I couldn’t wait to tell the boss that the meat in the sandwiches delivered to the neighborhood center was purple, that it had the sheen on it that ripe lunchmeat can have, that glisten that tells you, “hmmmm, time to toss.”  Fresh from her volunteer gig as a summer day camp counselor, my 15-year old daughter ran through the litany of complaints at dinner the night before.  “The SDC bag lunch was awful – the peach was like a rock and the meat in the sandwich was purple.”

I was all over it like white on rice.  Next morning, first thing, into the Exec’s office (which at the time was next door to mine), I couldn’t wait to unload this little tidbit.  “My daughter says the meat at the neighborhood center is inedible.”  It’s fun, kind of satisfying, to sit around and yak about what someone else did wrong.    Yeah.  I had a field day with the purple meat.

Until.

Later that same day, the head of the food program came into my office.  I remember this like it happened five minutes ago. I can see him walking in, with his trademark limp and his blue denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up.  He held a clipboard like he was about to check me off.  He didn’t seem mad.  He seemed puzzled, looked quizzical.  Right away, the crumminess of what I had done washed over me. 

Mr. Food Manager stood in front of my desk and just said, “Why didn’t you talk to me if you had a problem?  That’s what we do here.  We take it to the source.”

Which is not so easy – taking it to the source.  A lot easier to take it around the source or above the source.  Taking it to the source means a person has to screw up his or her courage and say, “Ah, excuse me, but I think that yesterday’s meat might have been purple.”  That’s not so easy especially when you yourself did not actually see the meat and you are taking the word of 15-year old finicky eater. 

All of this la-dee-dah goes by way of saying – if someone has an issue with a person, they need to take it up with that person.  Not his co-worker or boss or mama.  Now, this isn’t always a successful and warm strategy.  If I had told Mr. Food Manager directly that his meat was purple, he still would’ve been really mad and demanded to see the specific purple slice of which I was speaking.  But I’d be on a lot higher moral ground than I was, which was basically a sinkhole of professionalism. 

Possibly the most ungrammatical essay ever written.  But you get my point.

What can twenty bucks buy?   Eight gallons of milk.  A boatload of rice and potatoes.  Enough meat for a week….a chicken, hamburger, and some stew meat.  Twenty loaves of bread if you shop day-old and are ok with funky Wonder Bread. 

Should I continue?  How about six gallons of gas, a weekly bus pass, a pair of shoes for a child,  a back-pack and school supplies, the co-pay for prescription drugs.  How about a box of Tampons, laundry soap,  and a roll of quarters to go to the laundromat?

There are a lot of things to think about in the Governor’s proposed budget.  Many sweeping changes.  Programs eliminated.  Eligibility restricted.  Potentially a great deal of human suffering.  Unfortunately, most of the attention has been riveted on the issue of public employee unions, specifically collective bargaining rights.  This is an important issue of principle and I understand that.  But I also know that while the pro-union and anti-union folks are in the center ring duking it out under the spotlights while the big crowd cheers, issues like BadgerCare, Family Care, and W-2 are in the alley waiting to get in the side door to the arena.

No one is ever going to take up the $20 cut to the monthly W-2 payment.   No one’s got time.  So now people who need to use W-2 to get by will have to do so on $653 a month – $20 less than before.

To me, the $20 cut to W-2 is the budget equivalent of  gratuitous violence.  Unnecessary, painful, included just to ratchet up the lather. 

If a government’s budget is the complete articulation of its policies and values, what does cutting $20 from an already unlivable benefit level say?  It says, “We’re mad at you.  You’re taking advantage.  You’re not worthy of our charity.”  It says, “We’re better than you.  You’re lazy.  You need to really feel the pain so you get your ass off the couch and go find a job.”

Wow.  I’m no expert but I don’t think that’s a real good policy statement.  I’m kind of looking for the policy that raises all ships, that expects accountability but appreciates people’s struggles. 

Respect.

Twenty bucks could buy a lot of that.

What’s going to happen next is going to be really awful.  The proposed Medicaid cuts in Wisconsin are going to cause pain to real people.  Not pain as in…”Oh, I wish we didn’t pay so much in taxes.”  Pain as in…”I don’t think I can walk to the bus stop.”  Pain as in doubled over – not from having to write a big check to the IRS or the Wisconsin Department of Revenue but from an untreated ulcer.  Real people will suffer.  They will hurt, they will do without, they will get sicker, and they will die younger.  That’s a fact.  Take it to the bank. 

I am often late on the logic quest.  Other people figure out stuff a lot quicker than me and possibly a lot of people have figured out how having thousands of people with no access to health care and hence more likely to use emergency rooms, miss work because of illness, and become unable to work because of preventable disabilities somehow saves money and makes Wisconsin a better state. 

