Yesterday, Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD) held a rally to highlight the devastating impact the shutdown is having to people, especially the poor. Among the many troubling and outrageous pieces of fallout from the GOP shutdown — from the 20,000 people who rent assistance is drying up to a WWII veteran who was on Normandy beach and talked about losing heating assistance — are the impacts on young children.
First, the sequester’s deep cuts hit programs across the country, and it became clear that one of the biggest casualties of that terrible piece of lawmaking was Head Start, a program which provides early education to disadvantaged kids. Here in Massachusetts, 2,015 fewer children will be served by Head Start from the first round of sequester cuts (57,000 nationally). And because sequestration ticks up, those cuts are set to get worse.
The shutdown is like an extra sucker punch added on. One Head Start center in Western Mass. was scheduled to get their funding on Oct. 1, which was delayed by the shutdown. They are currently open, using other funding for now, but probably will need to close as soon as next week. A private donor recently gave $10 million to Head Start nationally to try and keep centers open through the end of October, but obviously private donations are just a temporary band-aid (though an incredibly generous gesture). Five more centers in Massachusetts are set to get funding renewed on Nov. 1.
Over the course of the summer, Massachusetts Fair Share collected more than 5,000 signatures from Bay State residents calling for an end to the education cuts from Congress — both those in the sequester and those in the Ryan budget (which contained a 43% cut in education spending). Many of the political races being waged across the state have education front and center.
One thing that became clear as we knocked on doors across the state was that people are worried about these cuts, not just parents. Even as it’s clear that we need to be getting better at educating our kids, we’re seeing cuts and shutdowns and more bad news.
What will America look like if we don’t educate our children? What kind of economic recovery can we expect if we fail to teach children the skills and knowledge they will need to compete for jobs?
As an organizer, I’m aware of how critical this moment is. We can make it clear to people that public programs aren’t the butt of jokes: It’s the source of the infrastructure that empowers growth and research investments that spur innovation … and it’s how we educate the next generation.
Nathan Proctor is state director of Massachusetts Fair Share.
JimC says
So what’s our delegation doing? I’ll give the MA5 candidates a pass, it’s crunch time. Are the Governor and the State legislators calling the Congressional delegation? Are activists calling connected people they know and telling them how urgent this is? Am I doing anything besides writing this comment?
SomervilleTom says
The last time I checked, Massachusetts doesn’t have any GOP legislators in Washington. We certainly don’t have any Tea Partiers.
Calls to red-state political terrorists from bright blue Massachusetts are likely to be counterproductive, IMHO. I suspect the immediate reaction would be for the GOP legislator facing a primary threat from the right to immediately produce an ad highlighting the “political pressure coming from the Massachusetts Liberals who are bankrupting us”.
I wonder if we should be doing more to raise the visibility of these impacts in the media. Perhaps the time has come to take to the streets of Washington, for example.
I must say that I wish the much-vaunted internet prowess of progressive groups like MoveOn were being used rather more to spawn targeted political action in the home states of intransigent legislators rather than yet more “urgent” calls for contributions before “tomorrow’s deadline”.
JimC says
On board is not good enough. Fierce urgency of now.
nathanproctor says
As part of a national group with a presence in a number of politically swingable, republican held districts, let me just say that the online groups like MoveOn and OFA, labor, and other citizen advocates (certainly Fair Share) are doing a TON in those districts. It might not be news in Mass., but it’s news in Akron.
On your point that we should be raising the visibility of impacts — I totally agree. The more people are aware about what this shutdown is really doing to people, the better. Changing the narrative is important. If this is about the real people these tactics hurt, and the real good our public dollars do, it helps our side in the shutdown fight and helps our side moving forward.
SomervilleTom says
I love the concept of reframing the narrative. I imagine a series of vignettes, following a pattern something like:
– fill-in-the-blank is a vitally important Government service, created by Democrats, that has vastly improved the lives of people like this: pictures-of-real-people.
– Listen to suffering-victim describe how the Republican shutdown has hurt him/her.
– The government provided fill-in-the-blank because it is the right thing to do. Shutting it down is the wrong thing to do.
The NIH is not accepting new patients. This is hurting our most seriously ill and suffering RIGHT NOW.
All government-sponsored research databases are in “safe” mode right now. No new research data is being published on those sites. If continued, this will delay vital medical and pharmaceutical research for years to come.
This over-reach by the GOP can be used to illuminate the true nature of the entire right-wing agenda. The shutdown is just the latest bottom line of a top line dominated by greed, dishonesty, cynicism, and narrow self-interest.