Because things break. Then they need fixing. They go wrong. Then they need to be made right.
A crooked painting. Flat tire. Drop your phone and the screen shatters. Things get crooked and punctured and cracked. Then we straighten, repair, fix.
Same thing with our bodies. Broken femur. High blood pressure. A new virus. So get a cast, change your diet and exercise, (hopefully) find a vaccine.
The word justice is simply that – the idea of fixing or bringing rectitude to a thing that is broken. Making something right.
Fixing it.
Social justice is fixing or brining justice to a social issue. After a hurricane, we bring food and medical supplies to victims. After September 11, 2001, we rushed to ground zero to bring physical relief.
Much philanthropy consists of people caring for people — feeding the hungry, giving clothes to the naked, helping the sick in body, advocating on behalf of the marginalized.
If you study the life of Jesus, bringing social justice to the poor, sick, oppressed, outsider — this is the great legacy of true religion, caring for widows and orphans, including speaking-up on their behalf to their oppressors.
A kind of social justice consumes my heart daily: social justice toward children.
Of course, children are always innocent and vulnerable, always. Those in foster care — our modern-day orphans — suffer perhaps the worst kind of injustice. It wasn’t a bomb or an earthquake or famine that caused their horror – it was their parent.
Neglect, abuse, then abandonment, from the one who was supposed to love, protect, nurture.
It is National Foster Care Awareness Month. I am writing a post each day of May. I wrote on the first and second.
During Covid-19, these children are suffering like never before. Incidents of death due to child abuse are escalating at alarming rates. In a March 24th piece in The Atlantic titled The Kids Aren’t All Right, the social injustice is made clear:
“For children who spend time in multiple households, rely on outside figures for guidance or mentoring..prolonged social-distancing measures will mean profound separation from some people who provide care.”
Up down up down, like an oil rig. Up and down and up and down. At a summer camp. For children in foster care. In a pool. In the shallowed end — José — holding onto the coping. Wearing goggles.
Behind him, dozens of other boys swam and threw water balloons and fired squirt guns.
But some boys didn’t swim; they sat, watched, afraid to touch that water.
Please don’t touch me.
May is Foster Care Awareness Month. Each day of May, I will write on their behalf.
I looked over and noticed José, alone. The 11-year-old was one of the five boys that slept in our cabin.
Coming toward him I shout, “José, let’s swim.”
In an eerie sound of terror — with fear in those shaken brown eyes and the grimaced contortion of his lips — he screamed, “NOOOOO!”
Almost in a shriek, “Get away from me!”
Immediately, I stop.
Please don’t touch me.
Twenty thousand RFK volunteers spread across the country and world, all trained not just to identify those symptoms in children in foster care, but more importantly, how to respond. Trust-based relational intervention (TBRI):
I remembered the basics:
Stay calm: no matter what.
See the need: behind the behavior.
Meet the need: find a way.
Don’t quit: if not you, then who?
Backing away slowly. “Hey no problem, Jose. Your game looks fun.”
“Yeh, yeh, yeh yeah Paul but please don’t come close to me again. I don’t want to learn how to swim. Please don’t make me.”
“No problem buddy, I just liked your alone game. Dunking yourself over and over. By yourself. So cool! I want to do that, by myself, just like you.”
“Will you teach me how, José?”
“Well. Um, okay, but you have to go over there.”
He points.
I slowly walk five feet to his right.
“That’s too close, further! And you can’t come closer or teach me to swim, or touch me!”
(Please don’t touch me.)
“I just want to do your dunking game.”
I grasp the coping. I assume the position. I submerge myself.
Then up down up down, like an oil rig. Up and down and up and down. At a summer camp. For a child in foster care. In a pool. In the shallowed end — Jose and me — holding onto the coping. I wore no goggles.
Last month, the United Nations reported, “[h]undreds of millions of children around the world will likely face increasing threats to their safety and wellbeing—including mistreatment, gender-based violence, exploitation, social exclusion and separation from caregivers—because of actions taken to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The chilling symptoms of child abuse.
The next day, I earned Jose’s trust. I said we should play “follow the leader.” Eventually, he let go of the coping as we walked along the side. Then I showed him how to walk from one end to the other. Then I showed him how to put his face in the water while walking, bending over forward. Then I showed him how to jump forward like a torpedo.
The process took two days. On the third, day, 11-year-old José swam.