I’d like to pair up 10 really sick uninsured people with 10 policymakers hot to cut Medicaid and ask each pair to spend an hour talking one on one.  No cameras.  No speeches.  One human being to another. I’d want to make sure that one of those 10 uninsured people is the homeless woman I met at a shelter whose illness had cost her a job, her home, and her independence. Now she is living in a room with another woman with a couple of hooks to put her clothes and a place to stow the rest of her belongings under her bed.

If Legislator X can listen to a diabetic explain how he has to wait to go into insulin shock to get insulin at the ER or Legislator Y can listen to a woman explain how she had undetected breast cancer that advanced to Stage 4 before she could afford a doctor and they can still advocate to cut Medicaid, I will then have to give up all faith in the basic goodness and charity of humankind.  Honestly.

My theory is that people who contemplate these punishing policies don’t know anyone who would end being on the end of the stick.  They don’t have a single face to associate with the issue.  They have never had someone in terrible straits ask them what to do or where to go.  They’ve managed to completely avoid personal interaction with the wounded. 

I wish the next demonstration in Madison about the proposed budget was a sea of crutches and wheelchairs and gurneys.  I wish there was a way that the thousands of people who are going to be at the end of that stick could show themselves to policymakers.  Make the deciders look them in the face.  And then vote.

Right now in Wisconsin, we’ve got a good old street fight going.  What’s good about a street fight?  People come to watch.  They watch, they wager, they strategize.  They tell their friends, they stay up late talking about the new moves.  Consider new weapons.  Call in reinforcements.  Boast, brag, create new Yo Mamma’s, connive, and adrenalize.

We’re taught to be worried about conflict.  Avoid it.  Run away.  Social scientists, tsk tsking about central city kids, will bemoan that they run toward a fight rather than away from it.  And wonder why they don’t have the normal middle class instincts of submerged, indirect conflict and moves so subtle that codebreakers have to be called in to decipher – “was I just insulted?”

I love a throwdown.

A long time ago, I lived in Flint, Michigan, a city that was company (GM) and union (UAW) – either or – all the time.  City council meetings were raucous, risky events.  Broadcast live on AM radio, citizens would jump in their cars and drive to City Hall if the goings-on got real interesting, the name-calling at the right high decibel.  I remember pushing my baby daughter in her bassinet back and forth on a braided rug, getting so angry and exercised about what I was hearing on the damn radio that the bassinet’s front legs buckled.  Oh dear.  Calm down.  I remember a particularly hot meeting when the last vote against a bad city neighborhood plan came rolling in on a hospital gurney with an IV in his arm.  Yes, ma’am.  Throwdown.

So, yeah, there is a big part of me that wonders why the two sides of this issue can’t sit down and respectfully reason together, there’s another part of me that says, “Do it!  Draw a line in the sand.”  “Say what you stand for.”  “Don’t sit down and be nice.”  For once, have the sides of the issue be black and white so everybody can figure out how to choose a team.  Get rid of the backroom moves and the bureaucratic, budget balancing gyrations and put the whole steaming mess on the table.  Make it a good enough show that the old folks and the working folks and students and kids know there’s a ‘fer and agin’ and pick one.

I had been thinking that all this conflict was a bad thing for Wisconsin — it’s not.  Anything political that makes people’s blood boil is a good thing for everyone.  They might be mad.  But, boy, they’re paying attention!

Just about a month from now – January 26, 2011 – about a hundred volunteers will head out to survey Milwaukee residents who are homeless.  Volunteers will visit meal programs, libraries, and other gathering places.  Volunteer pairs will walk the streets to identify and interview people who are homeless.  Trained outreach teams will search out homeless youth and visit encampments in our town where homeless folks are known to live.  Then all of the people living in Milwaukee’s shelters and transitional housing programs will be counted and interviewed.  It’s a major, major undertaking — coordinated by the Milwaukee Continuum of Care (CoC).

The CoC is required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to conduct this census of homeless people.  In fact, every CoC across the country will be doing a homeless count during the last week of January 2011.  This will be Milwaukee’s third Point in Time Count using a very rigorous method involving a) making sure that a person is homeless before counting him/her; b) obtaining basic demographic information from everyone and more extensive information about the homeless experience from most; and c) incorporating de-duplication procedures to insure that no one is counted twice. 

Because this is a census to satisfy HUD requirements, we must use the HUD definition of homelessness which is essentially this: a person or family living in shelter or transitional housing or in a place not fit for human habitation, e.g. car, street, abandoned building.  This leaves out families that are doubled up or people who might be moving from one place to another like young people who are couch-surfing or trading sex for a place to stay.  What this means is that the Point in Time counts just one type of homelessness – still, the process and the results are essential to our community’s ability to understand homelessness and focus our resources on the right problems.

