Thank you for expressing so clearly what I have believed for years. Government services should be about caring, actually caring, about all of us. Every one of us should feel that they are an important part of our whole.
It's our money and our government that was formed to support us. But Americans have somehow been trained into thinking it's greedy and wrong to want our government to give us things that support the collective good. It takes my breath away - it hurts that much - that multiple Republican governors gleefully denied free food to children. They denied feeding kids over the summer. Hungry children. That's how far off the rails we've gone.
Agreed. And that's one of the reasons why I think it's so important to loudly and unapologetically demand more-- I think one of the many reasons we got here is that the Democratic Party fell in the trap of austerity and limited spending too, which meant that we all internalized the choice as being between "no government services at all but maybe some tax cuts" and "ineffective, inefficient, non-comprehensive government services with intense means testing behind them." That's no choice!
At least once a week I think about the statistic that I heard when looking into daycare for my son... if the Nixon administration had not cut daycare policies families would still be paying something like $30/month for daycare.
I agree that we should demand much, much more than we get.
I had an 18-month-old when I gave birth to premature twins, and the level of support and care I got for them were night and day. When my first child was born, they wheeled me out to the car, helped put the baby in the car seat, and waved goodbye.
When I left the NICU with my twins, I had a huge packet of information of what doctors to see and when. Physical and speech therapists came to our home to work with the twins until they were 3.5 years old, when they qualified for a few hours a week in a preschool class. All of this was an effort to help them catch up with their peers who had not been born early, and I had no idea any of this existed until I needed it. But I often wished I would have had more support with my first child as well.
Oh this is a perfect story. I'm glad that you received more support with your twins, but this is exactly it! We've grown accustomed to having to pass a bar of "need" or "worthiness" in order to have institutions care for us!
Add the Finnish baby box to the endless list of things that either didn't exist when I had small babies (the internet in its current form, for one) or that I was unaware of and THANK GOD because you're right, I'd have to throw something. Thank you, also, for the notion of a politics of delight. I'm going to have to think hard on that one.
I have an interview coming out next week with Sarah Ryhanen, who has an experimental school/flower/soap empire (https://worldsendschool.org/) in upstate NY...and I was obsessed with this particular detail of our interview where she talked about wanting a vintage Jaguar forever, and that as part of their collective budget planning, she was putting forth to the group how she could buy one.
Maybe because of cold war binaries and soviet-bougeymen, we tend to think of collectivism as a path to grey matching jumpsuits, and what I love about the vintage jaguar (as a symbol), is the reminder that we also need pleasure and joy at the same time as care.
Love this, and dont want to throw anything against the wall cause you always make me feel the possibilty. This makes me think of our only distant cousin to the Finnish baby box, the beautiful box of books that stuff and Ayesha Curry give every Oakland public School child during the winter holidays. It changes every year and there are different ones for each age group. It comes in a nice box with beautiful stickers (I think it's a company, Literati, they just pay for). And I love that everyone gets it. And it's such a bummer that we only have nice rich people to very infrequently do things like this.
I love this for the kids of Oakland! Thanks Ayesha Curry! And I agree- it sends a different message when it comes from the government (namely "we are part of a society" rather than "it's cool that one of the better rich people feels some degree of attachment to our community.").
Wow, go Steph and Ayesha! To your point about being grateful for rich people’s largesse and Garrett’s mention of a transit center, the San Francisco Transbay Terminal is beautiful (the rooftop garden!), but its name starts with ‘Salesforce’. Also, the San Francisco General Hospital amended its name years ago with the Meta guy’s name (University of California San Francisco folks who staff and administer the hospital were asked not to call it ‘The Zuck’).
I fully agree that we must demand delight and joy from our government. Let’s change our political philosophy from Don’t Tread On Me to We Bring You Joy.
Love that change in political philosophy, and also agree that the beautiful new transit center in SF would be thaaaat much better without a corporate prefix (Salesforce, just pay your taxes and I'm sure there would have been enough money to pay for the center without having to get a sponsorship).
"Let us never accept anything less than a politics of shared delight." Loooove.
I'm interested in a couple things: Do you know where the funding for this comes from? Is it just their general fund, or something more specific (now or historically)?
And, you point out the pitfalls of mythologizing Northern Europe and pasting over their histories of racism and colonization. I appreciate that. (I worked in active transportation, i.e., biking, walking, transit, and there is a TON of that.) I think we often forget that the wealth that allows their governments to do these wonderful things is actually due to their long history of colonial plunder.
