More of us need to 'give a damn'

I have been thinking a lot about Kitty Genovese recently.

Genovese, who was murdered in March 1964 in New York City, was the case that told us something about ourselves that we really didn't want to know. Thirty-seven of her neighbors either heard her screams or saw her being beaten to death from their apartment windows, and not one of them called the police.

Some said they thought someone else would already have called, some just didn't bother. The consensus among them was that they didn't want to get involved.

I was 14 when it happened, living in a nice safe Virginia suburb. I remember that I was one of those people thinking what a cold, terrible place New York City must be.

I know that five years later filmmaker John Schlesinger made a similar point in his film "Midnight Cowboy" when he showed a dead homeless man on the sidewalk and no one even stopping to look at him.

For a few brief years, a movement grew out of the Genovese slaying. People wore buttons that said "Give a damn," and a group called Spanky and Our Gang had a minor hit with a record of the same name.

It was an interesting idea, one that seemed much stranger to many people than it should have. Give a damn about your fellow man, as if caring -- and giving -- could really make a difference in the world.

Some folks don't, you know.

Give a damn, that is.

Some folks don't give a damn whether the people around them live or die, and there's nothing political about it. You don't have to be liberal or conservative to be a jerk, just as you don't have to be liberal or conservative to be a mensch.

All you have to do is care.

For all the things I say about politics, for whatever praise I give Barack ObamaBarack Obama, I'm actually pretty well fed up with our political system. I think it's broken and it might be beyond repair, a machine flooded with money that isn't really liberal or conservative.

What our government does better than anything else is protect wealth.

It doesn't do much for people except get in their way.

When was the last time you were really happy with the people running things in Washington? I honestly can't remember. Conservatives might say during the Ronald ReaganRonald Reagan years, but I know a lot of my conservative friends were upset Reagan talked a good game but didn't do much about issues that really mattered to them.

Liberals might say Bill ClintonBill Clinton, but I was so disgusted with Clinton in 1999 that I actually wrote in my newspaper column that he should resign or be impeached.

There are good, caring people on both sides of the political spectrum, and I think most of them have one thing in common. They don't sit around waiting for the government to solve problems. They pitch in themselves, giving of their time and their money.

My sister volunteers almost full time in her sons' school system. Budget cuts have strapped education in her part of Massachusetts, and she fights politically too. But she doesn't just complain -- she works.

I know conservatives who do the same thing, some of them volunteering in hospitals and others in homeless shelters.

I know not everyone has time to do this, and some people give money instead. Others work for political change to get what they want, but I think people are beginning to see one thing.

Politics is the least effective way to change things for the better.

It's the least effective way to give a damn.