As I write this, I am happy to report that on Sept. 14, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “Last week, the number of weekly reported deaths from COVID-19 was the lowest since March 2020… We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic. We’re not there yet, but the end is in sight.”
Wow.
Take a moment to think how long we have all yearned to hear those words from someone in authority.
Early on, as I recall thinking when I vacated my downtown office, we all wanted to believe that such relief was just two weeks away. Then, that turned into a month or two. And then, well, our lives soon became forever altered. Now, four or five vaccinations later, the WHO is reminding us that there actually can be an end to all of this.
“(But) a marathon runner does not stop when the finish line comes into view,” added Dr. Ghebreyesus. “She runs harder, with all the energy she has left. So must we. We can see the finish line. We are in a winning position, but now is the worst time to stop running. If we don’t take this opportunity now, we run the risk of more variants, more deaths, more disruption, and more uncertainty.”
And none of us wants that, of course.
Instead, we crave certainty and steadiness. And that goes for our government, as well. Even Wall Street values stability above all else, in our markets and in our institutions. But stability, I think we’ve learned in recent years, is not quite the lead-pipe cinch we all may have taken for granted for most of our lives.
So, with that in mind, please forgive this bit of a detour here, but I encourage all of you who read this to participate in your local election processes this fall, regardless of your political persuasion. I know we’re all tired and worried about our jobs and our families, but well, this is important, too. If, like me, you grew up swearing the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ every day at school, it seems like now is the time to put civic action behind those words.
Toward that end, this November, I will serve as an election judge again in my local community. That’s something that I had started doing in 2008, but stepped away from during the pandemic for, well, health concerns.
But now it is the health of our democracy that I am more worried about. And this seems like the least I can do to help. So, I encourage those of you who can to please consider taking such action, as well. Granted, I can’t say being an election judge is a totally thankless job, because our local village president always brings doughnuts for the judges, even when he’s not on the ballot.
Even so, being an election judge is still an underappreciated role, pretty much all over the U.S. And in my experience, it is performed mostly by retirees, just looking to give back a little to their local communities, and to their country. Public service, we used to call it.
In fact, in 2010, I met a fellow volunteer who was then 84 years of age and operating on just one foot, having lost the other to diabetes. Incredibly, he was one of the cheeriest and most upbeat people I had ever met and we chatted throughout the day as midterm voters trickled in and out. As it turned out, my new friend and colleague had been one of the first African-American members of the U.S. Marine Corps, having joined the service right after Pearl Harbor as an underage volunteer with a note from his mother. At the time, African-Americans were segregated and trained separately in Montford Point, NC.
Nearly 70 years later, after all the adversity he had faced in an extraordinarily full life, which included turbulent duty as a Chicago police officer in the 1960s, my new friend still wanted to give back. In October of 2020, at the age of 95, he passed away.
This Election Day, I hope to honor his memory by pinch-hitting for him at the polls. Others can do so simply by voting.
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