"600 words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Dad was just doing his best

“600 words by Esther J. Cepeda”

Wrong is easy to spot, but “right” is sometimes trickier.

Ricardo Gonzalez, the 35-year-old Midlothian, Illinois man who is facing misdemeanor child endangerment charges for locking his two and five-year-old daughters in a makeshift cage in his pickup truck was definitely wrong to do such a thing. But his story tells me he actually was just trying to do the right thing.

Gonzalez was not a cruel monster bent on torturing his kids for fun – though there’s no end to those, a quick clip search will show you that parents from all races/ethnicities, socieoeconomic levels and geographies commit terrible crimes against their children. But let’s dig beneath the headlines: here’s a poorly educated guy trying to raise two small children with the girls’ mother – the same woman who, two years ago, had gotten herself in trouble for driving off to the store and leaving one of the girls, then 3, home alone.

So you’re this guy, scraping by on what you can make foraging and reselling scrap metal and whatever else you can find. You’ve got these two little girls who are out of school, you have no one to care for them (a neighbor was quoted in a news story as saying she would have watched the kids but let’s be realistic here, she probably didn’t mean all day every day) and you know well enough not to leave them home alone. You think about taking them with but you figure letting the girls roll around in the cab of the car isn’t a good idea either.

The lightbulb goes off and though you know a makeshift cage in the cab of your truck isn’t optimal you’ve solved the problem of not being able to have the girls near and relatively safe as you make your all-day rounds in the pickup.

Surely Gonzalez didn’t have the cultural or legal awareness to understand that sitting at a gas station with one daughter in your lap while the other cries in your makeshift cage is not going to go over well. In this country a concerned passerby will bust you out to the police. And so it happened.

Given his resources and expertise, was Ricardo Gonzalez abusing his daughters by keeping them as safe and as close as he knew how? I say no. Gonzalez is just one example of someone doing the best he can with what he’s got – people do unwise things out of desperation.

Either way he was clearly breaking the law and was badly in need of an intervention – good intentions aside, children cannot thrive in an environment devoid of familial support, safe shelter, and healthy stimulation, which anyone can see was not a part of the trash picking rounds.

I’ve heard people twittering about this latest sad story for the last two days, none of whom were able to look past what he did to see why he did it.

Some of us – the lucky ones – can cast an eye at what’s going on with the economy, oil and gas prices, and food prices, and cluck about how terrible this natural market correction is even as we get ready to go to Ravinia to enjoy A Prairie Home Companion and a bottle of wine.

For others, desperate times are calling for desperate and dangerous measures. They need help.

Tonight as I clap along to the Powdered Milk Biscuits song, my mind won’t be too far from Ricardo Gonzalez and his struggling family, and I’ll send them my silent best wishes that they can find any help they need to stay together and move on.

In defense of 75 degrees

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

I'm cold.

Yes, I know I was saying that in the middle of February but it's still true.

Sandals? Tank tops? On the 23rd day of June? You've got to be kidding me! I wore shorts once on the first actual warm day of summer but instantly realized the error of my folly once I innocently stepped into a favorite haunt, where it's brrrrrrrrrrr cold!

Shorts or not, that ubiquitous dark Dallas Cowboys down jacket you saw me in last March? It's still with me wherever I go. And let me tell you: I might get a funny look or two but it only takes about 8 minutes before I'm the envy of the grocery store, coffee shop, library, restaurant, movie theater, train, you name it.

Room temperature in public spaces is a distant memory. Seventy-five degrees used to be that hallmark of cool comfort, dialed down to about seventy-three when an extra kick was needed to shake off the heat of the oppressive summer sun. No more.

Observed while sitting in my favorite coffee shop on the afternoon of a perfect summer day: women and small children paying for an iced coffee suddenly clawing at themselves to cover their bare arms and shoulders. Elderly couples toting coats. Tall, burly, master-tattooed tough guys in cutoff shirts and shorts, taking their bagel and cream cheese mid-meal outside to the patio tables. And me snug as a bug in my coat on my favorite couch.

