth diapers and rubber pants because incontinence care items for a child over preschool-age didn't exist. Even a basic right such as education was denied Joyce and others like her until the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (now known as Public Law 94-142) was passed in 1975.
Since Joyce didn't walk until she was 5 years old, we often brought her out into the community in an over-sized baby stroller. Yes, people stared and pointed and tsk-tsked, and adults pulled their children away as if Joyce had something contagious. And yes, all of that affected me, shaped me. I learned early on how to speak my mind, and for good or bad, I've been that way all my life.
But the point is this - in the last 50+ years, our society has learned how to accept children with disabilites and support them and their families with appropriate programs, therapies, and education. Not necessarily embrace them, mind you, but accept them for what they are, loving and love-worthy human beings endowed by their Creator with the same inalienable rights as everyone else.
This video is a prime example of that positive change. We're not yet where we need to be, but with every passing decade, we're getting closer.
If you love a child with a disability, give a prayer of thanks for folks like my parents, Joyce, and the generations who struggled and lived happy lives with the people they loved, regardless of what their doctors and their society said.
Tiffani Bell, working on a fellowship in the city of Atlanta, stumbled across a Twitter post about the situation in Detroit. She learned that if a $150 bill was unpaid for 2 months, water service could legally be shut off. That made no sense to her, and Twitter acquaintance Kristy Tillman agreed. The two women put their heads together and let their hearts lead them. Within days, they set up a page for donation pledges, and started to connect with folks in the most need. In a few weeks, the workload of managing donations and notifying residents grew to a full-time job.
