Today in the city of Flint, Michigan the average family will have to spend either money they don’t have, or food stamps, to buy water so they can drink, cook, wash clothes and dishes, and bathe.
In the United States of America, and throughout every state, the infrastructure of our highways, airports, and especially our water supply are in dire need of repair.
You may wonder to yourself: why should I care about the problems in Michigan when I live here in, say, Ohio? We all need to care about our fellow human beings. The crumbling infrastructure of our country is getting worse every day. The problem of crumbling roads and infrastructure are a domino effect, if you will. What affects someone in one state will, over time, affect others in other states.
What can be done about it? What should we as citizens in every state of the union do to solve the problem? For one thing, we must hold our elected officials accountable and put pressure on them to see that funds which deal with these issues are allocated properly; if these officials, whether they be Democrats, Republicans or Independents, cannot or will not do the job, then we must find people who are willing to do it, who believe in doing it, and who can do it.
The story I mentioned earlier of a family that must take whatever money or food stamps they have to buy water to survive, to cook with, and to bathe with is a situation that will just continually get worse if we do not act. I can’t emphasize this enough: we must hold our elected officials accountable. Make them work toward public purpose programs at the state and federal level, similar to those Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed in 1932, such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Such programs will allow people to work and earn a living wage, to have suitable roads to drive on, and water lines which do not break, and if they do, they can be repaired or replaced.
This is the type of action we need. For if we do nothing as a people when our leaders, our elected officials, don’t do as they should, then we can’t take the moral high ground or point out other nations’ iniquities when our own inequities are just as bad, if not worse. Let me conclude this by paraphrasing a quote by John F. Kennedy, “” it is not the Democratic answer or the Republican answer, but the right, moral answer.”