total time: 16.08 minutes
total words: 2182
[Leming]: I'm going to go on to the sermon. I understand that a lot of the sermons at UU lately have gotten kind of... Yeah, we've been having audio issues all morning. A lot of the sermons at UU lately have gotten political. I'm a local politician, so it's not going to get any better. Sorry about that. Hopefully we can get off this topic eventually. Hello. Just to introduce myself again, my name's Matt Leming. I've been a member of this congregation since 2022. I'm a researcher at Mass General, a reservist, and I serve on the City Council of Medford. I was asked to do a sermon here a few months ago, and I thought for a long time about what I should talk about. And I figured that I should talk about something that I think about a lot. In the past year that I've been on City Council, there are a few topics that I keep meditating on. Income inequality was pretty embedded in a political campaign recently in which people voted to raise their own property taxes to prevent mass layoffs on the Medford public school system and invest in maintaining our infrastructure. An older woman in this congregation increases, even though she was on a very limited fixed income, because she knew it was the right thing to do for the next generation. Another thing I think about is land use, housing, where people can live. City Council is working on a historic rezoning initiative at the moment, which is foundational for any new growth, building, and commerce in Medford. And I think about the future. Last week, we passed an ordinance to make Medford into a sanctuary city to protect undocumented immigrants from the incoming administration. And all of that is very important work that I'm proud of, but it's also a bit dry and impersonal and good policy probably isn't what everyone is thinking about at the moment. about my job is people. So I'm going to talk about that. Being in elected office, especially at the local level, people come to me with all their hopes and all their frustrations. And it's a literal impossibility to please everyone. I learned that early on. Medford is a community of both long-time homeowners and renters, of multi-generational residents and relative newcomers, of the elderly and those with new families and those who just came here for a job in Boston. Geographically, it's placed between blue-collar communities, historically black neighborhoods, renter-heavy areas in South Medford, and some of the more high-class suburbs in the north. Historically, the Medford City Council was a pretty stagnant body, and I think I was elected in part because a majority of the city was frustrated with this and wanted change. And the vast majority of the people are very supportive of this. Older residents have been waiting decades to see it, and younger residents just like to see positive investments in their future. And other residents come to me with legitimate complaints, which we can have a productive two-way dialogue about. But many others wouldn't be satisfied with any particular action, and they're not satisfied with inaction, either. There's nothing I can do. Some of them just want to feel heard. There's some who are scared, some who are rabble-rousers, and I sat through my share of six-hour city council meetings At some level, it's healthiest for a person in my position to just ignore that and do what the majority of voters voted me in to do. And I tried. But I can't ignore it completely, because I do have some level of sympathy for them. And at the most practical level, I can't ignore the fact that this is not an effort-specific issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: They all vote.
[Leming]: And our country just reelected an autocrat who will be taking office tomorrow. So, I think it represents a bigger issue. During the tax override campaign, I spoke with a political activist who was more experienced than me and gave me his thoughts on these chronic naysayers. His interpretation was that they were mostly people who were lonely. They have a lot of time to post to the internet, and they don't have much going on, so they spend their days complaining about politics. In high school, I read a book by the psychologist Carl Jung called Man and His Symbols. In it, Jung said that people have an innate need for He talked about the mind requiring a sense of importance, just as our bodies need air or water. Some people feel important through their occupation. Some people feel important by supporting their friends and their community. Some feel their importance through expertise on a particular topic, and some feel important by being good parents. of importance from something real, we'll seek it elsewhere. He told a story in the book of a woman who had been abused and belittled by her husband for years and years before she had a complete mental breakdown. This woman was committed to a mental hospital, and in the hospital she woke up every morning and said that she had just had a baby. Having a child, Youngstead does offer a sense of importance This woman was made to feel so insignificant that eventually she got her sense of importance from delusions. Thought about that story a lot over the years. The last eight years, just like everyone else, I've been thinking about why Trump was elected in the first place. And anytime I think about it, my mind naturally goes back to something that my mother told me back in 2016. She said, Matt, most people go to work, go home, listen to the radio, go to sleep, and that's their lives. At some point, you just want to throw a brick through the window. Historically, people got their sense of importance through their community. When you're in a community, you have influence, you have support, and this was often found through unions, rotary clubs, Masonic lodges, churches, and so on, all of which have had steadily declining memberships for decades. Today, many, many people in the United States and the world feel isolated. