Politics Doesn't Have To Equal Inhumanity

​Federal funding that supports a young lady's job who works for me was cut overnight this week. The funding was scheduled to run through the end of September - it was COMMITTED to us through then - but that all changed in one overnight email.

How did I find out about this?

I found out when the young lady who works for me called me and told me she'd received an email letting her know her job had been cut.

An email.

An email not from me; I had no idea this was coming. An email not even from my boss or her boss, but rather from a political channel way above my paygrade.

This young lady has worked for and with me for three years. She's done incredible and indeed life-changing work to impact the well-being of our workforce and workforces across the state.

She has done valuable work.

Yet, in our conversations yesterday, I had to help her stop questioning her value. You see, it's easy to question your value when your work is as dismissible as a group email.

My consolation to her, even though I know it was of little consolation, I told her that people who don't prioritize valuing people are not capable of devaluing your work.

Politics is politics. But there are always two ways to implement political decisions. One is to factor in the human toll, which doesn't always mean a different decision, but it does prioritize humanity before implementing the decision. The other is of course to prioritize the decision and let the human toll be what that human toll might be.

As I talked with my friend yesterday, listening to her wrestle with her own toll, one she didn't see coming when she got out of bed yesterday - one she SHOULD HAVE been given the gift of seeing it coming - I couldn't help but imagine the thousands upon thousands who were wrestling with the same thing across the country yesterday.

Some may think I'm talking about wrestling with sudden and unreasonable political changes. But no. That's not what I'm talking about here - change and unreasonableness is the true nature of politics.

I'm talking about wrestling with the lack of humanity. And the reality that politics without humanity can get quite ugly.

Degrading.

There is a lesson in this for all of us. We all have to make some hard decisions now and again. Decisions that impact the people around us. And maybe there isn't always a right or wrong way to deliver those decisions, but there is always a human way.

I am a big fan of technology. That is, until we start seeing technology as a way to circumvent the extra time needed to insert humanity and human relationship.

Would it have taken an extra few days, maybe a week, to coordinate all the right people to have all the right human conversations with people losing their jobs?

Yes. It most certainly would have.

But it turns out humanity can be quite expensive.

So email it is.