This year, the Milwaukee CoC is turning up the heat on the Point in Time effort.  We want to do a better job on the count in general but especially with regard to homeless veterans and unaccompanied youth (under age 18).  These are two populations that locally and nationally seem to have been undercounted in the past.

In order to do an even better job than in the past, we need more volunteers.  In 2009, we had 72.  In 2011, we’ll need 100.  If you don’t mind bundling up and doing a little trudging around in Wisconsin’s January weather, you qualify!  We’ll train you.  Organize where you’re going.  Back you up.  And feed you cookies and hot chocolate when you’re done.

This is important work.  You know why?  Because counting the homeless tells the homeless and the rest of the world that the HOMELESS COUNT.  And they do.

If you’re interested, take a peek at our last Point in Time Report at  http://milwaukeecoc.org/MilwaukeePointinTime2009.pdf.  If you’d like to volunteer, shoot at email to Kari Lerch, the Continuum of Care Coordinator, at karim@communityadvocates.net.  Be part of the team.  We need you!

“Like most Packer fans, I have seen lots of Brett Favre and can’t remember a single time he seemed like he wasn’t giving everything he had, which was usually pretty good.  I guess that’s as good a tribute as any.”  (Eugene Kane, MJS columnist, post on Facebook12/13/10)

I’m probably one of the last six Favre fans in Wisconsin. He’s a spoiled brat and a traitor.  Now we can add sexting idiot to the list as well.  If I was his wife or his mother, I’d cuff him upside the head.

But he was amazing to watch.  So much so that Packer games would often find me off doing something else but a Vikings game would put me in my seat for the duration.  Favre’s resilience, attitude, recklessness – faith in himself – I admired and loved all that.  Watching him tackle the ball carrier after an interception — loved that. 

I loved that there was no quit in Brett Favre.  Not with a broken ankle, not when his father died, not when he ought to have retired.

So what’s my point?  Eugene Kane’s Facebook post — I’m putting that on my bulletin board — as a reminder to never call it in, never do just enough.  I think if we can give everything we have, it will usually be pretty good. And that is a really good tribute. 

Brett Favre looks pretty pensive, sitting on the bench during last night’s game.  I’m betting he’s sad and pretty uncomfortable watching the football game and having the world watch him watch the game.   I don’t think, though, that he’s kicking himself because he didn’t play hard enough.  That’s got to be a good feeling.

Yesterday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asked readers to vote on the five most important issues facing the state – the most critical things for the paper to focus on in the coming year. 

See “Including you in our focus for Agenda 2011, MJS, 11/28/10  http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/110882524.html

A nice bit of consumer involvement, the poll was likely intended to send the message that the MJS cares about us and what we think.  It’s tough being in the newspaper business these days so anything that builds connections, like asking people what they think, is a good way to at least hold on to the 12 people who still pick up the paper off the front porch on their way to make a pot of coffee in the morning.

So being a good citizen and a faithful newspaper reader (although there have been plenty of times lately when rotten fish didn’t deserve to be wrapped in this particular paper), I proceeded to register my top 5 community concerns.

Ah, let’s see…

• Crime
• Campaign finance reform
• Energy
• Great Lakes protection, the environment
• Health care
• Immigration
• Jobs and the economy
• Milwaukee Public Schools
• Poverty —— @#$%^&! POVERTY???
• Rail projects
• Reform of drunken driving laws
• Roads and bridges
• State budget
• Taxes
• Teen pregnancy

To me that’s like:

• Sprained ankle
• Headache
• Pulled muscle
• Head cold
• CANCER
• Premature baldness
• Acne
• Chipped tooth
• Nearsightedness

How does POVERTY get to be in a list with Roads and Bridges as if these two things are comparable?  In one corner, there’s the health-ruining, education-limiting, opportunity-destroying, soul-killing hammer of poverty.  In the other corner, wearing pink silk shorts with happy faces is Roads and Bridges.  Puhleeze.

I think this way of thinking is a problem.

We’re living in a city that has the 4th highest poverty rate in the U.S.  Why are we even having a discussion about priorities?  What other priority besides reducing poverty could we possibly have?

Like CANCER shouldn’t have to compete with the common cold for attention, POVERTY should be a slam-dunk as a priority.  Every one percent reduction in Milwaukee’s poverty rate would liberate about 6,000 people to think about their future instead of how to scrounge tonight’s dinner.  Think of the brainpower that could suddenly be devoted to helping kids succeed in school or maybe organizing neighbors to fight crime or finding good candidates to run for public office.  Think of the college degrees that could be earned.  The houses bought.  The taxes paid.

