I am the only child of a single mom who had me at nineteen years old.
My father split when I was four and paid no child support.
We had a very hand-to-mouth existence in the mid-70’s through early ’80’s.
My mom supported us by working as a waitress in Washington, D.C. until her own demons and addictions took over.
She eventually came out the other side of that, as did I, and we both try and lead lives of service and sobriety now.
She’s far more selfless than I am - I admire her greatly for that.
I also understand her struggles back in the day and know that many are not afforded the opportunities to build back their lives.
We are becoming a country that makes it harder for families to succeed in so many ways.
Life can be a struggle and unnecessarily hard for far too many folks.
I witnessed that up close and personal in the apartment complexes I lived in as child on the outskirts of Washington.
The kind of places that are owned by men like Jared Kushner and part of vast real estate portfolios controlled by some guy in a slim-cut suit sitting behind a desk on Fifth Avenue.
Spending more on that day’s lunch at the The Palm than a month’s food budget for most families in one of the apartment complexes they own.
The folks who live in those developments have become nothing more than numbers on a balance sheet.
Their value measured by their ability to pay up at the end of the month and even more importantly, to not complain about their sub-standard housing.
If they complain about issues like vermin, black mold, no heat, issues with potable running water, they will be evicted or challenged in court, risking both their shelter and their deposits if they dare speak up against an industry designed to exploit them.
As Kushner Companies has done for decades up and down the East Coast but primarily in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Baltimore and D.C. suburbs are a prime example of the Kushner business model of owning a vast amount of low-income apartment complexes.
Jared Kushner’s company filed 590 eviction notices during pandemic eviction moratoriums; intimidating residents who had fallen behind on the rent during a national lockdown, setting the court proceedings in motion to evict them when the moratorium ended.
The moment the COVID eviction protections lifted he threw folks out of their apartments even though the public health emergency was far from over in the fall of ’21.
Never mind that as a member of the coronavirus task force.
Jared was put in charge of the White House response - and initially put his college roommate and best friend in charge of U.S. response to a deadly global health crises.
Jared did this while withholding PPE supplies for doctors and nurses in blue states because he thought it would be more politically expedient for his father-in-law that way.
Of course, when Jared saw there was no real money to be made from the COVID pandemic he lost interest, as did Trump, and they pivoted to pretending it would just go away, diving into the world of anti-vax rhetoric and conspiracy theories.
They even condoned the targeting of Dr. Fauci, a hero of the moment if ever there was one, whose persecution by the right continues to this day through Trump surrogates on Capitol Hill.
But I digress.
The lives upended by all these predatory dealings and chaos are more than numbers on a spreadsheet.
They represent the future of our country and we own them much better.
We owe the children who have to leave their school districts to go live with a relative or in a shelter; having their stability and educations thrown into tumult at tender ages.
Not exactly the hallmark of fruitful societies, early trauma like that will follow children into adulthood where choices and consequences shape a life.
Even the kids lucky enough to make it out of those circumstances will find shadows cast for the rest of their days.
I know - I was in seven schools by eighth grade.
My mom went to prison when I was thirteen; by high school I had lost any hope of being a decent student.
I was, however, lucky enough to love with grandparents by then, in the bucolic suburbs of Westchester County, New York.
I will never forget the other kids I saw on visiting day in Baltimore City Jail where they had a little Christmas party for the kids whose moms were incarcerated.
They handed out gloves and hats.
Many would not see their moms free again for a long time.
My focus became socialization since being the new kid all the time had me hyper-focused on fitting in.
It was exhausting.
As is the life that often surrounds living at, or below, the poverty line.
Addiction and other dysfunctions, while they cross socio-economic boundaries, always seem to take an outsized chunk out of vulnerable or marginalized communities; this is by design as much as anything else.
It has to do with issues of policy, policing and the influence men like Kushner who profit from these conditions have on the policies that help create them.
This baked in corruption is as much a part of the GOP platform these days as waving a flag or railing against migrants and ‘the woke’.
They would rather build prisons than schools, aiming much of their rhetoric and veto power at programs that affect low-income families.
From health care to education to school lunch programs, Republican governors would rather turn down federal monies than be seen as helping folks they want to view as ‘the other’.
But they are not the other; they are you and me.
Until we see our society as one, as family if you will, we can never truly call ourselves excellent.
When politicians and business men go out of their way to be cruel - while hiding under the cloak of Christianity or patriotism - we have a real problem on our hands.
Their policies seek to cloud out progress and criminalize struggle instead of helping folks out of it.
Often enacting cycles of recidivism and despair within the criminal justice system which begins a whole other cycle that only a few have the good fortune to climb out of; meanwhile these same GOP lawmakers attack the rule of law when it comes to prosecuting Donald Trump and his supporters for their myriad crimes.
And the men and women who could make a difference, specifically conservative voters, vote for politicians that further punish middle class and working Americans who bear the brunt of their tax cuts for the wealthy and regressive social policies.
All in the name of what?
MAGA, a neofascist cult run by a madman bent on retribution, who would invoke the power of the military to thwart any opposition or protest should he decide to do again what he attempted once before: steal an election.
For broken men that is what winning looks like.
Making sure others suffer to cover up your own defects and criminality.
A country where if even one child goes hungry it’s one too many - should be our goal.
Grown men should not sleep soundly at night knowing children are not.
They certainly shouldn’t profit off of the suffering of others but that has become something beyond reproach for the GOP.
They have prospered under the gospel of Trump, at least in the eyes of the conned who cannot see themselves as the true marks of his latest grift.
Our true strength as a nation lies in our diversity and our ability to care for one another.
Our policy and statesmen and women should be tempered with grace and an awareness that our country should not be allowed to drift away from the core values and loftier ideals that live in the hearts of the righteous and the many.
Though at times it may feel like just a few, it is indeed many.
We are more alike than we are not.
We are made of the same things.
And we should all have the opportunity to make ourselves into something better.
Do not look towards people who seek to divide for leadership.
Look into your own hearts and at the times in your life you have gone out of you way to nurture the good in someone else.
Focus on that and the intention that we must protect our republic in November and keep working towards a future where equality, compassion and the well-being of others defines our national character.
Vote Blue.
Another brilliant yet heartbreaking piece, Noel.
I had the good fortune to grow up in post-war Britain., which may seem an oxymoron to some. But it was a society based on fairness. The Welfare State and the National Health Service were demonstrations that our society was supposed to be FAIR FOR EVERYONE. Of course Thatcherism has eroded much of that, as did Reaganomics in the US.
Of course it all boils down to GREED!
Let us pray that the US comes to its senses, before it's too late!
Glorious….thank you.