just like you and just like me

When I was a Day Camp Director and responsible for creating orientations for my potential staff, aside from all the program skills, group work agendas, song leading and administrative tasks necessary to share for the counselors and specialists, I would spend hours on helping my staff to understand the value of self and the uniqueness of self each and every camper was bringing to his day at the James and Rachel Levinson Day Camp of the Pittsburgh Jewish Community Center.

I believed then as I do now that if anything, no matter what age we are, we own our name and our name is a beginning statement of who were are and if anything else we are here and not invisible or anonymous. I believed that teaching kids to say their name loud and proud was the first step in admitting I am real and I am important. I asked my counselors to start, every morning by saying "...hello Johnny, hello Sarah how are you today and at the end of the day saying "...glad you were here today and then adding anything from I enjoyed your smile, to you swam well and goodbye for now, Johnny or Sarah, see you tomorrow"!

When I was a Youth worker at the Jewish Community Center of Pittsburgh I was lucky enough to be given the freedom of directing and choreographing a program called the Senior High Musical. When I became the producer/director of this program I added a new feature that permitted everyone to find a role in the musical and all they had to do was audition. All they had to do was say their name in front of their peers and sing something elaborate as an aria to something as simple as happy birthday. All hey had to do was say this is me, I am here. Everyone got in the play, everyone was important.

I walk down the streets of Los Angeles and see people begging, laying on the streets, carrying signs, heads turned down and just walking in some kind of trance. I don't say hello, which I know deep in my heart I should, but to clear my conscience I silently say as I look at them I see you, you exist. I want to look at these anonymous people, but people like me and say I see you, and you are unique and you must have your own special reason for landing on the streets, finding the streets, forced to the streets. And usually I silently recite..."there for the Grace of God go I".

I hear about the cuts of entitlements for the poor, the elderly the disabled, the middle class. I read about cutting unemployment benefits for Americans, the denial of bargaining powers for those in unions, the proposals for denying access to clinics promoting health and education for women's reproductive rights and their own bodies, and I listen to religious related rhetoric about how love is only okay if it is between opposite sex couples. All of this is shouted, stated said as if all of the groups of people needing these services are just anonymous people, people living in shadows, none of our family or friends and almost un-human like zombies. I hear the anger and the lies spoken as if one person does not count and one person is the one person we should not care about. I hear people say too many one person is jut too many of anyone.

Perhaps I am way too sensitive, way to touchy feel-ly, way to concerned about those in which I share this world with...or maybe I am one of many more who swear that one should not be the loneliest number in the world. That I am one person, my kids, my family, my family are one person.

We need to come together, those of us who look into a crowd and see faces belonging to people, belonging to individuals, belonging to unique people who want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness just like you and just like me. We can't let the selfish the blind to anything but their own needs speak out and only be heard.