“I have also read that the Pox was caused by accidentally coinciding climatic, economic, and sociological crises. It would be more honest to say that the Pox was caused by our own refusal to deal with obvious problems in those areas. We caused the problems: then we sat and watched as they grew into crises. I have heard people deny this, but I was born in 1970. I have seen enough to know that it is true. I have watched education become more a privilege of the rich than the basic necessity that it must be if civilized society is to survive. I have watched as convenience, profit, and inertia excused greater and more dangerous environmental degradation. I have watched poverty, hunger, and disease become inevitable for more and more people.” EducationPovertyClimate ChangeHungerIllnessProblemsEnvironmental DegradationCrises Book:Parable of the Talents Source: Parable of the Talents
“Here in California, a few years ago voters passed an initiative intended to prevent illegal aliens from using our schools and hospitals. The courts have so far prevented this fantastically stupid law from being enforced, but what bothers me is, a majority of voting Californians thought it would be a really good idea to share our state with large numbers of sick, uneducated people. Of course, the true goal was to force the illegals out, but as long as there are jobs here--even dirty, ill-paid, dangerous jobs--needy people from other countries will come here. Best they maintain their health, and in doing so, maintain the public health. And best their children go to school and become the educated Americans that the country will need for a positive future.” EducationCaliforniaHealthcareIllegal AliensUndocumented WorkersSocial Services Author:Octavia E. Butler
“We were both failures, she and I. We'd both run and been brought back, she in days, I in only hours. I probably knew more than she did about the general layout of the Eastern Shore. She knew only the area she'd been born and raised in, and she couldn't read a map. I knew about towns and rivers miles away― and it hadn't done me a damn bit of good! What had Weylin said? That educated didn't mean smart. He had a point. Nothing in my education or knowledge of the future had helped me to escape. Yet in a few years an illiterate runaway named Harriet Tubman would make nineteen trips into this country and lead three hundred fugitives to freedom.” FreedomEducationSlaveryEscapeIlliteracyHarriet Tubman Book:Kindred Source: Kindred