Learning from adversity

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Learning from adversity				October 8, 2005

There’s very little about which Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-1^st) and I agree. But she is my representative to Congress, and it was with deep sorrow that I recently learned she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

True to form, Davis has vowed to continue to work on behalf of her constituents while fighting a disease that attacks all too many women. Her prognosis, she says, is good, and we certainly hope that such is the case.

In concluding her remarks about the diagnosis, Davis noted that she looks forward “ to being an advocate for those who also share this challenge.”

While there is certainly nothing positive to be said about breast cancer - or any other life-threatening misfortune for that matter - it does seem that empathy almost naturally replaces sympathy or apathy when humas are faced with some challenge that is alien to their expectations or adversely affects their former status in life. As familiarity, if not similarity, sets in, they quite naturally develop an empathetic relationship with those who share their affliction

We in James City can sympathize with the people of New Orleans, but we find it difficult to truly empathize with them, since we have never experienced a city flooded or streets turned into corpse-carrying rivers.

I have no idea whether Davis, prior to her diagnosis, was an advocate for women with breast cancer. Now that she shares their misfortune, however, I suspect that she will be a forceful proponent of cancer research and breast cancer treatment.

Yet those living on the edge of society, or those who have been marginalized by disaster, disease or constrictive norms need advocates too. The poor need advocates, as do those with AIDS. Children from poor families need advocates, as do the elderly who can’t afford medical care.

Unfortunately, whether for good or evil, we have come to depend on our elected representatives to Congress and state legislatures to provide that advocacy.

But the fact is that most of the professional politicians now in power are well-heeled enough never to have experienced poverty, never to have sent their children to school without lunches and never to have faced a parent unable to pay for medical care. As a result, their empathy for such situations is improbable, while their sympathy, and hence advocacy, is minimal.

It was with this in mind that I found Davis’ promise of advocacy heartening. As a result of her affliction, she has moved quite beyond political advocacy into the realm of the personal and the humane. Because of her own misfortune, she now, both intellectually and physically, shares the challenges of other breast cancer victims. And, coincidentally, she has pledged her help to their cause.

While this is not the time to engage Davis in nattering political repartee, I do note that she is determined to stay at her post and continue to represent her constituents. It is in this context, then, that I hope she finds some way to extend her advocacy beyond the cause of breast cancer to those who are less fortunate in other physical, social and financial situations.

A good place to start is with the budget cuts proposed by Republicans to make up for the inevitable shortfall resulting from Katrina, Rita and the war in Iraq. Davis might consider, for instance, what effects would accrue to the poor if the proposed $225 billion were cut from Medicaid. Or $200 billion from Medicare.

Might she become an advocate for poverty-stricken kids if the requested $6.7 billion is cut from the school lunch program for poor children? Or will her advocacy for breast cancer suffer as a result of slashing $25 billion from the budget of the Centers for Disease Control? Can she bring herself to oppose vigorously the $4.5 billion loss in the Drug-Free schools program?

I realize that this is a lot to ask of a conservative Republican who is squarely behind the president’s tax cuts. On the other hand, there are thousands of poverty-ridden adults and poor children in the 1^st District. There are also countless homeless people and way too many mentally ill and drug-addicted constituents – all of whom need an advocate in Congress.

In March, 1816, the German poet Goethe wrote a note of condolence to a friend who had recently lost his son. “Everyone has within him,” wrote Goethe, “something of his very own which he hopes to develop by letting it work and go on working within him. This mysterious being gets the better of us and leads us on day by day. I find that it is the talent within me and that alone which has been helping me through all the adverse circumstances in which I get entangled by false direction or by coincidence or by confusion.”

There is no doubt that Jo Ann Davis is a woman of immense talent. Nor is there any doubt that her talent will lead her day by day to disentangle herself from the adverse circumstances which now engage her life.

May her recovery be complete and, as a result of her struggle, may she find herself capable of extending the powers of her new-found advocacy to all of her less-fortunate and unacceptably marginalized constituents in the 1^st District.