It’s cold outside, this last day of 2014. We Southern Californians are dangerously spoiled.
Our prolonged drought seduces us with limitless sunny play days, for which we pay with severe dangers to our food crops and water supplies. The beauty of our coast blinds us to the blight and poverty of the hidden trailer parks and the homeless camps that line our downtown streets at night, while we are tucked warmly away in our beds.
We have so much work to do to make San Diego a city in which all thrive, that is a decent place to live, work, raise children and grow old. It is so easy to turn away from hard work toward the beautiful playfulness that beckons us from the gorgeousness of our hometown.
Our civic attitude seems to be to go along to get along, until we wake up one day and we have become the frog in the hot water. The Belmont Park lease is a good example of that attitude. We must start to pay attention and to risk conflict with the powerful people who believe it is their right to leadership.
No one has a right to leadership and it should not be given just to keep the peace. Things must, and always do, change and we have personal responsibility to ensure that happens, within ourselves, the groups we care about and our city. We must force ourselves to improve, to learn, to adapt and to grow.
We need to be committed to equal justice for everyone, equal opportunities to live out dreams, with fair distribution of wealth and health. We need regulations to ensure that the wolves among us do not eat our young or old, that they do not steal the eggs of opportunity from the hens of production or tell us unchecked lies about the harm done to us.
But there must also be gratitude, with many things to be deeply grateful for. For one, all the hard working campaign workers and staffers of our Democratic candidates. It’s been tough to keep going when exhaustion threatens to take over, when voters tell you to go away and when truth cannot be heard over lies.
Our Point Loma Democratic Club is blessed with so much talent and ability, with people who are committed to Democratic ideals and values. They work hard to make this club successful, respectfully supporting each other as friends and colleagues. We are lucky and I am grateful for each of you.
So I am back at the beginning. There is a lot of work to do. But within ourselves, we have the skills, the ability and the talent to make meaningful changes to improve our lives, our schools and our city.
Play tonight and rest up tomorrow. We need our best selves ready to go, to make this a happy, healthy new year for all of us.
Susan Peinado, President Point Loma Democratic Club
San Diego County Democratic Party Club of the Year 2014
president@pointlomadem.org
(619) 800-5098
POINT LOMA & OB DEMS 