My opponent, Representative Brian Stewart, is ignoring my challenge, sent certified mail weeks ago, to debate my campaign for the Ohio House of Representatives District 12.
I have been knocking on many doors in Madison and Pickaway County, listening and talking about women’s rights, healthcare, fair voting districts and education for all students. Many of the good Ohio citizens I listened to lived in less well-off neighborhoods. Circleville, London, Ashville poor areas reminded me of the desperate streets I served as a Cleveland EMS medic at East 40th and Central. Locally, these unhappy neighborhoods were just smaller in size and population than Cleveland. The fear and hopelessness for the future similarly weighs heavy on these souls in Cleveland and in Pickaway and Madison counties. My grandfather was a child laborer in 1912, he raised my father living in the struggling neighborhoods of the south side of Chicago. I was born there.
Their stories are the same I heard in the emergency department for 45 years: “ I am working two jobs, neither one has health insurance. I skip my own medicine so my boy can get his. Working these hours I’m not home to supervise his homework. There are drugs in my neighborhood. I hope he can get a good job. We can’t afford any college, but he is so smart, a good boy.”
How many potential future teachers, engineers, welders, carpenters, plumbers, RNs, physicians, scientists are we losing because we did not invest in them, provide them healthcare, living wages working just one job for their parents, free trade school and state college tuition? We must provide more than empty thoughts and prayers. We can communicate through public policy that we truly care. We all do better when we ALL do better. Our people are Ohio’s greatest natural resource and ought be valued as such.
I walk away, my faith in humanity weakened when a woman from her somewhat comfortable home and porch overlooking a blighted neighborhood says “ I don’t agree everyone deserves healthcare. I worked for mine.” Being more well-off does not make one morally superior. Recalling the film Titanic , I’ll take Jack Dawson over Caledon Hockley any day of the week, or next week , or month, or year for that matter.
True, self-defeating behaviors often are associated with poorer economic status. Association is not causation. What comes first, self-defeating behaviors or despair? We studied an experiment in school on two rat populations. Each population was supplied with two water supplies, one pure water, one laced with heroin. Population A was a rat vacationland, filled with mazes, exercise wheels, plenty of comfortable burrows, female rats. Population B was a rat ghetto, nothing to do, no diversion of any kind. Population A left the heroin laced water alone. Population B drank it till they overdosed and died. Despair of any hope for the future kills rats and people.
Democrat FDR was one of our greatest Presidents. At his memorial on the national mall these compassionate words of his are carved: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those have too little.” 45 years of Reaganesque so-called “trickle down” economics has decimated the working and middle classes, has decimated many of the MAGAs. We should have never allowed any of our people to feel so despairing of hope that they feel alienated. These economic policies, not immigrants, are what is hurting us. The billionaires would rather you believe it is immigrants. They are quick to label as “Marxist” all who shine the flashlight of truth on them.
My campaign for the Ohio House District 12 values you, values all Ohioans. We all do better when we ALL do better. We can move forward into a caring, inclusive future. I earnestly hope Rep. Brian Stewart will take me up on my offer to debate what is the best way forward for every single Ohioan
