Reminder: This is my PERSONAL blog. The following words are my OWN opinions and I am not stating them as an official representative of my employer. The statements contained in this post (or any other post on this blog) do not reflect the views, opinions, or political positions of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing in any capacity.
If you live outside of the fine state of North Carolina, you may not have heard about the Moral March. The march is a social justice rally pulled together by the ForwardTogether movement, the North Carolina NAACP, and the HKonJ movement. The intention is to march through Raleigh on Saturday, February 8th to demand equal access to healthcare, sustainable economic policies, stronger labor rights, and fair elections.
For me, the reason to go boils down to one thing: Equal opportunity.
Out of all the American values I hold dear, equal opportunity is at the top of the list. Everyone deserves a fair chance to be the best they can be. And to be the best they can be, our playing field as to be as equal as we can manage it.
Think of the ideal playing field for soccer; green grass, freshly painted lines, a smooth surface with soft soil beneath it.
Now imagine that there is a fence built across part of this soccer field. As you cross the fence, the grass gets brown, the lines fade, and the surface is pockmarked with holes and rocks. Go further and you might find more weeds than grass. Even further, flood waters have washed away the grass. Mud is all there is.
We’ll never be able to make the playing field 100% level. There is no way we can control all the circumstances of every individual human being’s life. Trying to do so would drive us all mad.
But we can control the fence.
Throughout my nearly thirty years, I’ve watched that fence get higher and higher. I’ve seen it reinforced by people who don’t want to share the nice part of the playing field. People who want to keep it all to themselves.
On that part of the playing field, people have healthcare, quality education, and pothole-free roads. There are libraries, jobs, and affordable housing. I don’t understand why we don’t share those wonderful things with everybody. There’s no downside in giving everyone a shot at economic prosperity.
I march today because that fence needs to go. If equality means anything in this country, we need to commit ourselves to opportunity and invest in it.
Otherwise, our country will become a mere shadow of the great nation it once was.
Leave a Reply