4 hours Ago
By Michael Block One of my favorite quotes is from Ernest Hemingway, in “A Farewell to Arms.” “The world,” he wrote, “breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” We are living in a broken world.
And in the past couple of months, there has been talk about it becoming more broken for those of us in the human services world. We don’t know what is coming, in terms of a pullback from the nation’s commitment to helping our most unlucky residents put their lives back together. We find the chaos and uncertainty difficult to live with.
We can scream as loud as we can that we must put our best selves forward as a nation, as the measure of a nation is how it treats its most in-need . That’s true, but there is no guarantee anyone will listen right now in Washington. From my position of safety and relative security, I can choose to react to events, both recent and coming, in a few ways.
I can choose to follow my own passions and dive privately into hobbies and pastimes, do my job, hope this time will pass. I can work myself into an unhealthy froth, trying to persuade people who right now are not persuadable. Or I can become strong in the broken places.
I can take it upon myself to see to it that the basic human needs of those in my community needing help are met. In the homeless response community, we have been doing that for decades (myself personally for 17 years). We have dedicated donors and volunteers who have been with us every step of the way.
Many of those in need we encounter each day have been helped, and are living self-supporting, rewarding lives as a result, something I am incredibly proud of. But in this moment I’d like to remind our community — our donors and volunteers as much as the general public — that the possible changes to our national government will hurt our clients far more than they will you and me. At All Roads, we are dependent on federal funds for the rent subsidies that allow our low-income clients to live with a roof overhead and a lock on the door.
Yes, changes might affect us as well. Who knows what will happen with clean air and water protections, or the public lands we enjoy. But at the end of the day, we have a home, a bed and money in the bank.
Our clients only do with our help. The nation’s always been “broken” where it treats the poor, the unlucky, and the sick. If that broken-ness gets worse, I want to challenge our community, and others like us, to use this moment in history to focus on those breaks in our own backyard.
Make sure organizations that provide for basic human needs in Boulder County are funded and have enough volunteers. Call and ask if you’re not sure. Albert Einstein, who lived in a time of even greater crisis, once said, “ In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.
” There is an opportunity for leadership in the current moment, to re-orient ourselves toward the basics of a healthy community: A roof over everyone’s head, food on the table and a path forward in life. Perhaps we have not paid as much attention as we should to those basics in the past decade or two. Perhaps we have become distracted by more “nice to have” amenities and passed over “must-haves.
” If so, the opportunity is right in front of us to fix that. With so much at stake, it can be hard to see those suffering near us, for wanting to follow the drama in Washington. And yet, maintaining the commitment to help those close at hand is itself a strong reaction to our times.
Having lived in Boulder County much of my life, I know you understand that. If you can predict it, you can plan for it, so let’s not get caught off guard when the crisis arrives at our door. Let’s redouble our efforts to support our local safety net now.
Michael Block is the chief executive officer of All Roads..
