I have a routine that I follow almost like clockwork. I spin first thing in the mornings. Head to Starbucks to write a few blogs and prepare for my Politics Done Right Radio show. Run to my studio to do the hour show. And then head back to Starbucks and finish tying up loose ends. I interact we a lot of people of all political ideologies.
There are some of my Right Wing friends who never miss an opportunity to come stop by Starbucks if they see my car outside to get into a debate; always civil of course. In fact, many time we’ve changed minds on many issues.
My Progressive friends are still very obsessed with Donald Trump even as I try to steer them away from the obsession with him. I want to concentrate Progressives to concentrate on issues with those they are engaging and then appropriately portray Trump as the impediment to solving the problems that most affect the people they are working with day in and day out.
Recently I met a man in his mid-forties sitting in the back of Starbucks. We struck up a conversation, and I detected an accent so asked him about his origins. He was from Spain. Well after telling him I was originally from Panama, we continued the conversation in Spanish. I always modify my Spanish when speaking to folks from Spain. You see, as I told him, we learned theirs was from “La Real Academia de la Lengua,” The Real Academy of the Language.
After laughing about it for a few seconds about Spanish pronunciations of certain words versus how we do it in Latin America, my new friend asked what I did. I told him I was a Software Engineer/Developer/Business owner turned full-time blogger/political activist. He looked at me startled. I explained that I thought things were so bad, that just like we expected others to save the day, I felt I needed to step up. After all, I have always been political from the time I came to this country. At the University of Texas, we marched on the west mall demanding that the university divest its holding from South Africa, an apartheid state in those days.
He told me he had four kids while working on his Ph.D. as well as working as a professor at a university in town. With two people working in his household, his wife teaches elementary school, and things are not easy. “Hell, childcare alone was like another mortgage,” he said. That one stuck with me.
“How do you make an income?” he asked. I explained that bloggers and political activists survive mostly through online ads and contributions to their projects by people who believe in what they are doing.
“But can you make enough to live?” he asked.
I told him that in my case I had already put my daughter through college for her undergraduate degree. Additionally, our $12,000 to $16,000+/year health care bill got a relief when my wife started working a part-time job after not having worked for 26 years. That allowed me to cut my income requirement quite a bit. As someone with a big mouth about all that is wrong, it was “Now put up or shut up.”
After we got over the income discussion, which at first befuddled him, we moved on to political issues. He is decidedly progressive. Moreover, as someone from Spain, he just does not understand our health care system can be so horrendous and expensive. He knows that the healthcare programs in Europe, most with some type of Medicare for All single-payer system are much more efficient. We also discussed progressive taxation, income and wealth disparity, inequality, and much more. He was well versed in all of these issues.
I told my friend that I wanted to recruit folks to help disperse the message that unfortunately many are not getting because of a derelict media. I explained that many Progressives had become the Independent Media. Knowledgeable people like this man needed to be a part of the army. I told him eventually he would be out there doing his part. I don’t remember how he replied it exactly. I remember feeling a pit in my stomach as he implied that the system could not change at all because the masses would always be subservient to the few. And using his life as a prism, he could just have said: “I am too damn busy surviving my present to worry about my future.”
And that is the problem in America today. And the question is how do we get around those very real issues. Activists must create a means of easy engagement that does not require fundamental change in tone already difficult daily life. We must become less judgmental on those we tend to believe just let things happen to themselves and help find a path of participation however small. Most importantly we have to make sure they are informed even if they can’t participate in the struggle today or tomorrow.