Lucas Camilo

For the last week we’ve started off our morning by listening to Democracy Now’s coverage of the climate change conference in Copenhagen.  As each day goes by, and the world seems further away from an agreement that will truly reduce the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, its hard not to get depressed.  Having just brought a new life into the world, its scary to imagine what it will be like a few decades from now when Lucas gets old enough to engage and understand the environmental, social and political complexities of our earth.

We’ve been involved in activism and organizing now for most of our adult lives and so its probably no surprise that we often feel daunted about the direction of the world: from economic collapse which punishes the poor (while bankers and rich people get bailed out), to continued US-sponsored wars, to trade policies that further impoverish developing countries, to racist profiling of immigrants, to environmental destruction… and so on.  To be honest we thought a lot about whether or not we were ready to bring a child into the world at this moment in history.  In the end we decided that the love and inspiration involved in expanding our community outweighed our concerns about the future of the world.  And indeed, sharing life with Lucas so far has been amazing, perhaps even more so because of the health challenges he’s faced.

But we still can’t help but agonize about the future sometimes, especially at these pivotal political moments when world leaders have a chance to take action in order to mitigate the most significant environmental problem facing us today… and apparently don’t have the will; or when lawmakers in our country have the chance to reform a tragically broken health care system… and will likely fail; or when a president, who appeared to be the most progressive elected leader in a generation, has the opportunity to advocate for real changes to our financial regulatory and tax system… and won’t even bother trying.  Not that we mean to get you down, just to say that it’s a tough political moment, especially if you’re on the progressive end of the political spectrum.

So as we continue following the events in Copenhagen and imagine how to explain and teach to Lucas about all that is important to us, we’re also thinking about how to help affect change now.  For us, the end of the year provides an opportunity to contribute to a variety of organizations that are organizing to confront all the policies that we mentioned before.  This week we’ve laid out our giving plan and will be donating to 15-20 different organizations (we’re still finalizing it): groups that tackle environmental justice, international solidarity, media reform, immigrant rights, racial discrimination and economic inequality, and health alternatives.  We’re giving more in that last category than in previous years, including to a local birth center (we had hoped to have Lucas outside the hospital with midwives), to a group that connects and supports parents of preemies, and to a fund at Children’s Medical Center for parents of children with special needs who don’t have the resources to cover their expenses.

This giving is one little way that we can try to make the world a better place for Lucas as he gets older, and its also a way for us to recognize and pass on some of the amazing love and support we’ve received over the past four months.  We’ll share the list of groups that we’re giving to this year in a couple of days, and we invite you to join us in supporting these groups and others that are working to make our planet a more humane and healthy one to pass on to Lucas and all children.  Despite the many injustices in the world right now there are also many inspiring movements that are working to challenge the status quo – and that’s what gives us hope as we sit down to do physical therapy with Lucas on a cold winter morning.