An hour later, I felt these electric-like freezing cold tingles throughout my body – up and down up and down. This ebullient José — how to find words to convey the contrast in his confidence? —he sprinted through the cafeteria, announcing to dozens of children, “I know how to swim!”
Today, I wonder about José. I wonder if his father was released from prison. The father that “Got a new tattoo across his face.” The father he called “very rough.”
Is COVID-19 forcing José to stay in a home, alone, with that “rough” father?
I posted that on Facebook yesterday. It was a rough night. I needed to talk to her. I always called her when I was struggling. And last night I was struggling.
Many kind people, very helpful people, commented.
“I’m so sorry. Praying loving memories of your Mom will soothe your heart.”
“I feel your pain.”
“Losing a parent is one of the toughest things you’ll ever endure. In time, you’ll learn to work around the hole she left.”
My mom is not dead, though. I didn’t lose her. She just can’t really talk anymore.
She’s just not the same.
She’s here and she’s not here.
My post on Facebook was about missing that giant part of her – the love and compassion and care.
That’s the part I was referring to last night. That’s the part that’s largely gone — her mind. And even though she’s here in the flesh and I am so incredibly grateful to be able to hold her frail hands, and caress her and kiss her and sometimes make her laugh, we can’t communicate.
Every Saturday, at a minimum, I visit the skilled nursing facility, also known as, her home.
Her room is near the end of the corridor to the right of a lobby. I walk down the corridor. Often, there is a very elderly woman with the knit beanie. Scuttling on the floor with her slippers, back and forth and back and forth, she mummers to herself. She has no teeth. She must weigh no more than 75 pounds. She holds a bald baby doll as if for dear life. Back and forth and back and forth, she scuttles. Others sit in the corridor in wheelchairs.
Mom has a roommate. There is a drape that separates them. It’s dull yellow. I’m not sure of the name of the lady she’s with this time. Over the past four years, there have been many. Some have died. I especially remember Mary, and wrote about her and this entire nightmare, here.
As I walk down the long corridor, I always look into the rooms to the right. It’s not a pretty sight, all these stroke victims or cancer victims or life victims. I’m telling you, it’s not nice to see.
Some of you know what I mean.
Mom’s bed is adjustable. She doesn’t walk anymore. I always lie next to her. I used to get her into her wheelchair, push her outside, then we’d sit on the outdoor sofa near the entrance. I would escort her around the rose garden, holding her left arm as we walked slowly. She would always look at the box hedges and say, “those are mine.” At her house (we had to sell it after the stroke) she had box hedges in the front yard. Often she would trim them.
We’d walk around the rose garden once or twice. Then we’d sit for hours — me to her right. We’d laugh. I’d show her pictures of her mother and father, my Nonno and Nonna. We’d listen to Pavarotti. I always brought one of those fruit bars from Trader Joe’s.
I still bring the fruit bars and show her the pictures and we listen to Pavarotti. But, as I said earlier, she doesn’t walk anymore. I still take her outside. We sit. I took this photo on Saturday.
I was happy because I made her laugh. You take what you can get.
I travel often. And I meet strangers on airplanes and restaurants, often. Curious people. And I always get nervous when they say, “What do you do?” I’m a CEO and I’m educated and I’m 54 years old — and I consider myself pretty confident — and I still get nervous when anyone asks, “What do you do?”
Business people are supposed to have a nice tidy “elevator speech” prepared for this question. Besides the fact that I was taught that it was rude to ask people “What do you do?” I refuse to prepare and memorize an “elevator speech.” Here’s why.
First, INTP/Enneagram 5 wing 4’s like me think too much. We overthink everything. And we possess this innate desire to be different. Besides all that, I don’t like the idea of memorizing some lame 30-second line to describe, me. Elevator speeches are stupid because there’s no possible way to summarize what anyone does in thirty seconds. Unless you are a barber or student or brain surgeon or something like that. But I’ve never had normal jobs like those.
You probably think that’s stupid and non-strategic for me to forego that elevator speech. All the management experts say you need an elevator speech to quickly hook someone into your business. I don’t want to hook anyone tho.
Second, I’m into authenticity. Elevator speeches just seem fake to me. I’m not saying that if you use elevator speeches that you are fake. I’m not even saying even that at all. I’m just saying that to me they are fake. Again, you might think I’m too idealistic or whatever but, there you go – elevator speeches seem fake to me.
