Infinity Health & Wellness Magazine December / January 2017 | Page 16

Seeking Hope

This Holiday Season
by Cynthia M. Brown

I am trying to remember when I felt the way I do
right now. I want to talk about positive things. I want
to make a holiday wish for everyone who reads this
magazine. Instead, as the election cycle, which has
made our nation a laughing stock worldwide, nears
its end; as local state and federal forces shoot live
rounds of ammunition into a peaceful demonstration
by over 2,000 First Nations in North Dakota, as war
rages in more than two thirds of the world; as climate
change continues to accelerate; as fracking continues
to destabilize the earth and pollute groundwater; as a
more and more militarized police force needlessly uses
deadly force in more and more cities and communities
throughout this country; I am having trouble feeling
hopeful at all.
Perhaps this funk I am in is further exacerbated by the
fact that in September, I was walking across the street
in my neighborhood and I was hit by a car. While I
crossed the street, the light changed and a motorist
plowed into me, breaking my leg in four places. Yes,
it was my fault; the light was with me when I started
across but changed as I crossed the centerline. The
motorist stopped but only because of the crowd of
people yelling at her. She got out of her car and began
screaming at me. This was so surreal because just one
week earlier my son’s boss had crossed the same street
two blocks further north when she was struck by a car
and killed. When I was hit, my son was at his friend’s
funeral. Sarah, was her name, was jay-walking so the
driver bore no responsibility in the incident. According
to Ohio law, pedestrians only have the right of way, in
a designated crosswalk and with the light. Since my
accident, I have watched the news every evening. Not
a day has gone by when someone was not hit, walking
across the street somewhere in this city. One man,
after hitting a pedestrian, jumped out of his car and
ran away leaving his car and the injured person right
in the intersection.
My son helped organize a community council meeting
with city officials. He helped stage a walk-about where
residents and business owners placed signs with the

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speed limit along the street and crossed the streets at
a ll crosswalks. One driver was speeding and slammed
on his brakes, sliding into a cross walk. As pedestrians
chanted, “Shame, shame, shame,” he got out of his
car and threw food at them. Police cited the driver for
disorderly conduct and for speeding.
Our community has had to beg the police for additional
traffic patrols. We finally got speed limit signs,
indicating the 25 miles per hour speed in our business
district. Unfortunately if one does drive 25, motorists
honk, pass on the right and gesture their impatience as
they speed by.
I am troubled by all of this: by the complete disregard
for people in all of these things. We conduct wars with
drones and bombers so we do not put our soldiers in
harm’s way. I suppose if our countrymen do not die
and we flatten villages from afar, we can sleep better.
We won’t know about any lost life. The Lakota who
are protesting the pipeline are concerned not just
about their sacred sites but about the potential for
catastrophic water pollution along the Missouri River
should the pipeline fail. Why don’t the rest of us care
about safe drinking water? It is not just the Lakota who
will suffer should that happen.
I think it is really about scale…. I moved to this
neighborhood because it felt like a small town. I could
look out my kitchen window and see my son playing
in the backyard of my house and my neighbors’ yards.
We could walk to two parks. There were small shops
and restaurants to visit.
Now my neighborhood has new high rise apartments
along the business corridor. The school across the street
from my house has been converted to 40 apartments.
There is a sign to keep dogs off the 8 acres of green
space. When it was a school the sign said “clean up
after your dogs.” Tenants in the apartments are allowed
to have dogs but they must walk them across the street,
in my and my neighbors’ yards. Motorists, avoiding
highway construction, speed along the main road with
no regard for the legal speed limit. The street is just a
shortcut back to the highway. Sarah and I were not
victims, we are merely highway statistics….
I guess I want my life to matter. It is really dehumanizing

Dec / Jan 2017