Promise the Children: Why now?
By Tracey L. Hurd, Ph.D.
January 17, 2011
It’s time to put children first. Why now? Children lead us to clear action. We don’t hesitate- we rush near to the child that falls off the climbing structure, we help the six year old carefully pouring juice for his younger brother, we try to notice and name the everyday ways of youth act with care—we just do it. Children make us practice love. And when we do so on a larger plane, we work towards justice. And at this moment- when fair health care is being repackaged as “job killing,” when guns are enabling us to kill each other, and visions of “the other” are offered routinely and with hate- we need to act.
Values without action are little more than philosophy. Kids know that. It’s in the here and now that we create our values. When children attend under-funded schools, with short supplies and aspiration-deprived curricula, they live the dissonance between values and action. If we’re lucky, they see systemic inequity. But it is more likely that children use themselves as the focal point and simply learn that they don’t matter- that they are not valued. We can and must counteract that. As President Obama said recently, marking the tragic shooting and death in Tucson, “I want our democracy to be as good as (nine year old) Christina imagined it. I want America to be as good as she imagined it. All of us — we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.”
“We are faced with the fact that tomorrow is today,” Martin Luther King said, “We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late.” Kids don’t get another chance to be a second-grader- it’s now or never- a one chance moment. When taking action on behalf of children, we affirm that children matter- not only for our future- they matter now. Our Unitarian Universalist faith and heritage calls us to action. Let’s allow our priorities for children guide us. We can take small steps together, practice love, and work towards justice. Promise the Children is ready. Let’s walk together…now.
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