The Beatles (in "Hey Jude") sang "don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better”, but if you want to take a good thing and make it worse, leave it to the State of California. I was thinking of making things better when I attended the State Departments training for the Cesar Chavez Day of Service event. Ben Luna led us in an inspirational round of De Colores and then delivered a presentation on the ten core teachings of Cesar Chavez (thoughtfully identified by the late Mr. Chavez’s grandchildren).
As he talked, I remembered back to my childhood when my mother would not let us buy grapes. As a child I was miserable, not understanding. But I did understand that we were doing it for a good reason and I was proud of mom for standing up for what she believed. Even if I did have to have an another summer without grapes. We then broke into small groups and were coached in the virtues of “Service Learning”. All in all, a nice beginning.
But then they broke out the board game: Cesar Chavez Bingo. That is when things began to go bad. When you did achieve the rare pleasure of winning a round of Cesar Chavez Bingo, you were to stand up and shout “¡Si Se Puede!” The organizers hadn’t given a lot of thought to the process, because in the crowd of 200 attendees, every ten of us had the same color card, which meant that at any one bingo, 20 winners began shouting and elbowing and violating at least of one of the ten Cesar Chavez values. Who won? In the end we all ended up with little Halloween candies as a prize. Everyone won, and no one was happy. Then we broke for lunch.
On coming back we had a session on spending. Some costs were allowed with government funding, and some costs, alas, were not allowed. We were allowed to purchase food, IF the food was for volunteers involved in heavy labor. We weren’t allowed to purchase food if it was for snacks for the staff at a planning meeting. These are the kind of nuances that keep accountants like me employed. We don’t like them, but we live with them.
We aren’t allowed to pay for the cost of a grant writer, we aren’t allowed to pay for lobbying for a local politician, we aren’t allowed to buy t-shirts (unless they’re educational). But then came the clincher. Specifically disallowed by the State is the cost of union organizing, protesting, and organizing a march! I’ll hand it to him, at least Ben Luna begged our forgiveness and reassured us that we should support the cause but that we just couldn’t do it with government dollars. I just couldn’t help thinking that Cesar was probably rolling over in his grave when he heard that one.
Can our government mess up even a sure thing? ¡Si Se Puede!
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