And it's not just the coffee shop. Grocery stores – they have product to keep cool even as doors open and close letting hot bursts of air in right by the fresh fruit – have gone from cold to sub-zero. Movie theaters – an oasis for hot movie lovers – are places where you can see your own breath. Public transportation! We thank the god of planes, trains, and buses when we're not traveling in convection ovens, but I've seen children cry from well-meaning arctic blasts.

I've complained, but it's done no good. I've gone to the manager of my home away from home coffee shop, which happily collects a good fifteen percent of my annual income in coffee and cinnamon rolls alone, and asked for the temperature to be dialed down from "tundra" to "lake breeze" but what I get from the manager is a blank look.

She doesn't get it. Of course, she is about 185 pounds overweight – a baker, she's got the latitude – and breaks a sweat when it's over fifty. Me: I'm on the "athletic" range of the Body Mass Index, so sue me.

But it's not just her, its every manager of every public venue across the country, whether they be rail-thin, just right, or packin' a spare tire and they've all told me the same thing when I –and other more thickly-padded customers – complain: the comfort temperature has gone down. Unspoken, but obvious to anyone with eyes: the average weight of children and adults has gone up. A lot.

The Centers for Disease Control reported last November that more than one-third of U.S. adults – over 72 million people – were obese in 2005-2006. That’s 72 million people living in a society where not only is personal comfort king, but personal discomfort – the body’s natural way of telling us our bodies are injured or otherwise unhealthy – is controlled with external measures. In other words: "I’m carrying around an extra hundred pounds so therefore you must make it colder for me."

Can I convince you to dial the A/C up? Do it for whatever your favorite reason like to lessen the chemicals being released into the environment. Do it for those who need to realize maybe they shouldn’t be feeling quite so hot, or do it because the price of energy is skyrocketing and your wallet hurts.

Just please, let it be room temperature, and let those of us with normal body weights leave the coat at home.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact

eejaycee@600words.com

Hatless "Drunkard" doesn't give up his ship

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

For those who followed columnist Neil Steinberg's public meltdown in September 2005, when he was arrested on charges of domestic battery, the money shot of his new book "Drunkard: A Hard Drinking Life" comes early:

"We are arguing just outside [Kent's] door. I'm yelling, she has the phone… she's dialing…she has the phone up against her head and I suddenly swing, an arcing, open-handed slap, knocking the phone hard against the side of her head."

There, on page 22, Steinberg pulls back the curtain on an episode that made headlines from the pages of his own paper, the Chicago Sun-Times, to the front page of rival Chicago Tribune and even his old haunt the New York Daily News, making a spectacle of the sometimes wicked, sometimes sweet curmudgeon from Berea, Ohio who climbed the ivory tower of journalism into a four-times-a-week column at a major American newspaper.

The slap that changed everything.

The slap that changed readers' image of Steinberg, 48, from doting dad to two young boys and devoted – if oft-times bumbling – husband to a beautiful lawyer, into a stereotypical sauced newspaper man and, worse, wife-beater.

That slap confined him not only to jail – if only for a night – but many nights to a cold guest bedroom, and sometimes even to chillingly welcoming bars where fellow journalists revel in the tradition of downing drinks once deadline is met.

And the slap wasn't even the worst part! There was the indignity, sure, but there was also the parade of disappointed friends and family, clueless counselors, way-too-Jesus-y AA devotees and, of course, glorious, ever-beckoning alcohol which, if you don't drink much, you might not notice is almost literally everywhere.

So why – why?! – would anyone who'd gone through that miserable trial relive it nearly three years later, again so publicly, as he steels himself to embark on press engagements in support of his sixth book "Drunkard: A Hard Drinking Life", published by Dutton.

