TSK...The Black kids have the worst lunches

I've been watching interviews of Cori Bush lately. She's a nurse, single mother, ordained pastor and community activist. She just won the Democratic party's primary for US Congress in Missouri's 1st District. It's a huge win. 

Her interviews point out aspects of poverty. She talks about her own experiences with poverty. This is the topic of her platform. She talks about the cycle of poverty and how it is so difficult break from it. At one point she talked about food insecurity. As I listened, I thought of an experience from my college days.

One summer when I was in college, I worked for a summer day camp. No big deal, nothing fancy. It was part of the city's recreation department's summer programming. I like to think the director was ignorant, but I think she may actually have been racist. 

Some days we went next door to the city's pool. As the kids would get ready, I would help them with sunscreen. This included the African-American kids. In a snippy way, she asked me why I was doing that? I told her the kids still need protection from the sun. They can get sunburn, it may just take longer, but it can still happen.

Then, there was the time she made a snide comment about the differences in the lunches the African-American kids brought and the lunches the white kids brought. She thought it was terrible how unhealthy the African-American kids' lunches were. Therefore, the parenting wasn't as good. She needed to hear about how finances make a difference in groceries. The best options for healthy food cost more. Sugary "juice" drinks are cheaper than real juice. Produce is more expensive than chips. It's unfortunate, but is the reality some people live with. This food issue can lead to poor health, which is just another part of the cycle of poverty Cori Bush has as her campaign platform. 

#BLM

 

Peanuts vs. Jelly Beans

In fall of 1980, I started kindergarten. I was a 5-year-old. It was an election year. The Republican Ronald Reagan was running against the incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter. Scholastic News had ballots for us to use to vote. They were pictures of each candidate. We had a booth to cast our vote. It was a "brick" cardboard play house. Each of us took a turn to go in and put the picture for our candidate in a box. I don't remember who won and I don't remember who I voted for, perhaps Jimmy Carter. I was 5, what did I know?

Around the time I was casting my vote, Jimmy Carter was signing the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980. The MHSA was to set up grants for community mental health centers. Their was a movement for rehabilitation of people with sever mental illnesses in the 1970s. The focus of the movement and the law were on the same page. So, community health systems worked to coordinate general health care, mental health care, and social support systems. I didn't know this when I voted in kindergarten because...well...remember I was 5-years-old.

Thirteen years later, I was just out of high school. I went on a service trip to the intercity of Cincinnati. It was about 10 days of living above a storefront with a bunch of teenagers and some adult leaders. It was incredibly eyeopening. We did various jobs. I was at a soup kitchen. It was like nothing I ever experienced. We had speakers who worked in different ways with the poor and homeless. We went to hear one person and that's how I learned about the floodgates of mentally ill persons being released from hospitals. A year after Jimmy Carter signed the MHSA into law in 1980, Reagan repealed most of the law. So, mental health care saw major cuts. 

This changed my view for the rest of my time in Cincinnati. There was a park in front of where we stayed. Lots of homeless were there. I talked to one man who was a Vietnam vet. It was obvious he really could have used help. He showed me the scar from his sternum diagonally down his left side around to his back. Much of what he talked about didn't make sense to me. If I knew about PTSD back then, I would guess that was one of his issues.

Many at the soup kitchen were surely suffering from some mental illness or other. One day, a woman came through the line. She was wearing a purple fishnet shirt. That was it for the top. No regular shirt. I didn't know what to do. I wasn't sure where to look. I mean, we talk to those who come through the line. It would be weird if I ignored her. She did the talking and moved on through.

In both kindergarten and the summer after graduating high school I wasn't aware of my mental illnesses. Now, I've been living with it, in good times and bad. So, it is a very important issue for me.

Looking at the two presidents and at an area that is very important to me, I'd like to think I went in that "voting booth" and voted in the interest of my future self. I'd like to think I voted for peanuts vs. jelly beans, that I voted for Jimmy Carter.