An academic exercise is an emotionless explainer. However, many people only learn subjects when there is an emotional lever to tie the subject matter to something meaningful in their lives. Pain, suffering, anger or perhaps dying and even death.
I have been through incredible transformations in my life. Incredible trials and tribulations that some of you may have experienced as well. When I explain economics through the lens of recovery, tough love, and full expression of the resulting pain and suffering that goes into austerity, that offends some people. People that are either privileged or incapable of expressing such things themselves. Some have judged me. Some have cast aspersions through 3rd hand stories and a few that didn’t understand my perspective imposed their own faulty logic to explain my motives, character, integrity, leadership, and problem-solving skills.
I have sacrificed my privacy, my reputation, my sanity, and at times and most importantly, my time and energy to demonstrate the very real costs of ignoring economics and have allowed just awful people to smear my name in cliques and gangs all over the social media and in real life… folks have seen my rage over austerity and have extrapolated all manner of meanings to my work and my very existence.
I have nothing whatsoever to apologize for as my activism is driven by pure motives and a pure heart. I wake every day to see a little boy with autism and know services aren’t there for him because horrific lies about reducing debt and deficits keep the economy from serving the people. Children and adults with special needs require incredible amounts of services for the individual and flexibility for the caregivers.
One of the major problems I had in my now former career was brought about due to the time impacts of supporting my son. The mental fatigue that comes from people placing demands on me to meet THEIR expectations and little understanding for the overwhelming frustrations that come from sleeplessness, tensions that brew at home, a lack of day-to-day support, mounting bills, and piles of laundry. Without significant structural changes to society, the way we view caregivers and the relationships to career, family, and care, many will continue to suffer marginalization, loss of economic viability, and blackballing by those who choose not to understand. We see it from the peanut gallery of social media trolls, we see it from the old guard who doesn’t want to change, we see it from elite tone police that has never experienced any meaningful adversity a day in their lives.
I have walked in elite circles and I have been in the mud with the proles… they all put their pants on one leg at a time and they all have their fair share of assholes. It should also be said that their are really good people in all stations and strata. Good people who care.
But rest assured, humanity reviles what it lacks understanding.
So, as I press forward in both searching for a new career or job to pay the bills and my activism and building of nonprofits and businesses to serve the causes I want to impact, I hope those that wish to work with us at Real Progressives and that may hire me as a project/program manager/ visionary and strategist will take the time to consider the whole picture and not carve a snapshot, create a strawman, and then bludgeon it. I assure you… I am me through and through and value truth, integrity, people of high moral character, and individuals who seek to build something greater than themselves.
Lastly, whether you be an academic, activist, or simply a human being, we can all learn to work together when we take a moment to learn who one another are and not smear and judge. Nothing good comes from that.
We have a world to change! Let’s get on with it!