"People ask me if I'm embarrassed about it," Steinberg told a crowd of family, friends and award-winning journalists at an intimate book party in downtown Chicago Wednesday night, "but I tell them: 'I wasn't embarrassed to down every drink in sight, why would I be embarrassed to talk about how I got myself out of it?'"

A few days before, he'd answered my first question – why!?! – in his inimitable Steinbergian tone: "If you don’t write about something, then it's lost and I thought it was valuable to remember this," he said as Sun-Times news men and women flitted in and out of his office. "I really did it because I really wanted to redeem this experience. As Dante said, if you've got to go to hell you've got to take notes."

Some notes!

Harrowing, painfully lonely notes. Notes no one wants to fess up to when the hangover hits. Notes you wouldn't wish on an enemy. And yet, notes that at the most unexpected moments ring brightly, reverberating with hopeful – and really funny – timbres.

"I was writing it as it was happening, so I like to think they're fresh," he said. "The editing was excruciating – that was as difficult, if not more difficult, than the writing. At the time [of recovery] the book was the one thing I could control. I couldn’t control the drinking, the law, or the case but I could control the book. During the editing I had to really battle to keep control if it."

And was it worth it?

"If I wrote ‘Ulysses’ it was," he says, reasonably tired of pondering it. "Given the pain, ‘The Sun Also Rises’ would not have been worth it to me, I would have much rather avoided the whole thing."

"That said, I feel I did the best I could with a bad situation. I at least rose to the occasion and didn’t move to a Red Roof Inn and continue drinking. At least not yet."

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Still separate, still unequal but still hopeful

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

In overturning of Brown vs. Board of Education – the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed children would not be forced to attend schools based solely on race – Chief Justice John Roberts said Louisville and Seattle school districts’ voluntary public school integration plans failed to justify their desire to integrate schools by assigning certain students to schools based on race.

Last June 28, 2007, the country groaned at this so-called "huge step backwards," the assumption being that race discrimination was the numero uno culprit in the staggering failure and drop-out rates among minority students.

At the time I argued that the flip meant nothing in a society where scores of kids were failing miserably because of the color-blind blight of poverty.

It’s almost a year later and not only are kids still being left behind, we’ve recently learned the numbers are surely worse than we’d imagined. U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is floating a plan to make the formula for calculating the number of drop-outs uniform across states so districts can no longer cheat down their annual reporting.

And the left-behinds? Big surprise – none of them are Carnegies. According to Census data analyzed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty, back in 2006 – before the economic downturn – 17.4 percent of kids under 18 lived in poverty. That’s thirteen million kiddies living in real, actual poverty in the United States, and yes, over half of them were black or Hispanic – but why discriminate? A poor kid with a lop-sided shot at a decent life is just that, regardless of race.

But discrimination comes in many forms and to change how we educate tomorrow’s multi-hued leaders we must start with how every one of us sees them today.

"The challenges of race are not behind us and, in fact, are compounding with poverty," Matthew L. Kramer, self-professed affluent white kid and President of the hugely successful Teach for America – a national corps of new-to-education brainiac teachers dedicated to eliminating educational inequity – told me this week.

Matthew says the success his 17,000 teachers have experienced in reaching nearly 3 million low-income children since 1990 comes from being focused on solving the problems kids come to school with each day, "but because 90% are either African American or Latino, their particular challenges of poverty and race are fundamentally intertwined – both are factors in their lives."

The difference between the educational philosophy of his corps and the teachers getting pumped out of traditional education programs? It’s all in how they look at their charges.

"Our experience is that even though the majority come to school with these challenges, our teachers have the ability to motivate kids to work harder than they’ve ever been expected to work – and the kids perform! The evidence is overwhelmingly clear, we may not be post-race but it’s not credible to say these kids can’t learn, whether the issue is race or poverty."

Matthew rhapsodized about tangible successes like a phenomenal youth symphony orchestra comprised of low-income charter school students – "It’s hard to see the KIPP orchestra and not start crying" – and evangelized his belief that it is possible to keep poor or minority children from being left behind. And that opportunity is not solely in teachers’ hands.

