Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt–Ancient Roman Gladiators’ motto adopted by Modern Special Olympians

Eunice Kenney Shriver, founder of the Special Olympics and prime mover of civil rights, education and health legislation for the mentally disabled, died on August 11, 2009. She spent 48 years of her life working tirelessly in making the world a far better place for her special friends. She was 88. She started it all with her sister, Rosemary, and in 1963 in her own back yard with the first camp she held for mentally disabled children and young adults. Her work led to civil rights legislation, including the ADA – Americans with Disabilities Act – for all disabled persons.

Watch this 10 minute tribute video of her life and contributions to the world:

The Special Olympics is very dear to me. I volunteered at the July 1983 Sixth International Special Olympics Summer Games held at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where I was a college student. A crowd of more than 60,000 attended the Opening Ceremonies and approximately 4,000 athletes participated.

Mrs. Shriver had all of us shouting for joy and crying tears of joy at the opening and closing ceremonies. It was a true honor to see and hear her speak in person, and to see the passion she had for her athletes. She made an effort to meet as many athletes personally as she could, and I’m sure there were few at that time who had not met her. Everyone on the team I worked with had met Mrs. Shriver. They were from Baltimore, MD. I still have the Orioles baseball cap they gave each of us.

That is a week I will never forget. That week transformed me from a fence-sitter to an aspiring advocate, and it taught me that giving your time and energy are more important than just giving money. Anyone can write a check, and we are grateful to all those who do. But it takes commitment and effort to get out there and do the hard things that need to be done to effect real change.

I didn’t continue with Special Olympics after college. I started volunteering in my community with Mid City Fix-up, an organization supported by my past employer. Local corporations provide the money, supplies and labor needed to repair and maintain houses downtown that our local elderly own and can no longer maintain without help. We were given time off our jobs to work within our community. I also volunteered with the local United Way and I gave the super-share amount out of my paycheck each pay period. I also volunteered each time a “Day of Caring” was available.

After being laid off from the chemical industry, I’ve volunteered at the food bank, during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita doing whatever was needed of me (mostly by the Red Cross), and then began volunteering in the public schools my son attended. When I began homeschooling my son, I started volunteering in local politics and was very active in the 2008 Presidential Campaign. Now I volunteer with Organize for America, a Democratic grass roots organization to work on the community level to effect national change. It’s flexible so I can fit it into my hectic work schedule with two businesses.

Mrs. Shriver’s legacy has changed the world for the better, made huge differences in millions of lives worldwide, and will continue to do so. Last week on NPR’s All Things Considered, there was a story about the partnering of Special Olympians with regular Olympians and a tribute to Eunice Kennedy Shriver. You can listen to the 3 minute broadcast at that link.

If you are looking for an opportunity to get involved in your community, there is probably a Special Olympics organization close by. I hope you will give generously and more importantly, volunteer, with them. If you already have a cause you support, I hope Mrs. Shriver’s example will encourage you to go the extra mile and make a bigger difference in your cause. For anyone who hasn’t volunteered before, I strongly encourage you to find a place in your community to volunteer and make where you live a better place. The time you spend will be worth more than you can ever imagine.

Do you have a story about your experience with Special Olympics or a mentally disabled family member or friend? Do you have a story about another cause? Please tell us about it in the comments.

Mrs. Shriver, thank you for everything you’ve done for so many throughout the world, and Godspeed. You will be greatly missed, but those you organized and trained to carry on your legacy are well prepared to step up and continue your work.

Technorati Tags: Eunice Kenney Shriver, Philanthropy, Special Olympics, volunteer

Hi folks! This is a long post, nearly 2000 words, with 3 videos, so grab a drink or snack and get comfortable before you continue.

President Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. He enjoys a whopping 83% approval rating. When Bush left office on the same day, he had a 22% approval rating.

The above video was just a snippet of the poor attitude GOP leaders carry. Many Republicans have voiced significant dismay with the direction the party has gone and is going. They haven’t left the Republican party, it has left them. I haven’t left the Republican party, it left me, and now I’m leaving it.

