Seniors and Children - the targeted populations!

Yesterday I went to an advocacy planning meeting - for human services in the rough financial seas ahead.

We heard from groups concerned with or represent children, seniors, the environment, disabilities, the poor and others who rely on the vast social service networks. All these groups have clients who now need services and see their client list growing by the day! In the face of that growing need - we are facing a huge budget deficit here in Oregon and I presume in all 50 sates and the District of Columbia. It is not pretty - in fact it can be depressing ugly - but we know we need to keep looking ahead and being hopeful that a new administration in D.C. will offer some hope and help - but it will not be immediate.

In bad times more people need social services.
In bad times governments cut social service funds.

That's the ongoing quagmire faced across this country right now!

Food banks are empty as people who used to donate now need the food themselves.
Lost jobs means more need food stamps.
More kids meet the requirement for free school lunch programs and those programs are either even funded or get less money now.
More seniors need help with food, medicine, emergency money for taxes and utility bills and those funds are the same as in previous years or less - with more people meeting the criteria for those funds.

Ask your state why is that the most vulnerable among us are the ones who are made more vulnerable in bad financial times? Do we not value our seniors or children? Why are they rarely or never top priority budget items?

Find out what decisions are being made in your state that affect seniors and children and call your state and federal reps and senators to make your voice heard..

And get involved with your local advocacy groups...

Mother's Day 2007

A repeat posting [from Mother's Day 2006 on my politikal blog] - with a few minor edits
[cross-posted there today as well]




How did we get away from the original intent of Howe's mother's day proclamation to a now corporate event of sell sell sell and buy buy buy? Oh and do not forget to make those intercepted phone calls....

I cry for those mommy's who have lost their children in the mad shrub's so-called war....

Let's take back mother's day - we started to take back our country from mad king george last Fall - let's continue to do so....peaceably

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870
by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Peace