"It is not legitimate to say is this unfixable and people don’t want to maintain that view. There are many successes out there but I think we’re stuck until many, many more people have seen them with their own eyes," Matthew said. "It’s hard to change our minds but it is only a matter of time at this point before [people] come into more examples of successes."

Until that happens, as you drive past, ask yourself if you can believe the gaggle of kids clustered on the street corner can achieve despite the odds stacked against them. Then tell yourself "yes."

If as a society we start to believe in the promise of today’s left-behinds, they’ll start to believe in themselves. And if we demand that everyone who has a stake in their education – you and me included – expect nothing less than success, we will get it.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Voices of reason

by Esther J. Cepeda

"Pregunta del Dia" translates to Question of the Day and today’s comes from several different readers who keep asking:

Q. Can you believe these gas prices?! It’s highway robbery.

A. Yes I can. No it’s not. Gas prices are not that bad. Heck, I remember whining about it in 1997 when it bumped up to $1.25 – I stopped complaining long ago.

In summer of 2003 I took average gas price data from 1970 to 2003 and adjusted it for inflation and found that compared to cars, chicken wings, and other items in a basket of goods, gas was still really cheap. (Don’t ask why, I’m weird like that and I love statistics.)

Fast forward five years to the week before Memorial Day weekend 2008 and people are gnashing their teeth and weeping about gas prices. Though I keep telling people that not only is the rise in gas prices not that bad – it’s a natural market correction that’s going a long way toward weaning us off our dependence on a non-renewable resource – no one ever believes me.

So thank you, Energy Tribune. Robert Bryce, this publication’s managing editor just wrote a lovely piece on slate.com about the reality of today’s gas prices, which he says are dirt cheap compared to prices in many other countries. I quote:

"When measured on an inflation-adjusted basis, the current price of gasoline is only slightly higher — about 20 percent — than it was in 1922. According to the Energy Information Administration, in 1922, gasoline cost the current-day equivalent of $3.11."

"Today, gasoline is selling for about $3.77 per gallon. Given the ever-increasing global demand for oil products — during the first three months of this year, China’s oil consumption jumped 16.5 percent — and the increasing costs associated with finding, producing and refining crude oil, it makes sense that today’s motorists are paying more for their motor fuel than their grandparents and great-grandparents did."

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thanks Bob!

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Pay to play

by Esther J. Cepeda

"Pregunta del Dia" translates to Question of the Day and today’s comes from R.T., a Cary, IL reader who asks

Q. "Do YOU think DePaul [University, in Chicago] should keep the Minutemen from having their speaker there Monday?"

A. He’s referring to a speech to be delivered Monday May 19 on the campus of DePaul University – the largest private University in Illinois, one of the largest private universities in this country and the largest Catholic university in the U.S., according to Wikipedia.

Let me quote from the Father Jose Landaverde and the "Comite de Marzo," a pro-illegal immigrant rights group, from their press release asking for people to join them in a 24-hour "Prayer Vigil to Stop the Hate & Racism."

"Cris Simcox who is the Minuteman Militia Corps. Leader has been invited to speak by a conservative group at DePaul University on May 19th, 2008.  Simcox is well known for his anti immigrant sentiment against Mexicans.   Simcox travels the country recruiting members and has had growing involvement in his group of racist border vigilantes.  White supremacist groups have openly recruited members for the Minuteman patrols groups like neo-Nazis from the National Alliance & Aryan Nations.  Simcox as of today refuses to acknowledge that vigilante border patrols are a haven for violent racist.  Many groups have asked the university to cancel Simcox's invitation but DePaul University refuses & say that they must allow all groups on campus exercise the right to freedom of speech."

DePaul is…absolutely 100% correct. They have allowed their students to freely exercise their right to freedom of speech in protesting Simcox, been open with the media, and offered these same freedoms to campus speakers – and campus protesters – who were similarly controversial.

