On being picked as one of the "100 Most Influential People of Orange County" in 2019

I'm very honored to find myself on your list of the 100 Most Influential People of Orange County of 2019 for my time trying to defend the fundamental dignity of those people, men, women and children in our county who find themselves reduced to living on our streets.

If I am on then on this list, let’s see then if we can change then the discourse and more importantly _the power dynamics_ in our county in the coming year so that THE FUNDAMENTAL HUMANITY of EVERYONE could be respected. Rabbi Nico Sokolovsky of Fullerton's Temple Beth Tikvah was absolutely right when he said recently (Nov 5, 2019) a Fullerton City Council Meeting that when people already reduced to living on the streets are being forced off the streets (and to no-where ...) then we have not merely a homeless crisis but a moral one.

So we have to simply end the erasure or fundamental degradation of people around us. And here all kinds of people are honestly threatened:

FOR INSTANCE, (1) what happened to Katie Brazer at the last OC BOS meeting where she was gaveled down TWICE when she simply tried to tell them the story of her father who died homeless on the streets this past year SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. https://youtu.be/R9NVzl5u7Nc / https://youtu.be/O4wOCITgQ9o / https://youtu.be/duRXaFEFAfc

And (2) neither should there be Swastikas painted by synagogues anymore nor used to intimidate Jewish parents and school children, nor above all THEIR REVERED HOLOCAUST SURVIVING grandparents and great grandparents be intimidated by this stupid, thuggish “copycat / wannabe” evil. (The largest number of hate crimes and incidents in Orange County are actually _still_ perpetuated against our Jewish community (2018 OC Human Relations Committee Hate Crimes Report, pg 7). Honestly, HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? Have we learned NOTHING since the Nazi Era of the 1930s-40s?)

Nor (3) should smiling, rosary praying Mexican-Salvadoran-etc born grandmothers be threatened with deportation nor their cute-as-can be grandchildren be worried that their smiling abuelitas or “make the best tamales _in the whole world_" tias (it’s Navidad time…) be “taken away” from them.

And (4) it should be seen as a tragedy that American-born Iranian-American grandchildren can’t see their still in Tehran residing grandmothers here now either.

The last two items of course at least in part "beyond the power" our county but we should see how fundamentally counter-productive it is to keep little kids from seeing / learning from their grandparents, much less watch them being _ripped away from them_. The result can not but be a bad remembrance of this country (that's supposed to be a shining beacon of freedom / hope) in the hearts and minds of those children as they grow up.

At its core, we must bring an end to the politics of status “I’m more important than you” / “I _deserve_ to be more important than you.” And if we don't we certainly will _deserve_ what we sow.

Let’s see if we can make Orange County, yes, a "kinder, gentler place" in the coming year where everyone is given the fundamental respect that is their (and all of our) due.

The Golden Rule "Do onto others as you would want them to do onto you" is the fundamental basis of every religious system that has ever existed. Let's heed that wisdom of our common humanity and past.