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, a report from the Surgeon General said that about half of U.S. adults reported measurable levels of loneliness. One-person households have risen by 15% in the United States over the past 60 years. And back then, while 44% of people reported having dinner with their neighbors a few times a month, only 28% reported this in 2022. Unions used to provide a social fabric for blue-collar and rural communities, and union membership peaked in the United States in the 1940s and 50s before it saw a slow, decades-long decline. In 1983, when I assume they first started to record these statistics, 20% of U.S. workers were in a union, while only 10% were in in 2023. As community declines and individuals become increasingly isolated, many achieve their own sense of importance through outbursts, through anger, through conspiracy theories, ideas that make them believe they're the one with the real answers to life's problems. And it's very easy for bad actors to take advantage of this mindset, so we need to fight that. Been, uh, delayed with the audio all morning. During the, uh, tax overrun campaign that succeeded this past November, I helped coordinate a number of parents who wanted to see their children have better schools. I helped train them to talk to their neighbors, going door-to-door to meet others, and explain why these investments are so desperately needed. But I also saw the effects of, uh, disinformation A small group of developers and people with millions of dollars of property that they didn't want to pay more on. And older politicians who just don't like to see power mounted in this information campaign. And these weren't the people on a fixed income who I have a lot of sympathy for, but they did pretend to be. And this information had an effect on citing anger and division on the basis of nothing more than fabrications, But because of those parents who knocked on doors and contributed their time and effort, who talked in person to their neighbors, the measures passed. This isn't isolated to Medford, Asheville, North Carolina, the city where I lived and attended high school for six years. I was recently devastated by a hurricane. Dozens lost their lives and whole areas of the city were destroyed by flooding. My best friend's dad was nearly impaled by a tree that went through his living room wall. But when FEMA tried to send in aid workers, they were attacked by a few residents who had been told that these aid workers were part of a vast governmental conspiracy. On a personal level, I have nothing but empathy for people who feel isolated, outside, left behind, angry, lost, or just want someone to talk to. Growing up, I was a military brat, and I attended 13 schools in Virginia, California, Washington State, North Carolina. I don't think that I was mentally equipped at that age to be uprooted that often. I was the outsider. It doesn't feel good to be lonely, and being lonely makes one feel unimportant, and that can make a person act out. It was only later, through trial and error, that I learned how to build a community in new places and make friends, and that's why I value it so much today. When I first came to Medford, I didn't expect to stay for long with the economic situation my generation and coming generations face, we're always incentivized to uproot ourselves and move on, especially in a place as expensive as greater Boston. I became involved largely through this church in affordable housing work around Medford, and I learned just how many residents here wanted to make things better. This work brought me and a few other activists around to lobby the city council on affordable housing initiatives, and I quickly learned that while politicians can rarely make change happen by themselves, they can easily block it. So you do need good elected representatives sitting in those seats. Often, good people, even if they do have the time, energy, capacity, and mindset to run, are too busy doing other good things to run for public office, and that leaves a vacuum for the not-so-good people. So, even as a relative newcomer with very little money in the bank, I decided to try it out. Since that wrote, most of my job has been to battle the effects of misinformation. As a scientist, I try to reason with people who disagree with me, but what I've come to realize is that facts, logic, and data are not nearly as important for this as in-person social networks Most people form their views based on community, what their neighbors think, or these days, what they've read on whatever community they've been directed to on the internet. For all its historic problems in America, it used to be more social. And I don't want to make the mistake of looking at the past with rose-colored glasses. We're reminded tomorrow, in LK Day, that things used to be a lot worse for a lot of people than they are today. is verifiably true. And without this regular interaction, people can become isolated and vulnerable and easily taken advantage of by bad actors. If I had one critique of my generation, it's that we're a bit too picky about what we choose to be involved with. We're mistrustful of organizations in general these days. And I could be preaching to the choir here, telling this to the Unitarian Church, but don't be afraid to put your time into an organization, a church, volunteer group, social club, anything outside of work or the internet, even if it's imperfect. And if your neighbors are lonely or left out, bring them into the fold. They might accept the invitation, or they might not invite them. America is sharply divided right now. The next four years are not going to be a cakewalk. Everyone can do their part. Political activism, volunteering for an organization, or just talking to a neighbor if you need someone to talk to. Tomorrow, January 20th, will be the four-year, two-week anniversary of an insurrection in the U.S. Capitol. And what I like about it is, Justice Peter is the very man who incited that insurrection. But it will also celebrate the 96th year since the birth of the most important civil rights leader. And I'll conclude with a quote of his that I think fits this occasion. The line of progress is never straight. For a period, a movement may follow a straight line and encounters obstacles and paths bends. It's like curving around a mountain when you're approaching a city. Often it feels as though you're moving backwards and you lose sight of your goal, but in fact you are moving ahead, and soon you will see the city again closer by. Thank you for listening.
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total time: 16.08 minutes total words: 2182 |
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