But today the DePaul Conservative Alliance, which invited Simcox, is upset. DePaul is making that group pay $2,500 for security officers to make sure things don’t get out of hand between Minutemen supporters and praying protesters.

And again DePaul is…absolutely 100% correct. The Conservative Alliance knew their choice in speaker would draw opposition and went ahead with plans for a hoppin’ event. Fair enough. They should have known that the University routinely asks student groups to pay for the cost of ensuring the safety of large crowds at any on-campus event, instead they’re hurtin’ for money and blaming the protestors for their presence at the speech.

"Basically, I am paying to ensure a protest happens at my event," Nicholas Hahn, the president of the university’s Conservative Alliance told a Chicago Tribune reporter.

No, that would be your speaker fee. Nevertheless, it’s an easy fix. Just pass the hat around at the event, Conservative Alliance, your peeps will be glad to help out. It’s your right to be there and have your speaker say whatever he wants, but as with most things in life: you play, you pay.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Colorblind killings

by Esther J. Cepeda

"Pregunta del Dia" translates to Question of the Day and today’s comes from Larry, a faithful reader who asks:

Q. "I was just wondering what your opinion is on the two young Hispanic gentlemen that were killed in a car accident that was caused by a white Chicago Police Officer.  I believe that he is about to get off scott free."

A. Larry is referring to Chicago Police Officer John Ardelean, who the Illinois State’s Attorney’s office just determined cannot be tried criminally for the deaths of Miguel Flores and Erick Lagunas in a car crash Thanksgiving 2007. The officer had been off-duty at the time.

Officer Ardelean had been up on two counts of aggravated DUI, but because he refused a Breathalyzer test for 7 hours after the crash and didn’t do so until his supervisor insisted, there is no evidence to prove in court he actually was drunk at the time he killed.

That’s not to say he wasn’t. Nevermind that he knew better than to drink and drive. He clearly used his knowledge of the law to avoid a conclusive test until his boss made him take it. This is the part when the conspiracy theorists make it all about Latinos being disposable in this society, their lives and deaths less important than others’, etc.

Nope, had the two victims been white or Asian or Martian, for that matter, Officer Ardelean would have still been in cover-your-ass mode. Human nature. It’s not as though in a purportedly drunken binge he was looking for two minorities to mow down.

That, of course, is no excuse for his actions.

On the bright side there’s a new sheriff in town, Jody Weis, and this is exactly the sort of community-relationship mess he’s pledged to root out and boot out. He verified for local media that Ardelean is still under investigation and has been relieved of his duties.

Perhaps out of the glare of the TV cameras he went ballistic and made crystal clear to other cops that they aren’t going to slip quietly away if they’re caught driving drunk – or giving a checkered brother a free pass for seven hours until the buzz wears off before insisting on a test.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Prostitution's Hidden victims: boys

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

That "dirty old man" who pays cash to use women as disposable sex toys may have started out as a bewildered, ten-year-old boy.

Of the many shocking revelations meticulously documented in the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation’s report "Deconstructing the Demand for Prostitution" released late last week, the most heartbreaking and disturbing was that among men who frequently pay prostitutes for sex, many had their first sexual experience paid for by a close relative – at as tender an age as ten.

In 2006 and 2007, a team of twelve male and female project interviewers from CAASE and a group called Prostitution Research Education set out to look into the minds of Chicago men who pay for sex from the estimated 16,000 to 25,000 women in the city who sell their services. They advertised their study on Craigslist, Chicago After Dark, and the Chicago Reader, and eventually spoke for two hours each with 113 men ages 20-71.

Their "average" john was 39 years old, only slightly more likely African American than Caucasian, overwhelmingly college-educated and making over $40,000 a year, with a girlfriend or wife at home. A little over half of them bought sex from once a month to several times in one week, soliciting women on the internet, in person, and through escort services alike.

The average age of their first purchase was 21 with the jaw-dropping age of ten pulling down the average. These stark numbers – 29% of these guys’ first time ever was paid and 17% had that first experience on a dad’s dime – round out the tragedy.

