LXXV. The Gridlock Privilege -

Yesterday, President Obama, Governor Mitt Romney, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, some of the few major players in global politics, had crowded New York City streets due to the annual United Nations General Assembly.

The car-parades wind their way up and down the streets, marking New York City as their own territory, while the locals are forced to dodge frozen zones and drive down the otherwise avoided, tourist-dotted, main streets

I suppose this situation gives us local New Yorkers the opportunity to again appreciate the landmarks we usually regard as nuisances.

After watching the somber traffic news update prior to the Today Show yesterday morning, it struck me that we should learn from history and re-create a past example.

In 1978, the first-ever international conference on primary health care, the universal-insured right of access to healthcare, per se, was held in Alma Ata, present-day Kazakhstan, then U.S.S.R.

Maybe it is utopian of me to say that perhaps world leaders should have their summits convened in corners of the globe that are impoverished or under-developed.

As the son of victim of the Wisconsin Gurudwara shooting had said, hate can be combated via solidarity. If the President stands alongside the people belonging to a community that has been targeted, and word of this juxtaposition in mind and body spreads, the nation as a whole will recognize the target and communities will coalesce.

So why not have the world’s leaders stand upon soil that is targeted by the forces of nature? Why not propel change to a place that is unbeknownst to the people outside of it’s geographical region?

Security - In the United States, there are parades of cop and secret-service cars following and surrounding people of power, authority, all in the public eye.
Why not build up security personnel elsewhere?

I guess another critique of my idea as being absurd and implausible is the Olympics. The Olympics’ arrival into places that only have an epicenter of robust socioeconomic proportions, causes forced evictions of the impoverished in surrounding areas.

However, what has to be done is to make sure that evictions occur with scaffolding - That is to say, eviction is already, in itself, an act of coercion. Instead of using violence, people should be relocated to a place that is better. Why not build up the slums?

It’s not that easy, Reshmi.

I know that it is not easy. But ideas cannot be defeated because they are not complex enough.

“I was just determined to get the facts right and to simplify the argument without being simplistic… I didn’t want to talk down to people. I wanted to explain what I thought was going on.

                                                                                - President Bill Clinton

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2zYxElCy6E)

I have never been more sure of this than now.

Politics never fails to be motivational.