The Benjamin Report

I decided I wanted to put more writing up. This is something I wrote shortly after the funding for my AmeriCorps Service was cut-off and I was immediately and unwittingly out-of-work. Eventually I would go back and finish the school year with a budget funded through a different account (that’s besides the point though). Essentially, this was written at the time I thought it was all over. And now I’m sharing it, because, why not..

Yesterday morning, I and my colleagues wrapped up our weekly lesson with a local class of 4th grade students by thanking them for their time. A routine goodbye. Though, as we informed them that with the school year coming to a close they would only have one more lesson with us, a little girl had approached me with a bittersweet farewell of her own. “I’m going to miss you guys, this is my favorite part of coming to school.”

And I smiled. It was actually in this class that it dawned upon me that there was more to what I do than helping kids with their reading, their learning, and their access to important local resources. That the very act of just being there supplied an encouragement, and that the process of education is dependent on the student’s willing participation. That one simply cannot learn if they choose not to learn. And that learning can be enjoyable. It can be fun. And it could be the resuscitation of life. It was for me, so why couldn’t it be for anyone else?

That was the last thing I’d hear from any of my students in all of my classes on what would turn out to be the last class I would teach.

I drove to Madison that afternoon to introduce my girlfriend to my brother over a late lunch. On the drive back home, I received a text message from my supervisor informing me to check my e-mail ASAP. When I did, I had found that the federal funding (which made up the near entirety of the funding) for our program was being cut off. This could be traced through the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, and their efforts to inflict austerity on the Federal Budget. But that’s a discussion for a different argument on a different day. In this though, I was sad, but subdued. Like being slapped in the face, and then looking up to find that I am all alone.

I drove my girlfriend to work the following day. Her job is in Wauwatosa, and on the highway I pointed out to her the exit I would usually take that morning, 309B to Milwaukee’s South Side neighborhood. And the difference in that route to the one I was taking then, and the one I take when I go home slowly imposed itself to me and I realized a greater sadness.

Wauwatosa is a beautiful neighborhood, so too is my neighborhood in Milwaukee’s East Side. There are beautiful buildings and excesses of trees and parks, places to read, places to feel comfortable. Places to be alone and places to be with others. And people to occupy such spaces, all smiling with their headphones in, their morning coffees and coordinated outfits and beautiful makeup and ugly makeup and cool hair and interesting styles and interesting voices. But there, they sing together and it is there they sing in that same space. Discordant, or unified, it is always there.

And I suppose our politicians occupy similar spaces, in Madison or DC. They go to work and their routes travel through clean neighborhoods with beautiful trees and beautiful people. And they’ll see protestors, and they’ll hear their shouts. But they don’t look at them, and if they do they see only them, and then they see where they are.

They see what they see. They don’t see what I see. So they don’t know what I know, so they don’t believe as I believe. So when they think, they think alone. And when they move, they move by themselves.

The highway is a direct line slicing through neighborhoods and its participants have their full ability to choose where to exit. One could enjoy the splendors of the city while avoiding its dilapidated scars, its decrepit moss of the street. The cracks in the spine of the place are painted over to them by the avenues of their choices.

Our politicians might hear from protestors and their opponents about the degradations sinking the country. They might see pictures and read reports about the amassing failures in infrastructure, the economy, housing, and climate crises. But looking at a picture isn’t the same as breathing the air in the places it shows. You can’t feel the presence as if you were there. And reports, statistics, and numbers aren’t truly more than black symbols on white paper.

I could tell you about families overwhelmed, children who can’t sleep, gunshots that break quiet, buildings falling apart, men and women who can’t walk but amble the streets asking for change or conversation, or all the prisons that you can’t find on maps. But hearing it from me, from words on paper, is not the same as a chorus of kids telling you that the only thing they’d want in their dream classroom is air-conditioning.

Experiencing the world as it is for others is a choice. Understanding the sufferings of millions is a choice. And it isn’t even a particularly difficult one to make. But to make that choice requires humility and selflessness.