60% of black men in America drop out of high school and see prison time
Working at minimum wage 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year yields $10, 700 a year- the poverty line is $16,000 a year for a family of three.
Half the children in the US are uninsured
The bottom 40% of Americans earn 1% of the US’s wealth
The US borrows 14 billion a month for the Iraq war.
Ouch.
Another sad set of findings by another research group on urban education. The American Promise Alliance studied high school drop out rates and used “data from the 2003-04 school year to calculate a graduation rate of 45.7 percent for Kansas City, compared with the national average of 69.9 percent.” Check it out yourself. Sad. Sad. Sad.
Unfortunately Kansas City is not an anomaly among urban school districts. We do rank 40th out of the 50 major urban core cities.
I sat in a room packed with sixth graders and their parents listening intently for information on a scholarship program that supplies thousands and thousands of hours of tutoring between junior high and high school and then sets them up in college. This foundation, the only of its kind in the city, is spending millions- tens of millions- to do what the public schools in all surrounding regions are doing for free ( well, aside from taxes) adequately educating students and getting them into college.
But, we welcome their efforts and those thoughtful students and families from the district considering such options.
Kosovo declared its indpendence today from Serbia sparking support and outrage simultaneosly. Serbia is up in arms backed by Russia and part of the EU while France and a handful of others supports the majority of ethnic Albanians’ celebration in what they clearly liken to our 1776 declaration. Crudely constructed bombs ripped through villages in Iraq and Afghanistan killing scores while Kofi Annan and Condoleeza Rice hammer away at an agreement between opposing parties in Kenya where thousands of innocent civillians have been killed in street violence rooted in a controversial election process.
And amid the chaos and convention, the world turns its eyes upon Pakistan where a country long steeped in primitive rule casts ballots today to transition the government from military rule to civillian rule. A sharp and bitter struggle that has come to be symbolized by the tragic murder of PPP party leader Benazir Bhutto. Ironically, her book ‘Reconcilliation’ was released over the weekend. It stands as a testament to the power, potential and wretched birth of democracy.
Across our tiny, water covered planet, the bitter, brutal, yet beautiful struggle for democracy is being waged in an all in, fight to the finish, winner takes all battle that, at the risk of the the sublime, the fate of mankind hinges upon. While the advent of democracy provides in no way a panacea for human suffering and the problem of evil, it does provide a suitable context for human life to flourish, namely that of freedom.
The central message of Jesus’ teaching was the Kingdom of God: the rule and realm of the living God. A Kingdom which He rightly proclaimed is ‘not of this world’ and yet at the same time, the advent of the Lord carried a specific proclamation for this world, namely that the Kingdoms of Heaven had invaded the Kingdoms of the earth. While the mystery and depth of these themes continue to enlighten and perplex even the most devout, the Gospel of Luke contains a simple direction in which we can follow: Glory to God in the Highest and on earth, peace, good will toward mankind.
As the evolution of human culture and their governing principles and bodies clearly indicates, nowhere is a better context for this laid than in the seedbed of democracy.
We remember Benazir Bhutto today and that not in vain for in her own words:
“You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea.”