I wonder, then, if you know of any similar examples from other parts of the world — or perhaps less specifically, if any countries in other part of the world have such a strong ethic of delightful collective care. If not, is it really just a money thing? Or is there something deeper about the culture of (Finnish/Northern European) whiteness, the culture of it, in which people care less for each other as community members such that they HAD to shore up their social safety net and governmental systems of collective care? Whereas other cultures with longer, highly regarded traditions of intergenerational living and neighborly communal care have had less need to ensure a governmental safety net, because they already had it among themselves? (That also seems pollyanna — and I'm sure all people would create publicly-funded systems like these if they could, even if redundant. But maybe it's a small part of it?)
That became longer than planned, and less articulate. Thanks!
Great essay! God Forbid we act like a closed knit community that sinks or swims together (literally now!). Maybe there are just too many different types of humans in the melting pot USA. The smaller 15-30 million vs 330 million citizens), more mono-culture countries in Europe that are more Socialist and caring actually had to fight for a long time to achieve what they have and it really only started officially after WW2. Maybe if we keep fighting here in USA - we too will have abetter quality of life for most citizens someday via better goverment services etc. But we must organize and do the work because the 1% powers that be like the current status quo inequality and wealth flowing to the top 1-10% via the ridiculous Wall Street Casino fake money rigged economic system where 10% elite of the population own and manipulate 90% of the stocks. I have written about doing away with the stock market model and going back to only private or collective ownership. Your business only grows as much as you can handle. Real profits in real time - no over evaluations/speculations or derivative shell games bs. There are billion dollar private companies for those greedy dolts who dismiss the idea. It would be great for the environment and rural areas with hyper local economies. It would also be more equitable for most citizens having a better slice of the economic pie and better quality of life.
We're paying for NATO. Our job isn't to have a loving, caring society, it's to produce weapons and soldiers to protect these loving, caring societies, just like it's Eastern Europe's job to produce workers for these loving, caring societies. Soldier ant and worker ant aren't the ones who breed...
This is so well put. We are trained by precarity-- both our own and that of others-- to dream smaller and smaller, yes for ourselves, but also for the world. Even our care and empathy becomes more funereal than visionary.
Thank you for expressing so clearly what I have believed for years. Government services should be about caring, actually caring, about all of us. Every one of us should feel that they are an important part of our whole.
Yes! And joy too! Government services should spark collective joy!
It's our money and our government that was formed to support us. But Americans have somehow been trained into thinking it's greedy and wrong to want our government to give us things that support the collective good. It takes my breath away - it hurts that much - that multiple Republican governors gleefully denied free food to children. They denied feeding kids over the summer. Hungry children. That's how far off the rails we've gone.
Agreed. And that's one of the reasons why I think it's so important to loudly and unapologetically demand more-- I think one of the many reasons we got here is that the Democratic Party fell in the trap of austerity and limited spending too, which meant that we all internalized the choice as being between "no government services at all but maybe some tax cuts" and "ineffective, inefficient, non-comprehensive government services with intense means testing behind them." That's no choice!
At least once a week I think about the statistic that I heard when looking into daycare for my son... if the Nixon administration had not cut daycare policies families would still be paying something like $30/month for daycare.
Thirty dollars a month! A very reasonable amount to pay for childcare! We could have that!
I agree that we should demand much, much more than we get.
I had an 18-month-old when I gave birth to premature twins, and the level of support and care I got for them were night and day. When my first child was born, they wheeled me out to the car, helped put the baby in the car seat, and waved goodbye.
When I left the NICU with my twins, I had a huge packet of information of what doctors to see and when. Physical and speech therapists came to our home to work with the twins until they were 3.5 years old, when they qualified for a few hours a week in a preschool class. All of this was an effort to help them catch up with their peers who had not been born early, and I had no idea any of this existed until I needed it. But I often wished I would have had more support with my first child as well.
Oh this is a perfect story. I'm glad that you received more support with your twins, but this is exactly it! We've grown accustomed to having to pass a bar of "need" or "worthiness" in order to have institutions care for us!
Add the Finnish baby box to the endless list of things that either didn't exist when I had small babies (the internet in its current form, for one) or that I was unaware of and THANK GOD because you're right, I'd have to throw something. Thank you, also, for the notion of a politics of delight. I'm going to have to think hard on that one.
LOL the bad thing about not knowing about alternatives is we don't know to demand them, but the good news is that we save on window repair costs :).
I love this.
I have an interview coming out next week with Sarah Ryhanen, who has an experimental school/flower/soap empire (https://worldsendschool.org/) in upstate NY...and I was obsessed with this particular detail of our interview where she talked about wanting a vintage Jaguar forever, and that as part of their collective budget planning, she was putting forth to the group how she could buy one.