Third, INTP/Enneagram 5 types are prone to stumble over our words. Hard to describe this phenomenon. Between the (overthinking) brain and the movements of my tongue and cheeks and jaw is this kind of delay thing that happens. People often tell me I seem “serious.” I think part of the reason is that when I speak I have to concentrate super hard on making sure that what is “in” my brain and the words I speak, match. It’s not easy – I’m telling you, it’s not.
And since I don’t memorize elevator speeches, I’m left to, extemporaneously, answer the curious people question, “What do you do.”
I usually say what I end up saying, with pauses and “ums.” It takes a while — more then 30 seconds. I get nervous. And even though it’s not a typical elevator speech, and I stutter a bit with “ums” and it takes a while, people always respond by saying something like, “That’s so amazing what you do for those children, and that you are giving back.”
Then I tell them that I don’t really get to work directly with the children in the way our volunteers do – that as the CEO I meet with donors and government leaders and stakeholders in our organization. Then they say, “Yeah but still you are helping people.”
That makes me feel good. (I do get to, once and a while, visit some of our programs and interact with the precious children. In the summer I did visits in Sacramento and San Diego and Dallas and Pennsylvania. And last week I did a visit to Poland.)
Anyway, I’m not sure elevator speeches are necessary. Maybe they are, I don’t know. But I’m going to continue to just give a non-rehearsed answer when the curious people ask, “What do you do?”
It goes something like this.
“I lead an international non-profit organization of 16,000 volunteers. Last year these amazing volunteers gave over 2.6 million hours toward working with children. Not just children, victims of neglect, abuse, and abandonment. We work alongside the government. Social Services locates the children for us, children in foster care. Our volunteers provide direct one-on-one mentoring, guidance, trauma-based interaction, fun, self-esteem activities, acceptance, structure, and most of all love.
“We work with the most at-risk population there is – minor children whose guardians, the ones who were supposed to love and nurture them, hurt and abandoned them, instead. We are an organization made up of Christians, but our goal is not to convert the children in any way. We just want to love them.
“We have a small staff – for every paid staff member, there are over 1,000 non-paid volunteers. We are committed to helping confront abuse, change lives, and transform communities. Because, statistics tell us that the way to prevent academic failure, substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, sex trafficking, homelessness, incarceration, and rehabilitation, is to prevent it before it happens.
That’s what I say. But it’s not exactly that, of course.
I’m in a meeting with Royal Family KIDS’ National Directors from around the world: Ghana, Namibia, Poland, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, the UK, Australia. All work with children of trauma.
The stories I’m hearing of neglect, abuse, and abandonment. Orphans living in Lord Of The Flies institutions with teen ringleaders bartering young girls like chattel to get drugs.
In some countries, there are no child protective services to keep the children safe. Refugee children living in tents. Children walking hundreds of miles with parents trying to seek asylum in safe countries. Four-year-olds wandering the streets.
But in the midst of hearing these realities, my mind drifts back to my own home.
Mostly what I’m thinking about are the millions children of privilege, “protected” by parents believing them too good to fail, stressing external success at all costs, shielding them from the painful realities of the real world. The facade of the “top university.”
Making sure their children stay away from “problem” children whose poverty or lack of education or broken home or blue-collar parents won’t lead them upwardly toward “success.”
Making sure their children spend more time on teams or with tutors or with coaches or in safe church youth groups — “safety,” versus the danger of a holistic life. Worse, the parents who will at all costs give their hight schoolers free reign to alcohol as long as they secure their desirable university.
Keeping them away from the poor kids. The neglected, abused, abandoned.
I once had a choice to send my own children to the local public school where 70% of the children were English learners from south of the border. Poor kids. The other choice was protecting them through homeschooling, or the local private school with all the children of rich white families.
I went to an expert for advice: A professor friend from UCLA who was on a panel of the UC Board of Regents, dealing with undergraduate education in the UC system. He was educated at the most elite private schools in France and did his Ph.D. at Oxford.
“Send them to the PUBLIC school. The diversity and dissonance and culture and language and the diverse sociological and economic standing will educate them far more than anything else.”
We obeyed; we tried the public school.
For one whole month.
Then I chickened out.
In any case, off they went to private and charter schools.
It could have been because I liked the status of sending them to the “better” schools, if I’m honest.
I was guilty, too. I wanted everything to be certain. Especially the well-being of my children. I want to “protect them,” too.
But I’m realizing that what we think is best, often isn’t. The brokenness of humanity and close proximity to pain and grief is perhaps the greatest education of all.
Richness has a poverty about it, poverty a certain sense of wealth.
