The Vision

Let me describe to you a scenario that is an everyday occurrence in our life. I need you to use your power to visualize the following scenes.

Picture a young woman standing with three small children hanging on to her dress and peering around her. She sees the three following settings:

Setting 1 - An angry man scowling at her with fists doubled up ready to strike her. Behind him is a dormitory type room with food and clothing. A woman’s shelter, if you will. To get there she has to take a brutal beating, but if she makes it, she has assurance she and her three children may be able to live in the cramped quarters, but safely. That assumes there is room for them. If not, she may have to return home and take another beating, or go on the streets to join the homeless ranks with her three children.
Setting 2 - An angry man with a scowling face, with fists doubled up standing by a casket accompanied by the three children, looking at their mother in the casket.
Setting 3 - A community of people, all are greeting her and the angry man. Her children are with them and they are all working together with the people from the community. The people are holding out Domestic Violence Prevention programs and welcoming them to join them, and work out the problems surrounding the little family, there are employers, clergy, law enforcement, school administrators and other members of the community.

Off to the side stands a well-dressed man with a handful of dollars and he is trying to decide if he should give the money to the shelter or the community prevention group. In the prevention program scenario, all of the families are being cared for, not just the half as in the dormitory setting and no beating is required.

Given a choice which do you think the woman would choose?

Which does the rich man choose? Every single time he chooses the shelter, leaving the woman and children to weep and suffer.

Daily large corporations are opting for Setting One and Two, and totally denying funds to option three. Just last Friday, Boeing made that exact choice. The Friday before that, Salt River Project made the same decision.

Domestic Violence prevention is just not on the list of things to donate money to. It is too hard to quantify the results. Corporations must fear there is not enough instant gratification and recognition in donating to prevention.

John says: Nothing is real to you until you experience it; until then it is just hearsay.

No Money for Prevention

After the first three or four lines you will say, "Oh no! John is on his high horse, again!" As I sit and ponder the attitudes around us I marvel that we, as a nation are not further in the tank that we are today. Now, let me preface my remarks by saying that I realize that businesses and individuals only have a finite amount of discretionary time and money. I may wish it were not so, but, that is life.

Where am I going with this? Let me tell you, it is a Fix the Hurt issue. It deals with a long time sore subject and extremely constipated thinking. If I were a follower of the tightly bound, myopic thinking I would propose to the chief of police in every jurisdiction that we pull all of the patrol officers off the street and just wait until they get a call that a crime has been committed! Then respond. Why in the world cruise around trying to prevent crime? You cannot count the number of crimes that you prevented.

I would also propose that we stop all efforts to find a preventative cure for breast cancer and the myriad of other diseases that we spend money doing research on. Just wait until they contract the disease and try and treat them. That way you can count the number that you could not save. This way you cannot quantify the numbers that do not contract the disease from your efforts.

My big fear is that the closed minded, short sighted people will someday have the brilliant idea to overhaul the school system and decide that we do not need to do anything to prevent ignorance.

Okay, okay, I am talking about large corporations that have made the decision that they are only going to fund the service portion of the domestic violence efforts. What does that mean? It means they do not care a whit about whether a victim gets beaten or not. If they go to the shelter these mind bound folks will donate to that effort, but only about enough to take care of half of the victims. The rest will be turned away because of the lack of funds to care for as many as there are. When the victim is sorrowfully turned away by the angels at the shelter, they will either return to the home where they are abused and take the beating for leaving, or they will become homeless and that is another group of angels duty to care for.

Fix the Hurt is one of the few truly Domestic Violence Prevention groups around, because there are no funds to support that effort. Recently, we requested funds from Salt River Project and were quite rudely told that they only support service related efforts. This was not a real surprise, even though disappointing, that yet another community leader was had cranial constipation. We asked if they would consider allowing one of their people to serve on the Fix the Hurt Board of Directors. The hope was that we would get some expertise on the board which would be useful and, at the same time ,they would see the impact of the prevention programs. We were told just as rudely that they only suggested their people serve on the Boards of organizations they supported financially. So we decided they had classified us pond scum and tried yet another effort. We asked if they would make a small donation to the upcoming fund raiser of the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Again the answer was given just as rudely, “No they are an advocacy group and we do not donate to advocacy groups”. Woah!! You mean it as against corporate policy at Salt River Project to be an advocate for victims of Domestic Violence?

At this point the decision was made that this group was not for much of anything according to their spokes woman.

John says: "If you think there is good in everybody, you haven’t met everybody."