So what went so wrong and why?

I think four things are at the center of the GOP’s demise:

• The GOP aligned themselves with the evangelical, religious right, which accounts for 20% of the American population. They made these people their base. This population likes to tell others what they should do when they don’t follow their own beliefs anymore than “regular” Christians, those of other faiths and non-believers.* This group is advocating for rewriting the U.S. Constitution to make it more like the Bible, something our Founding Fathers went to great lengths to guard against in the strict separation of church and state.
• The GOP became intolerant of anyone who doesn’t think the way they do or anyone who doesn’t agree with them. They are a party of “their way or the highway”.
• Their leader, George W. Bush, willingly exchanged liberty, American values and the rule of law for some unknown and unmeasurable margin of national safety which I do not see as making us safer. If anything, Bush has made us less safe.
• The GOP has believed that government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem ever since Ronald Reagan was President. Why would we want to elect anyone to a government position if they believe this? They are ideologically opposed to government playing an appropriate role in society. But we have a government and it is supposed to work. Under these people it can’t work because they don’t believe it can work effectively, and they purposefully don’t make it work effectively.

The 2008 Presidential Campaign

The Presidential campaign underlined so clearly that the GOP has become unprincipled and has dived into the gutter. They spent their time and money smearing President Barack Obama instead of coming up with new ideas and new solutions to our problems. Barack Obama was running for President and John McCain was the guy who didn’t want Barack Obama to be President. There was nothing in McCain’s campaign of substance about what he had to offer America, except perhaps more of the same of George W. Bush.

That they thought it is okay to attack an opponent’s patriotism and character instead of his stand on the issues is completely unconscionable. That John McCain slandered William Ayers and continued to do so even though public records clearly indicate Dr. Ayers was tried and acquitted of any crimes is wrong. That the GOP thinks it’s wrong for anyone born in the U.S., no matter what their racial heritage, to run for president, including someone of the Islamic faith, is despicable. Those actions are not America’s values and they certainly are not Republican values, at least not the Republican values with which I grew up.

The GOP’s Hubris

The Republicans seem to want a royal-like control of the government, all its money and other resources, free reign over the economy, and the power to give even more power to certain individuals they bless with that power. Even though they preach smaller government and government is the problem, it seems to grow under GOP Presidents without bound. That’s hypocritical.

If anything, the GOP has become un-American in its thinking and actions. They want all the power and money, and anyone who might need help needs to help themselves because if you aren’t putting more money in the wealthiest pockets in the country, you’re of no use to them. Of course, now that trickle-down economics and the gutting of banking and investment regulations have thrown us into an economic recession to rival the Great Depression, they aren’t as rich as they used to be. They are being paid back in the most effective way possible, hitting them in their bank and investment accounts.

The Rush Limbaughs of the country seem to think we surfs, a the middle class, owe them our hard work to line their pockets. Why anyone listens to this comedian is beyond my understanding.

The GOP is no longer for limited government, peace through fire superiority, the party of ideas and principles, and reasonable progress. It is now for a bigger, socialist government to help the richest of the rich, invasion of our privacy without checks and balances, increasing power in the highest offices of the land, racist, raping the environment at every turn, in favor of torture and “the ends justify the means” thinking, and starting wars in countries that haven’t attacked us. That’s outright imperialistic. Anyone who isn’t for them is against them and is an enemy, as demonstrated in the indefinite detentions of “enemy combatants” without charges.

Compassionate Conservatism? NOT!

What about our obligations to each other? What about compassion for those less fortunate than we are? They call a middle class tax cut welfare. What about the redistribution of wealth from the other classes to the rich? In a time when the rich are richer than ever before, the amount of charitable giving has decreased significantly. How is anything supposed to trickle down when no faucets are turned on at the top of the sink? Trickle down economics doesn’t work. It has never worked and it won’t work in the future because of the greed of the rich.

I know one thing. If they don’t change their ways it will be a long, long time before they are able to rebuild the party and regain any power. Why do I care? This country is built on a two party system of government where the opposing parties are supposed to help keep each other in line. Right now, staying in line has to come from the Democrats who also have all the power. Perhaps the far more open government President Obama is leading will provide the necessary checks and balances from the American people without the need for an opposing party. If that happens, I’m not sure the Republicans will ever be able to rebuild the party.

