It has been difficult to gather my thoughts into coherence for a while now.
So much is going on in the world, so much of which makes so little or no sense – and is so harmful to so many.
But to constantly be on the attack about these things, and their immediate causes – Trump and Trump’s policies and governance – is not comfortable.
Although ironically, it is actually not so different from how I have spent much of my life.
My career in legal services for the poor primarily involved advocating in the Kentucky and Ohio state legislatures for policies to support poor families seeking to achieve economic stability through work.
The reasons why this is so difficult for so many are not well understood by much of the public. Poor health, poor education, inadequate transportation, lack of child care, inadequate skills, and other barriers, make obtaining and keeping jobs a challenge.
I often described this for my law students in my poverty law classes in this way.
Some people are born on third base, and think they hit a triple. Many others are born on home plate or first base, and are just happy to be in the game.
And then there are those who are born behind the dugout, without bat, ball, glove or uniform, but who are expected to compete.
My experience was that aside from those who had extraordinary and unusual gifts that enabled them to surmount these barriers, most could not compete without intervention.
So my professional work as an advocate was to help establish and strengthen interventions that would enable them to compete.
This was hard work. It involved constant efforts to overcome entrenched beliefs on the parts of legislators about laziness and lack of work ethic of poor people. Policy victories were few and far between.
That was my legal career. Other endeavors outside my job, for example serving on the Covington School Board, were similar. Our students came largely from low income families, that faced many of the same challenges that legal aid clients faced. Attaining education excellence was similarly challenging.
So by virtue of my experience, I am equipped to face many of the challenges of the present.
As with poverty, much of the public does not understand these challenges. What happens when people do things they believe wrong, is that they are denied rights and opportunities that the law, indeed the Constitution, afford them
Undocumented immigrants are a perfect example. People come here for two reasons: safety and opportunity. To escape oppression or to find better economic opportunities.
The first group has the legal right to come here, to seek asylum. Unfortunately we do not have a system for evaluating their claims in any orderly or timely way, especially given their numbers. Many of them are getting caught up in policies that deprive them of the opportunity to do do.
Those seeking a better life face more difficult obstacles. They do not have the right to come in.
They do not want to break the law. They simply want a better life, for themselves and their families, and are willing to face great danger and obstacles to seek it.
And again, the numbers wanting to achieve that are overwhelming.
I do not pretend to know the answers, how to solve these situations.
What my training and experience have taught me is that when people grapple with complex problems with honesty and open minds, answers become possible. Solutions are found.
It then becomes the process of applying our will and our resources to implement the solutions.
We have the resources. We have the wealth. We have the human resources, those with the intellect, the training, and the education.
The question is whether we have the will.
Our history reveals that we have the will to grapple with tough problems. Very slowly at times, and incrementally.
But we have shown, time and again, that we have the will, once we identify the problem and the solution, to implement it.
I am not minimizing the difficulty and complexity of this. It takes hard work. It requires overcoming many negative attitudes and beliefs.
But we have done so. We can do so.
And now we must do so.
If we want to preserve what has made us the shining light on the hill to the rest of the world.
My prayer is that we do so. As Mother Teresa said, prayer changes us – then we change things.
Col Owens is a retired legal aid attorney and law professor, author of Bending the Arc Toward Justice, longtime Democratic Party activist, and member of the Boards of Directors of Kentucky Voices for Health and the Kentucky Board of Elections.