Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Conflicted: How to focus long term when world around is in turmoil?

The graphic below summarizes work I've been doing for nearly 40 years.

Helping kids born in  high poverty in neighborhoods throughout Chicago and the world move through school and into jobs and careers, with the support of volunteers who are part of organized non-school tutoring, mentoring and learning programs, is a long-term goal, that requires people in many sectors to devote a slice of their time, talent and dollars on a consistent basis for many years.

Since I started writing this blog in 2005 the world has suffered from many disasters, ranging from earthquakes, to tsunamis, to hurricanes and to wars, terrorism and partisan politics. I created the graphic at the left for this 2011 article, to encourage people to budget their time, talent and dollars into three categories, so that while they respond to disasters they don't stop supporting causes that require daily support for many years.

With what's going on in US politics after the November 2016 election, and the installation of DT in the White House, I'm now not sure if there will be a future that offers hope and opportunity for disadvantaged young people...or for the rest of  us.  As I post articles about supporting well-organized tutoring and mentoring programs I wonder if this is time that I should spend in the streets protesting how DT is turning over our country, and our freedom, to a small group of radicals.

I don't think so, but I'm not certain.

So today I updated my graphic, showing that I feel we need to still focus on those things that we've been working on, and are important for our future well-being, while also devoting a slice of our attention to trying to prevent the potential disasters coming from DT and his handlers.

You can make this slice as big a part of your attention span as you want. Just don't make it 100%  or we may destroy all that we're fighting for.

PS: I created a sub section in the Tutor/Mentor web library with a few links to political activism sites that I feel are important resources.

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