Change Has Come To America

The Obama campaign machine has morphed into a grassroots volunteer organization at usaservice.org where people can search for local volunteer and service projects in their communities. President Obama is doing something many recent Presidents have failed to do, ask the American people to give, sacrifice and become part of the solution. No Presidents since John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter have asked the American people to help.

President Obama can’t change the country alone and neither can the government as a whole. We the people have to work together and President Obama asked everyone to join him and work toward helping others in our communities and solving as many of our own problems as we can.

Significant, lasting change comes from the bottom up, not from the top down. It helps the bottom up approach if the top assists in making the job easier by providing programs and resources to use in making the changes that need to be made.

The Obama Administration has already, in its first few days in power, reversed some of the most egregious violations of justice committed by the Bush Administration by ordering the closing of Guantanamo Bay prison, closing the CIA’s secret prisons off shore, forbidding torture techniques to be used by any agency, and the halting of the kangaroo tribunals that were a sham of legal trials. It is also in the process of seriously beefing up its diplomatic corp, the State Department.

The GOP lost all its power in the House of Representatives and a great deal of power in the Senate in this election. There are currently 58 Democrats in the Senate and there may be 59 when the Minnesota Senate election is finally settled. It takes 60 votes in the Senate to prevent a filibuster.

There are at least a couple of centrist Republicans who got the message sent by voters in this election that we are tired of them not cooperating and getting things done. I believe and seriously hope the Senate will not be bogged down with Republican partisan tactics to slow legislative progress just because they might be able to get away with it. I abhor violence, but if any of these bozos start a ridiculous filibuster, I hope someone will slug him or her in the chops.

In 2010, several Republican Senators will be retiring from office, opening their seats to potentially be filled by Democrats. If that happens a lot will be riding on the success of the Democrats, but if they succeed, and I believe they will, the Republicans won’t be able to use the Democrats’ record against them to win elections. The GOP will have to stop being a party of finger pointers and naysayers, and become a party of real constructive force in the political arena or they will never regain leadership in America.

In closing this post, I must say I am most ashamed of Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, from my home state. He is a pathetic character since being caught both in Washington DC and at home with prostitutes. So much for Republican right-wing family values. He is also proving to be one of the most obstructionist Senators in that body of legislators. I didn’t vote for him and I sure won’t be voting for him in the next election, should he choose to be foolish enough to seek re-election with his horrible behavior.

*References:

Ethics and Religion

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan war, Bush-Cheney, GOP in Exile, Guantanamo Bay prison, Iraq war, Obama Administration, Republican party problems

I was listening to NPR yesterday afternoon on the way to tutoring. One story was so heart-warming and had me in tears that I had to write about it. The discussion was about the U.S. Post Office and what they do with all those letters to Santa each year.

The only time the USPS violates the rule to never open anyone’s mail is at Christmas, and they open the letters to Santa Clause. People, ordinary local citizens of a community, come to read through several letters and pick one or more to provide Christmas presents for a needy family or make someone’s Christmas wish come true. It’s a fantastic way to be philanthropic.

They read a few of the letters on the air, and some of the wishes and requests were heart-breaking. One letter, the one that had me crying, was the letter asking Santa to find her dog, and if he found the dog, she would need a new collar and leash for it.

Kids ask for a new school uniform, basic clothing, a winter coat, or boots to wear in the snow. Some ask for a better job for their mom or dad. The postmaster interviewed said that many kids ask for necessities, and too often not any toys or luxuries at all. Those are the kids he and his community want to reach.

This is a great way to help kids who write those heart-breaking letters to Santa in your community. Volunteer at your local main post office, read through the letters to Santa and pick one or more to “answer”.

Make Christmas wishes come true for one or more kids and their families in your community.

Technorati Tags: Answer Letters to Santa, being the change i wish to see, Christmas, Letters to Santa, Philanthropy