I guess I’m tired of the ridiculously high poverty rate being an accepted fact of life in Milwaukee.  And puzzled about how an enormous problem that hurts 1 out of 4 people in our community gets such ho-hum attention.  Are we still blaming the poor for their situation?  Do we think the poor shall always be with us?  Is poverty so institutionalized here that we can’t pull it apart and start eradicating it piece by piece?

I rant.  I exaggerate.  I know that the other issues are important.  Immigration, MPS – a lot of the items of the list need serious and sustained attention.  But the foundation of the heartache in this community is that thousands of kids wake up and go to bed poor and their parents can’t do a damn thing about it.  But we can – if the community decides that’s the highest priority.

So that’s why I think you ought to go online and vote — for Poverty.  Early and often.

They should’ve walked.  Don’t you think?  If they wanted to go out West, they should’ve just walked or ridden a horse or bumped along in one of those cute little Conestoga wagons.  I mean, what was the big hurry?  It’s not like gold or land or opportunity wouldn’t still be there waiting for them if they took a couple of extra months to get there.

But nooooooo.  Some crazy investors, fully supported by the U.S. government in legitimate and not so legitimate ways, and lured by little bergs across the West begging to be stops, decided “Damn it all, America needs trains!”  Can’t you just hear it?  “If we don’t build this train track, the world’s going to leave us behind.”

Ever been to one of those little dusty specks out West — where remnants of a settlement are just barely obvious?  The train route and later the freeway scotched the town’s chances of ever growing.  The stores closed down.  The people had to leave.  The smart ones found the train station in the next town and hightailed it West where the economy was hopping and where people had figured out the connection between PEOPLE  AND  OPPORTUNITY AND TRANSPORTATION.

Wisconsin’s at a critical juncture — we go forward where the action is or we shrivel and dry up.  Bet the town fathers in the 1800′s who didn’t want that dirty, loud locomotive bringing grifters and thieves to town wished they could rethink that decision and get with the program.  Too late for them.  Not for us.

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”

No kidding.

It’s the day before Election Day 2010.  I am nearly blinded by the flurry of idiocy – from all sides.  From Scott Walker’s accusations that Tom Barrett is a tax-raising fiend to Tom Barrett calling John Chianelli an unqualified crony of Scott Walker’s and on and on.  I’m not even going near any discussion of clocks or tables. 

Politics not only makes for strange bedfellows – it makes for desperate ones as well.  And what’s worse? Really?  Desperation – aka wanting to win at all costs - makes politicians do and say outrageous things.  Unbelievable things.  And say them over and over and over – until whatever support we may have felt for them melts into aggravation.

Yesterday, one of my sons said he was voting for Mickey Mouse.  “You can’t do that,” I said.  “You’ll just throw away your vote.”  “Yeah,” he says, “But what if a lot of people voted for Mickey Mouse and he won?  That’d be kind of interesting.  Having a cartoon character run things.”  (And just so you know, my son’s isn’t 9, he’s 25.  Pray he doesn’t represent the average young voter.)

But he raises a point.  The entire campaign has been cartoonish.  A lot of Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff.  A lot of mysterious packages being delivered by Acme Explosives Company. 

A lot of complete and total B.S. 

Enough already.  At least it’ll be over tomorrow.  And the mop-up can begin.  Oh well.

I wish I had a printer in my car. And maybe a voice activated word processing system that allowed me to create documents while I was driving.  Sometimes, because I’m pressed for time and sometimes just to dare myself — I’ll wait for the drive to a meeting to figure out what I’m going to do once there.  This dare double dare game creates a certain level of fear and adrenaline that kind of rivets my attention on the topic at hand….maybe the way planning way ahead doesn’t. 

This is a confession and a risky one at that.  After all, who wants to hire a strategic planning consultant who is ginning it up in the car on the way to the strategic planning session?  My husband dubbed this practice “Just In Time Consulting.”  You know how good manufacturers will control their inventory and have supplies ready ‘just in time’ to create products on demand?  A lot of inventory laying around is bad for business. So smart manufacturing is lean.  Very lean.  Me, too.  At least with regard to business.

My translation of that is that over-planning and over-analyzing makes you weak, nervous and cautious.  I don’t want to script a group’s every move.  I think a set of key, core-hitting questions will generate greatness in a group of smart, committed people.  My job is to focus and ask, ratchet it up, focus and ask, ratchet again, and then let people see what they’ve created.  Midwife!  That’s the term.

This is what’s in the midwife’s trunk.  Paper, markers, my trusty painter’s tape, my sticky wall and post-its. And oh, a couple of signs about the 10-Year Plan just in case.  And in the driver’s seat?  Just me.