If You Had Five Minutes With the President

5 Minutes 55+ Personalities 1 President

Edited and with a foreword by Ron Reagan

©2004 Harper Entertainment

Essay by Garland Jeffreys

I distrust political parties with all my heart and am sickened by how much money is spent in the support of the election of politicians who in the end ignore the real needs of Americans.  Elections are an opportunity for the people to vote for true public servants.  Yet it seems to me that politicians don’t really have much to do with regular people.  They appear to be more interested in taking care of their own.  The tax cuts that have been instituted, for example, are clearly a benefit to the privileged.

If I were going to sit down with the president, I’d ask him or her to demonstrate that he or she really cares about people in this country as opposed to just paying lip service to the idea of caring.  What would really be the evidence?  To finally do something about health care.  It is just an outrageous thing that in a country of so much wealth there are more than fifty million people without health insurance.

As for world events, the idiocy of this intervention in Iraq has cost us an incredible amount of money and human life on both sides.  It is simply insane when you think of all the money that is now unavailable for services that are truly helpful to people in need in America.

We are still separated by race and religion.  We have not repaired the past, and we’re still divided by prejudice that threatens our future.  I want a president who will truly stand, in word and deed, for the dream of every American: equal rights for one and all.

Real, honest and forthright actions programs for education (ones that are, yes, about money) are in order.  We should pay teachers what they are worth.  We must make teaching a career that appeals to the talented, committed and visionary among us who can make such a huge difference in our children’s lives.  I was once a teacher in elementary school.  I could see the roots of dysfunction right there in front of me—kids with bruises, kids with too much on their minds about what was going on at home, kids who were hungry, poorly dressed, coming from chaos.

If we really were in fact paying attention to the people of our country, we would not only not miss these problems, but would be determined to do all that we could to eliminate them.  And then we might think twice about educating the rest of the world to our way of life.  Let’s share the wealth of wisdom here at home; let’s make life better for all Americans first.
Garland Jeffreys’ thoughtful, passionate songs mix rock and roll, reggae, soul, garage, doo-wop and Latin influences to create a deeply personal hybrid that reflects his own multiethnic roots.  A New York native and an icon of the music scene for the last thirty-five years, Garland is presently working on several new recordings.