"We have to do a lot better job of talking about exploitation and violence toward women just to counteract the overwhelming glamorization of prostitution in this country," study author Rachel Durchslag told me last week. "One thing we need to do is talk to young men about this issue. Moms and dads don’t want to talk to their sons about this but with one quarter of our participants reporting they had their first paid experience before the age of seventeen, it tells me we have to talk to dads about how to bond with their sons with some healthy masculinity instead of based on exploitation and domination."

Up until now, the conversation about the fallout of pay-to-play has been focused on the female part of the prostitution equation. The facts in this report, found on http://www.caase.org, point to the serious need to intervene in the lives of very young men today in order to make a difference in the lives of women and men – both those involved in prostitution transactions and those hurt by after-effects like sexually transmitted diseases, the pain of betrayal, and the inability to have healthy relationships – for generations to come.

That’s a tall order in a society where young boys and girls are constantly bombarded by images of ultra-sexual women, and pimp culture has become so mainstream you can buy pre-packaged costumes at your local Halloween supply store. The same society where parents scoff at the idea of their 8^{th-graders learning about condoms in health ed. classes.}

"Absolutely young women are growing up with unbelievable amounts of pressure to be sexual but that’s only half of the equation. Prostitution not only harms women in communities but harms men as well," Rachel said, citing the guilt, shame, and real remorse the men in the study expressed to their interviewers after having the opportunity – in many cases for the first time in their lives – to talk openly about their behavior and feelings out.

Calling all moms and dads: get over your embarrassment about the "sex talk." Your sons and daughters need you to have frank and open heart-to-heart conversations about sexual health and responsibility, today. Sexual victimization for either gender can happen early but it’s never too late to do everything possible to avoid it.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Cynic’s guide to pink ribbons

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

I like breasts as much as the next guy – even more, maybe – they feed babies, provide shock absorption, and are pleasing to look at. No downside, right? Well, not unless they get cancer. Many have.

The race to their cure has become a global, multi-billion dollar philanthropic and cultural phenomenon – and that’s how I came to be annoyed by pink ribbons.

Don’t worry, I didn’t stay annoyed, but who could have blamed me when last week on one day alone I ran across “breast cancer awareness” batteries at the 7-Eleven, a “Think Pink” accessory pack for a kids’ portable video game at Circuit City, and a pink ribbon Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation street-sweeper!

“Come ON!” I thought, “How many ways can marketers make money off women’s breasts?!” That was followed immediately by my standard, “It’s not even the number one killer of women in the U.S.!” That would be heart disease, followed by cancers (lung!), strokes, lung disease in general, and Alzheimer’s disease, just FYI.

And it’s not even October yet, but aahhh, close to Mother’s Day.

But rather than remain peeved at the preponderance of pink in my life, I instead bowed to the temple of what will go down as one of the strongest consumer brands in history –one that actually saves real women’s lives – the Susan G. Komen For the Cure breast cancer awareness foundation, and its pink ribbons.

Google ‘em if you want, you know the story: 25 years, a promise between two sisters, the Y-Me Race for the cure, etc. I blew in a call to ask them if they felt their message was becoming diluted because of the marketing blitz, if people are getting tired of it all.

“We have tested, informally, in various ways and found that both men and women are still very open to the messages,” Caroline Wall, Manager for Cause Marketing Operations told me yesterday. “We’re trying to engage all different types of niches and consumer groups…whether it be Kitchen Aid mixers, or Major League Baseball, or Garth Brooks.”

I became interested in the success of the brand not realizing the power of the pink to pervade different cultures and languages. And not realizing how desperately that’s needed.

I was thinking along the lines of targets to sell products to, after all, the pink ribbon peddled 58 million green dollars – 20% of Komen’s revenue – in 2006, according to one Los Angeles Times article. And yes, there have been some unscrupulous logo users, which Komen actively roots out, and certainly no shortage of critics of the success of the campaign. But back to those “targets.”

