I heard on NPR today…

I heard on NPR today that politicians in France are proposing a 'right to housing' act, following in Scotland's footsteps, to go along with their established rights to medicine and education. If it passes, it'll take years to fully implement, but still. No more homeless in France. Substantial aid for impoverished single parent families to get them into decent housing.

But here in the States, such a wealthy nation, we haven't even managed to implement universal health care yet. Our public grammar schools are a bitter disgrace. And in Iraq, and Sri Lanka, and too many other places, everything just seems to be devolving into mindless brutality. Sometimes I'm just astonished at how we, human beings, can be so civilized, and so barbaric, at once. We hold such extremes within us.

I'm not sure how I ended up here, but I ran across the YouTube video of We Are the World and it made me cry. At a time when I'm feeling so frustrated by world politics and mindless partisanship (in so many ways, so many places), I think it just hit me hard, you know?

This song ended up raising over $50 million for famine relief in Africa. What we can do when we put our hands together and try.