Maybe because of cold war binaries and soviet-bougeymen, we tend to think of collectivism as a path to grey matching jumpsuits, and what I love about the vintage jaguar (as a symbol), is the reminder that we also need pleasure and joy at the same time as care.
Yes! Collectivism isn't the same thing as monk-ish sacrifice!
Love this, and dont want to throw anything against the wall cause you always make me feel the possibilty. This makes me think of our only distant cousin to the Finnish baby box, the beautiful box of books that stuff and Ayesha Curry give every Oakland public School child during the winter holidays. It changes every year and there are different ones for each age group. It comes in a nice box with beautiful stickers (I think it's a company, Literati, they just pay for). And I love that everyone gets it. And it's such a bummer that we only have nice rich people to very infrequently do things like this.
I love this for the kids of Oakland! Thanks Ayesha Curry! And I agree- it sends a different message when it comes from the government (namely "we are part of a society" rather than "it's cool that one of the better rich people feels some degree of attachment to our community.").
Wow, go Steph and Ayesha! To your point about being grateful for rich people’s largesse and Garrett’s mention of a transit center, the San Francisco Transbay Terminal is beautiful (the rooftop garden!), but its name starts with ‘Salesforce’. Also, the San Francisco General Hospital amended its name years ago with the Meta guy’s name (University of California San Francisco folks who staff and administer the hospital were asked not to call it ‘The Zuck’).
I fully agree that we must demand delight and joy from our government. Let’s change our political philosophy from Don’t Tread On Me to We Bring You Joy.
Love that change in political philosophy, and also agree that the beautiful new transit center in SF would be thaaaat much better without a corporate prefix (Salesforce, just pay your taxes and I'm sure there would have been enough money to pay for the center without having to get a sponsorship).
This is my new favorite White Pages post.
Oh thanks Luisa!
"Let us never accept anything less than a politics of shared delight." Loooove.
I'm interested in a couple things: Do you know where the funding for this comes from? Is it just their general fund, or something more specific (now or historically)?
And, you point out the pitfalls of mythologizing Northern Europe and pasting over their histories of racism and colonization. I appreciate that. (I worked in active transportation, i.e., biking, walking, transit, and there is a TON of that.) I think we often forget that the wealth that allows their governments to do these wonderful things is actually due to their long history of colonial plunder.
I wonder, then, if you know of any similar examples from other parts of the world — or perhaps less specifically, if any countries in other part of the world have such a strong ethic of delightful collective care. If not, is it really just a money thing? Or is there something deeper about the culture of (Finnish/Northern European) whiteness, the culture of it, in which people care less for each other as community members such that they HAD to shore up their social safety net and governmental systems of collective care? Whereas other cultures with longer, highly regarded traditions of intergenerational living and neighborly communal care have had less need to ensure a governmental safety net, because they already had it among themselves? (That also seems pollyanna — and I'm sure all people would create publicly-funded systems like these if they could, even if redundant. But maybe it's a small part of it?)
That became longer than planned, and less articulate. Thanks!
Great essay! God Forbid we act like a closed knit community that sinks or swims together (literally now!). Maybe there are just too many different types of humans in the melting pot USA. The smaller 15-30 million vs 330 million citizens), more mono-culture countries in Europe that are more Socialist and caring actually had to fight for a long time to achieve what they have and it really only started officially after WW2. Maybe if we keep fighting here in USA - we too will have abetter quality of life for most citizens someday via better goverment services etc. But we must organize and do the work because the 1% powers that be like the current status quo inequality and wealth flowing to the top 1-10% via the ridiculous Wall Street Casino fake money rigged economic system where 10% elite of the population own and manipulate 90% of the stocks. I have written about doing away with the stock market model and going back to only private or collective ownership. Your business only grows as much as you can handle. Real profits in real time - no over evaluations/speculations or derivative shell games bs. There are billion dollar private companies for those greedy dolts who dismiss the idea. It would be great for the environment and rural areas with hyper local economies. It would also be more equitable for most citizens having a better slice of the economic pie and better quality of life.
I'll definitely check out your writing-- I definitely agree that we need more models and imagination about how to order our economy.
Wow, this is the first time I've read The White Pages and this is an excellent post.
Thanks for being here! Appreciate the kind words.
We're paying for NATO. Our job isn't to have a loving, caring society, it's to produce weapons and soldiers to protect these loving, caring societies, just like it's Eastern Europe's job to produce workers for these loving, caring societies. Soldier ant and worker ant aren't the ones who breed...
Isn’t Finland part of NATO?
This is so well put. We are trained by precarity-- both our own and that of others-- to dream smaller and smaller, yes for ourselves, but also for the world. Even our care and empathy becomes more funereal than visionary.