We can talk politics all day long and it means nothing if you don’t think people.
I post articles about Flint and the inaccessibility of clean water. Here’s the reality. I have five scars on my neck. Double thyroid cancers led to a weak immune system, which made my urban asthma — typical to low-income kids of all races — flare so badly in my 20s that I took a medication for 11 years, and that ate away at my bones and put an extra 100 lbs. on my body. The surgery to repair the bad bones paralyzed my vocal cords and created a fissure in my esophagus. All that, fixed up right, and now, I have this mysterious bleeding fistula in my throat.
“Not an easy fix,” says the doctor young enough to be my daughter. I am part of the magical percentile that had Medicare until I was 18, and figured out how to barter a small talent for a job and health insurance in adulthood. And if I had not otherwise, from that point forth, I’d be dead.
Think about that exponentially for a moment. Think, “we.” Think “we would be dead.” Still, I will be dead eventually, sooner than I should be. Maybe from this fistula that no doctor seems to understand, probably because they haven’t dealt with many toxic waste refugees, like me.
Things happen in our bodies and if we’re lucky, a researcher takes up our case and treats us because there’s a good paper in it. I’m trying to say that these issues are not simply type and font. They are not only class and race and politics. They’re flesh and blood. They’re mortal happenings all around you — if you’re very lucky — and in your own very lives eventually if you’re not very lucky, but they’re the most typical way of being. So don’t take these issues lightly when you encounter them. Don’t think clean water is someone else’s problem. Don’t look at photos of melting glaciers and just say, “so sad.”
Imagine this is all your happening and you must figure out how to survive it. Now, what will you do?
