OK, “Does anybody care?” was a trick question because of course people care! It’s easy to care.
But it’s actions that matter.
As one Café reader pointed out, it’s tough to serve in the trenches when the power players either don’t listen at all or only pretend to care. People who don’t make money off the system are shoved aside by those who do
And where is media? With declining readership, it’s too expensive for any local news organizations to actually cover the city nitty gritty.
But they still pretend that they do.
Bureaucracies by design force you to plod through thousands of pages of techno-speak. It’s like searching the proverbial haystack for the needle of evidence to prove who’s giving what away to whom.
I could barely read some of the recent wonk-posts and I even speak the language!
My bigger picture question is really who are we preaching to? Who is really listening?
Business lobbyists preach to “taxpayers” while seeking benefits for the only taxpayers that really matter to them: themselves. Labor unions preach to “the community” while seeking benefit for the only community that really matters to them: themselves.
The people and the environment are left indeed to fend for themselves.
One bright note: this year’s Earth Day festival: the EarthFair in Balboa Park was bigger than ever. So yes people care, I couldn’t recruit the 400 volunteers needed to produce the event each year if they didn’t. “The people” are seeking solutions on their own to environmental problems locally and globally.
But alas, out of 280 exhibitors, only two were elected officials either seeking public input or offering environmental solutions.
You’d think they’d care more about 75,000 citizens gathering for one day trying to make a difference for the rest of year.