I am almost No one

I am almost no one
I wonder if I am ever recognized, yet.
I hear the angry words
The crowd cries because of social racism.
I see the many faces of hate and
I want to run..
for the faces of hate are not kind
and sometimes ugly, I know...
I am almost no one.

I pretend as though I hear not their angry words
I feel each word like a sharp sword.
I touch the sensitive skin that conceals my heart.
I hope my heart doesn't explode but
I worry that it will...
I cry not only the tears of lonliness but also
the tears of pain and still...
I am almost no one.

I understand that I will always go through this

I say it'll be ok
I dream of a better day, I know it will never come.
I try to be happy and I hope to be above those
who hate, but for now...
I am almost no one

It's difficult to get around the plain-spoken despair in that poem. But somehow politicians, judges, racists and good church-going right-wingers manage to do it EVERY SINGLE DAY without fluttering an eyelast. Matthew Osborne's simple poetry speaks the lie to that kind of callous self-righteousness and our modern mantra of "For the Children."

I've said it before: America eats her young. Women and children are demonstrably the poorest of the poor in the wealthiest nation on earth. While we make much of abberant behavior exhibited in well-off suburbs like Columbine, Colorado, we completely ignore the devastating destruction produced by social inequity and down-right race hatred going on in places like Detroit, Washington (DC), San Francisco, Harlem, Brooklyn, Denver, Dallas and Richmond (CA & VA). We blow it off that children wake up every day to gunfire on the streets, to growling empty stomachs, to hopelessness and despair.

Cath wrote me about children in her city who sleep in their cars, because they don't have homes, in order to be able to keep attending school. I've seen too many times, particularly while living in California, Black and Latino children convinced that they had no chance of living to the age of 25.

During what some of my friends have referred to as my "secular sainthood" period, back in the early '90s, I was very involved with non-profits in San Francisco's Western Addition and Mission districts. I ran an after-school program for immigrant youth from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mexico and Central America. I still remember something one of the kid's said the day I told them, after three years, that the city would no longer be funding the program so I would have to shut it down.

"But why?" the boy, age twelve, asked me. "We are learning here and we are safe."

"I'm sorry, Luis," I told him, "but this is what happens in life. There are many programs vying for the same money and all of them cannot be supported. This is what happens in life."

"But, Rod," he exclaimed, gesturing to the small bank of computers in the room. "This is NOT life. This is the break from life!"

He was right, of course. It was a break from the drug-dealers a block away from where we sat, from the violence, from hunger, too. (We always fed the kids when they arrived, just in case they had not had meals that day.)

I had never been able to define my tiny program for forgotten kids that well. I wish I had... I wish I had been able to articulate how we were supplying them a break from the brutality and hopelessness of their lives. But it didn't matter, you see, in the political morass of funding equations. The Prop 187, anti-immigrant, anti-affirmative action steam-rollers were all lumbering forward. Immigrants were out in California. They were almost no one...

Dancing at Midnight

If I had been better positioned myself, I would have reached out to help him as I have with so many others during the past year while I was still relatively well-heeled. But this time, all I could do was watch from a distance and worry.

He is almost completely gone now. His marriage is broken. He will move to Colorado, perhaps, or anywhere other than where he suffers now... I have done what I could. Phone calls, e-mails, prayers.

My friend and astrologer, Jennifer Blue, has often told me that dancing is one of the rites of initiation. So you can often find me dancing at midnight, dancing away the spirits of despair and trying to dance in the spirits of light. I am that kind of Old Religion fool.

The past year was one in which I found many reasons to dance for other people. Now I must dance for myself.

This magazine is part of the dance, of course. The dance we do here, thanks to the jazz band of writers we offer, is for people all over the world. We keep hoping that by reaching out and bringing them to you that your own sense of morality and social justice will be provoked. As KEVIN CAREY argues in this week's DAY ONE, there's a good reason to care about what happens to the poor --- even if you are one of the greedy...

YOU also surprised us this week with your selection of the G21 Person of the Year. I got to do the commentary chores on that one..

THINGS THAT I HATE THIS WEEK

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He is now a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appears both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. In January, 2001, Rod became the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers.

Rod lives in Baltimore, MD, at the moment (though it seems to most people he *actually* lives on the Web,) edits the writing of people from six continents for The World's Magazine, and wonders if New Orleans is actually the next stop on the hejira.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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