Living.
We understand that crimes against human life are just as important as crimes against other forms of life in our world. We believe in messages that recognize environmental crimes against communities like West Oakland & the South Bronx are just as pressing as those in the Western Arctic & the Southern Amazon.
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LIFE Is LIVING
The country eats its young and leaves its elderly in the summer heat to spoil
by Marc Bamuthi Joseph
A note about the cost of dying…
Right now, my grandmother is fighting down the cost of living.
In a mirrored hall of financial cycles, I am her bridge out of troubles the way she was for my parents 30+ years ago. On this globally warmed, deathly hot Florida August afternoon, I sit at her table, my son nearby. I watch with wonder…her every motion an epigraph of the body I will come to occupy; gray eyelashes, retired nurse’s hands, the critical, sharp corners of her mouth turning upward, easily, playful and luminous…
I must say it kinda freaks me out to visit my grandmother.
Somewhere in the midst of the love in this visit, is a silent, neon, implicit flaw in the premise of tomorrow’s promise…
And so I trip…
Cuz I am physically fit and ALSO keenly aware of the ways I am physically reaching away from my youth. Being around my 94 year old grandma is an unsettling reminder to maybe get right with God instead of lingering on the numbing tastes of the flesh…
I am safe, and spooked in the company of the aging, smell my youth’s sense of immortality slipping away on the sweat of my skin. My new york-set internal clock begins to slow. I remember I have so much left to do…and so little time…so little time…
Today my elder needs me.
My grandmother bought her home.
Her bank will not re-up at the end of her 5-year, real estate bubble, fucked up loan.
Always paid her bills on time.
She’s 94, the banks are discriminate in taking their time to decline.
The country eats its young and leaves its elderly in the summer heat to spoil…
…and the real bug out is…
If Congress fails to act on health care reform, it will be 20 times less expensive for me to buy my grandma’s house then it will be provide health care for her or ANY ONE in my family. 62% of all bankruptcies last year were due to folks incurring unsustainable health care costs. 1.5 million families go into foreclosure every year due to unaffordable health care costs…
my grandma is a vigorous and VITAL 94.
Feisty.
On this august day, we look at one another from across the table, silently chewing on an endgame, active in a fierce tug of war between life and debt…
Despite the complex web of health and finance, the fear of dying reminds me that life is living…
Reminds me of the murdered youth we marched to remember in Chicago last month…
Kids who probably didn’t have an opportunity to see the reaper coming before getting sickled from behind between classes…In Chicago, we focused Life is Living on the art and activity that sustains our communities…soccer, dancing, visual art, music, biking, poetry, food, gardening…we framed the day in such a way that we could all agree that just as energy consumption is an environmental issue, elder care is an environmental issue.
Sustaining the planet INCLUDES sustaining enough humanity to recognize the basic right to age in peace, without literally worrying to death about a place to live…
The blueprint of our geological accountability is ACTUALLY imbedded in our sociological accountability. A people empathetic enough to care for one another’s physical and mental health, is thusly compassionate enough to assure the safe passage of our planet to future generations
As we seek to mirror the success of the Chicago Life is Living event (big UP Kuumba Lynx), I am settled into the very personal terms of celebrating urban life in this time of economic downturn. Planning for the Oakland Life is Living leads me into the West Oakland Senior Center, and the Public Library on 18th and Adeline, both of which border our event site, DeFremery Park. I want folks coming out of either building to be at home in the park on October 10. More than that, I want each to find home in one another…
like a grandson bearing a burden for the one who bore him life…
like a newborn finding herself in her grandfather’s eyes…
please stay tuned as we chronicle this pathway to environmental sustainability…
the path is built by and FOR people, with an emphasis on future classic traditions, and in celebration of the LIVES we LIVE… holistically fighting for financial, physical, and social health…
urban…
red…black…green…and blue…
more soon…
Call your congresspeople. Call, speak, yell, cry, appear, mourn, demand, be. Yes, they are discussing these same issues right now. Yes, they need to hear from us (and our grandmas). Are we less passionate than hairsprayed health-insurance actors??? I didn’t think so.
Thanks for writing this Bamuthi.
WOW, this is an intense piece. A great read and hopefully health care reform happens sooner than later.