“We don’t want to pigeon-hole anyone but there are opportunities to have an ‘in’ with a particular population, for instance, the African American and Latino communities through product placement,” she said, noting that black and Hispanic women get diagnosed way later than Caucasians.

The numbers: breast is the most common cancer in African American women and the second leading cause of cancer death among African American women. It’s the most commonly diagnosed and the leading cause of cancer death among Hispanic/Latina women.

Consider my cynical mouth shut.

Mother’s day breast-health support buyer beware, yes you can look on their web site to make sure the pink products you want to purchase will fulfill Komen’s mission of funding research for a cure. Shop smart and find a balance but don’t automatically buy into the backlash.

“There are still over 200,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer every day in this country,” Caroline said, “and they would say they’re not tired of hearing about it."

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Feeling the Pain

"600 Words" by Esther J Cepeda

If you live in Chicago, or any other world-class city like New York or LA, you have a unique civic pride, a knowing that wherever your travels may take you – the South Pole, New Guinea, or Beijing – anyone you bump into will know where you’re from.

Rarely do you encounter someone in Guam who will respond to “I’m from Chicago” with “Oh, isn’t that where the schoolchildren get killed on their way to school?”

That doesn’t make it any less true.

The harsh reality is that thirty-four Chicago Public School children died violently in 2007, at least that many are gone so far this year, and we haven’t even begun to imagine how many more will be claimed by New Year’s eve.

The million dollar question is what to do about it. Everything has been put on the table: SWAT teams have been deployed, gun laws proposed, anti-violence curriculum put in schools, even trained ex-gang members have trickled into the streets to help “mediate” turf battles. But no silver bullet, if you’ll pardon the pun, has put a dent in the tensions roiling neighborhoods all over Chicago.

The politicians and the church leaders have had their say about what it will take to end the carnage. Look at “Letters to the Editor” pages in Chicago you’ll see the general public weighing in, mostly heaping blame on “careless parents.” They’ve all got good points, we’ve heard them all before.

Since innovative solutions are in order, I thought I’d ask for one from a different kind of expert. I called up Marco Marsen, aka the “Billion Dollar Problem Solver,” a marketing wiz for the likes of myriad successful corporations, “one of America’s top Out-of-the-Box thinkers,” and author of “Why We Haven't Won the Wars on Poverty, Drugs or Terror" to get a different take on things.

Now don’t get too excited, he didn’t have “an answer,” but did throw out the beginning of one. It goes a little something like this: we need to start caring.

“We’re all in this together,” he told me recently, while on tour for his new book The Lion’s Way. “But the people who live in poverty, the people who don’t have health care and have to choose between getting a tooth treated and paying the rent – they’ve been forgotten.”

“Whether you like it or not, the people who are pulling the triggers are the victims of all the failings of us as a society,” he says, “The feeling of ‘I don’t have any choices so I’m going to take matters into my own hands’ is what’s driving this.”

Marco thinks we Americans – who claim to live in the greatest country in the world –

consider those who lash out in our inequitable society a problem we have no part or responsibility in.

And he’s right. How many of us have thought: “‘I’m’ never part of the problem, so ‘I’ can never be part of the solution.”

We’re all worried about our wallets and the economy, but not overly concerned about who dies in the “bad parts of the city.” Its human nature: the gas tank bill is in your face, while dead children on the 6 o’clock news is sad, but doesn’t affect your life past the sound-byte. Unless you live in those “bad parts” of the city, that is.

The actual impact of what happens in those “bad parts” affects us as members of our society in immeasurable ways – spiritual, emotional, economic – that message just hasn’t hit home yet.

“I don’t blame people – why would anyone want to feel the pain?” Marco says, “But at the end of the day, we’re all in this together.”

From the Billion Dollar Problem Solver: not an “answer,” just the beginning of one: we need to start feeling the pain.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com