Signatures

From Michiana Chronicles:

My daughter spent a lot of her spare time this winter wrapped up against the cold on the streets of downtown Brooklyn asking strangers for the signatures that are needed to get the fellow from her hometown on the presidential primary ballot in New York’s eighth congressional district. That’s Lily. Some of you know her, and I know the thought of her makes you smile. She has a positive spirit. Lily collected signatures from strangers on the streets of Brooklyn after work, after long, tough social worker days telling patients and their families the truth about what’s out there when they leave Manhattan’s Mt. Sinai hospital.  

"There was one lady,” Lily told me, “who said she absolutely would not sign a petition for Pete Buttigieg. She told me she had heard that the town where he was mayor, South Bend, Indiana, is a terrible place, especially for minorities, and he’s a bad guy who has done things to make life bad for people there.

“I told her, ‘I’m from South Bend,’” Lily said, “and I said, ‘I don’t think that’s true.’”

“Then the woman said, ‘Well, I have friends in South Bend, and I say it is.’”  Continue here....

-- Sid Shroyer


When can we move forward from the competition-only framework, that we've ended up with, and toward a collaborative-constructive one?  I think this resonates with those (young and old) who are interested in more than the current simplistic good-guys vs bad-guys win-at-all-costs mentality and actually want to solve problems positively, for the betterment of all.