An Alternate Witness

There's all kinds of ranting and raving going on around the United States and among Americans abroad about the new stimulus package Pres. Barack Obama is trying to put through Congress, about how it's too little too late, how it's just the same as the Bush stimulus that didn't work. People are complaining that the government isn't coming down more harshly on AIG for using government bailout award bonuses to their executives (contractually obligated bonuses which, incidentally, amount to only 0.03% of the government's total AIG bailout). My roommate's new complaint is that Pres. Obama is now reversing his campaign slogan of "the fundamentals of the economy are wrong" to echo the old Bush comment that "the fundamentals of the ecnomy are strong."

All of this is justified criticism, and since the early Bush years, I've applauded any critique of governmental policy, because genuine critical thinking about the government became a scarce commodity under George W. Without a doubt, Pres. Obama ran on a platform that included fixing what's wrong with the economy, and he should be expected to follow through on that promise. And I believe that he will, not merely because it will help get him re-elected in 2012, but also because I think he genuinely believes in the American promise.

However, we cannot and should not rely on the goverment alone to fix the problem. For a start, the government can't do it alone. Indeed, for the government alone to make any sort of dent in the economic crisis would mean mortgaging our grandchildren and great-grandchildren's futures with an even greater ballooning of the national debt than George W. Bush foisted upon them. Even if the government had the money to make a difference, though, would they really be able to implement quick and effective policies? National government is by definition cumbersome and slow, and it is exactly that quality of our goverment that helps protect us from too much dictatorship and oppression. Primarily, however, the goverment is too large and impersonal to see what individual communities need and what solutions individual problems warrant.

That's why I've been so excited to see a trend of Do-It-Yourself Stimulus peppering the news.

Sit-In Leads To Green Revolution
The first inkling I got of this was when my roommate started talking about a factory in Chicago where 240 workers were staging a sit-in after their factory was foreclosed with just 3 days notice. The complaints included the fact that Bank of America had been awarded funds in the stimulus package precisely to keep it from foreclosing on businesses and pushing up unemployment. This commentary by UC Santa Barbara's Prof. Nelson Lichtenstein explains why factory sit-ins are both rare and significant. The conclusion of this event is even more exciting than the effectiveness of this kind of civil disobedience. Just a month ago, the factory was bought by a California company making energy-efficient windows, making this a green revolution, too!

Several other cases have come to my attention more recently of mid-sized businesses and even individuals stepping up to the plate and sacrificing to help those even worse off in this economic crisis.

Hospital Cutbacks
From the Boston Globe came the story of the President and CEO of Beth Israel Hospital who, faced with the need to slim the budget, took a hard look at "the people who polish the corridors, who strip the sheets, who empty the trash cans, and he realized that a lot of them are immigrants, many of them had second jobs, most of them were just scraping by." He also recognized that the interactions of food servers and people who pushed wheelchairs with patients were a vital part of the practice of medicine at his hospital. So instead of announcing job cuts as he had originally thought, he asked his employees to

"...do what we can to protect the lower-wage earners - the transporters, the housekeepers, the food service people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don't want to put an additional burden on them.

"Now, if we protect these workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a bigger sacrifice," he continued. "It means that others will have to give up more of their salary or benefits."

He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when Sherman Auditorium erupted in applause. Thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause.

And, having been asked, his workers were more than happy to give up cost-of-living increases, bonuses, a few vacation days and a little sick leave if it meant that everyone would keep their jobs.

Public Defenders
I remember reading a year or two ago that the Public Defenders office somewhere in the Upper Midwest was unable to keep lawyers on their payrolls. With mounting costs of law school and little to no chance of scholarships and other financial aid, new lawyers had so much debt piled on their shoulders that they couldn't afford to work for the public good, no matter how desperately they might have wanted to. The goverment was considering options to forgive those loans just to keep enough lawyers in the Public Defenders office to do what the Constitution demands. According to this article, the economic crisis may be helping public services, and at a time when lawyers are desperately needed to deal with the flood of foreclosures and bankrupcies rocking the country.

Philanthropy Rising
Even individuals are ponying up and doing what they can to help those worst effected by the economic crisis. This article explains how Salvation Army Kettles have raised record donations this past Christmas season, funds desperately needed in such times. I've also read that donations to church social action funds are also on the rise.

So while the economic situation in America may be bleak, I think that for many people, this crisis is bringing out the very best parts of the American spirit, that can-do attitude that got our nation to the top of the global pigpile to begin with. It renews my faith in the power of human compassion. I just watched Will Smith's "Independence Day" yesterday, and I still believe that what that movie says is true:
When the going gets tough, Americans get going!