9/11 Memorial Police Car Misses the Point

The tenth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001 is almost upon us.  There will be much focus on that awful day with multiple tributes and retrospectives.  Locally, it began nearly six months ago when, in May, a suburb unveiled its 9/11 squad car (http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20110526/news/705269895/).  The burning twin towers are on its hood, an American flag represented on its doors.

What are we saying when we spend thousands on a special squad car that lists the names of the dead and nothing on the affected human beings who are still with us and need our help?  What about the families of those who were killed? What about the survivors who are disabled or jobless?  What about the thousands of wounded soldiers returning home from a war that began on 9/11?  

September 11, 2001 was dreadful.  Like Pearl Harbor for the generations before us, 9/11 influences how we perceive and respond to the world around us. 

Nearly ten years have passed since that day.  What happens this year on that date will say much about who we are as individuals and as a country.  Will we focus on the loss or the gain?  Will those who died on 9/11 be proud of us or embarrassed by us?  How would they feel about what we say, think, and do all these years later?

The Discovery Channel recently aired a program about rebuilding at Ground Zero. One of the commercials urged me to donate funds to first responder charities. I couldn’t help thinking about all the money being spent on memorials around the country and wondering if those funds could be better used by the people most impacted by the attacks.

I fully support commemorating those who lost their lives on September 11. May the memorials and monuments do them justice.  As you watch the programs or read articles about that day, give some thought to what is being said.  Are we honoring the living or just the dead?

It’s about communicating.  Does a painted squad car send the right message?

Debt Crisis Accord

The debt crisis, the potential for default, and the last-minute compromise were the hot items on the news and talk shows for weeks.  Buried in all that were lessons to be learned that have nothing to do with world finance or economics. 

Remember, I do not take political sides.  I look at how the message is delivered and how we react to it.  We would do well to consider the communication, or lack thereof, that we recently witnessed.

At a recent party, a Democratic friend voiced an idea for saving billions while at the same time addressing the drug problem and the immigration problem.  The Republicans there loved it.  It was a good idea. It was logical; it made sense.  It solved four problems simultaneously.

I have friends who are Republicans and I have friends who are Democrats.  As I spoke to them, taking my own unofficial poll, I found they agree on most major points regarding the debt ceiling and the budget crisis.  If they are in accord, how can their representatives in Congress not be? 

Was this a case of poor communication?  Is there some other way the electorate should be telling their representatives what they want? 

Perhaps the root of the problem is buried in the word “representative.”  Its definition, from Merriam-Webster.com, is [emphasis mine]:

1. Serving to represent

2.a : standing or acting for another especially through delegated authority b : of, based on, or constituting a government in which the many are represented by persons chosen from among them usually by election

We do not live in a true democracy where everything is put to a vote and decided upon by the citizens. We live in a republic.  We select people to represent us.  Those individuals are acting for us, not for themselves – according to the definition above.  And that must be the point of the communication breakdown.  Either we or they do not understand what it means to represent. 

I sure hope that gets resolved or it won’t matter how good the communication is.

Storm Stories

If you watched the news or The Weather Channel last night, you probably saw that fierce storms rolled through the Chicago area around 8:30.  They were impressive storms: the wind picked up a full-sized jet at O'Hare airport and moved it thirty feet.  Three tornados were sighted and a big chunk of the north suburban area was under an official tornado warning.

This blog, however, is not about the weather.  It is about communication.  The citizens of northern Illinois needed it last night and, in many cases, we didn't get it.

Channel 20 (a PBS station), alerted its viewers to the issuance of a tornado warning. However, the station switched to the Emergency Broadcast System, which our Comcast cable box promptly locked out, making the information unreadable. We had to turn the television off and then back on to get to another station to find out if the warning applied to our area.  We found two stations (Channels 2-CBS and 5-NBC) had their weathermen delivering reports but we missed most of it because we had been forced to "reboot" the TV.  And the radio was no help. We tried two stations and learned the Cubs game was delayed. Nothing was said about the tornado warning during the time we listened.

Back to the television.  As soon as CBS and NBC delivered the weather report, both stations returned to network programming.  One station, which continually brags about the amount of money it spends on weather instrumentation, had no live reports during any of the times we left The Weather Channel to check local station coverage. This is not the fault of the weather people who work for the stations.  The decision to interrupt regular programming is made by management and management obviously decided that commerical revenue was more important than alerting Chicagoans of impending bad weather.

Suffice it to say that Chicago was very lucky last night because it escaped a castatrophe.  Since the local stations didn't think the storm was important, no one else did either.  Imagine leaving fans in their seats at the ball park or seated outside at an open-air concert when 80-mile an hour winds were about to hit them.  How irresponsible can you get? 

So, thank you, Channel 20 for taking the warnings seriously.  And thank you Weather Channel for your coverage last night. We would not have known what was coming or what to expect had it not been for you understanding how dangerous that storm could be.  You communicated: efficiently, effectively, and continously.