| | Well my friends, it has definitely been a while since I've last "xangaed" (sp?).
It's been a busy last week with reading, writing papers, moving, and our usual schedules. But this is Friday, and I am so thankful that it is Friday. Jen and I are going to go on a date tonight to the Brick Store and then out to see a movie or rent a movie. Something. And yes, I'm going to take advantage of the Brick Store's amazing Belgian beer list!!!
This past Tuesday included a paramount moment in my life. Ms. Sadie Fields of the Georgia Christian Coalition, came in to speak during our American Religion and Politics course. We had a lot of questions for her, and a lot of the answers seemed insufficient, ungrounded, or utilizing highly cyclical logic. It was very frustrating for myself and a majority of my classmates, who could not understand why the Christian Coalition could be such a life-draining organization when Christianity was meant to be life-giving. Many of my classmates left without resolution, especially my classmates who are gay. They, and I, can not understand why the "sanctity of marriage" revolves so heavily around preventing a same-sex couple from uniting in an eternal, "God-ordained" relationship and not on developing true family values of love, equality, and mutual growth to sustain the relationship. However, I made a resolution that I would not leave the building without bridging the gap between us, regardless of how large it is.
Economic justice is a large concern of mine and I approached her with the topic after the speech and Q&A were over. I asked her if there was anything we could work together on (yes, I'm sincerely interested in volunteering for this group) such as, economic issues to raise levels of equality and equal opportunity.
I proposed advocacy of raising the minimum wage to an actual living wage. She said that she's not interested in that because a lot of teen-agers utilize those jobs to teach them formative lessons in economics. Fine, I though, how about trying to develop a policy that would raise any minimum wage to a living wage once the citizen turned 18? No deal. Raising the minumum wage would also increase the burden on small business owners.
Then, I asked her about advocating for universal health care that would then relieve a large portion of the burden upon small and large business owners (GM and Ford both cite the rising costs of health care as detrimental to their bottom line; further, many high-tech manufacturing jobs have moved to Canada because the labor is cheaper due to the universal health care). She replied that she wouldn't be interested in that because health care needed an incentive to do well. (Yes, 300% profit is required for innovation... just ask Bill Frist).
Ok, then I asked her about advocating for fair trade and equal free trade agreements (fta's between two similar countries. i.e. two developing countries or two developed countries). She then said that some action should be taken but she's not really about touching the free market. She thinks it will do best on its own and untampered. It was at this point that I said, "So basically, you're not for touching the free market at all. But with the market of ideas, culture, you want to regulate and legislate it up." She paused.
Then, I took initiative of the pause and spoke of something more along her turf - abortion. I asked her if we could possibly work together on measures to prevent abortion from happening. We could look at the educational, geographical, political, racial, and economic backgrounds of the performed abortions to discern a policy or set of policies that could be enacted to reduce the number of abortions performed in our state. She hesitated slightly, but then said "If you can organize a group of people that would be interested in doing that, yes, we could do that."
BOUYA!
I couldn't contain my smile. I said thank you, I'll get on that, shook her hand again, and left. Oh wow. I achieved the basic goal - to cross that bridge and meet somewhere in the middle. And although it required an hour of frustration and ulcer developments, it was all worth it. Now, I just have to start contacting existent groups in Georgia to see what we can do TOGETHER in this region. Perhaps, this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Or, perhaps she was just bullshitting me because it was nearing 10pm. We'll find out!!!
By the way, did you know that I'm:
Yes, I am an independent woman... (Heather, I think something's wrong with your quiz...)
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