When Things Get Real
By Albert B. Kelly
When it comes to the
mixing of government and politics, it’s never easy to know what’s genuine and
what’s merely part of the “posture” that comes with trying to look engaged on a
specific issue. In fact, I’m not entirely sure that you can separate the two,
but Saturday before last, in the cold and snow that seems to have settled over
our patch of earth, I had an opportunity to see how we might start to separate
the governmental wheat from the political chaff.
On this occasion, it was a
small intimate gathering where I played host to Senator Cory Booker so that he
could have an opportunity to listen and speak first hand with a small group of people
in our community and the county who are dealing with the impact of Washington’s
decision to stop extending unemployment benefits for a significant number of
people who’ve been out of work for a long period of time.
Senator Booker plans to
weigh in on this issue in a big way in the days and weeks ahead. I’m not sure
how things will go and he might not know himself being one of a 100 Senator’s
with a vote, but whatever he does and however things go, he will know firsthand
exactly how his vote and his advocacy will impact the people whose lives hang
in the balance.
This is no small thing. I
know that there are many views and opinions about unemployment benefits, food
stamps, and the safety net in general. But I also know that if the people who
depend on this safety net have always been “those people” over there at arm’s
length, then it’s easy to simply see them as a statistic or an abstraction. If its
stuff you’ve only heard about second hand, then it’s easy to buy into some
narrative that has the whole lot of them sitting around collecting their
government hand-outs and watching daytime TV while sucking off the government
teat.
But if you’ve sat 18
inches away from these men and woman…and yes their children too, and if you’ve
closed your mouth, and if you’ve looked into their eyes and really listened to them
describe their day-to-day lives; then there’s no way you view them as a
statistic or an abstraction. To me, knowing that, makes for an informed vote
and maybe that’s all we can ask of the men and woman we send to the hallowed
halls of Congress; that they know exactly what the heck their voting for and
how it’s going to play out on the street…or the farm…or wherever.
That’s what Senator Booker
was doing Saturday before last- making sure he knew- because “how it would play
out” is a lot different from considering “how it would play”. If nothing else,
I know that when party leadership in the Senate comes to court him for a vote
and when some lobbyists camp out in the halls near his Senate office; they get
balanced out by the voices and the faces and the stories of the folks who live in
our community and across our county and that’s a place to start.
There are, to be sure,
those who do take advantage of the system. And while some come in jeans and
t-shirts and sneakers and old coats; others come in $5,000 Perry Ellis suits
and work on Wall Street. My point is, if we have to err, I’d rather do it on
the side of making sure the family we spoke with that Saturday had heating oil
so their five children could be warm when temps hover around 3 degrees as they
seem to do lately. I’m fairly certain the Senator felt that way too.
Don’t get me wrong,
extending benefits solves nothing and the Senator said as much when we were
together. But solving underlying conditions in this world so that people can go
to work and make a decent living wage and not need a safety net is a really big
and long-term thing. If that’s the discussion we’re having, then you’re talking
about education, new technology, the global economy, out-sourced jobs, and
cheap labor markets overseas…ad infinitum…ad nauseam.
But that’s not what we’re
talking about and that’s not what Saturday before last was about. No, right now
we’re just talking about keeping people alive and well and OK until we can
figure out what we’re going to do about those really big, really complex,
really long-term things that will shape the way we live our lives in the
decades to come.
Saturday before last was all
about understanding the difference between what we have to do right now-this very
minute- to make sure people living on the edge don’t fall off and the really
big stuff that will get done over months and years if they get done at all. I’m
encouraged because if nothing else, I get the sense that Senator Booker genuinely
cares about “how things play out” on the street where things get real in a
hurry as opposed to simply “how they will play” and that’s not nothin.
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| Bridgeton Mayor Albert Kelly meets with NJ Senator Cory Booker to speak with local residents on the impact of not extending unemployment benefits for those who have been out of work for an extended period- 1/25/14 |
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| Bridgeton Mayor Albert Kelly welcomed NJ Senator Cory Booker to the Bridgetowne Restaurant as they hear from several Cumberland County families about the day-to-day impact of cutting off unemployment-1/25/14 |