There is a story about a young woman named Yara. Yara worked for the city of Franklin in the clerk’s office. During election season, she worked mainly on elections, and during the rest of the year, other things, including staffing the “input line,” the main telephone interface with the public.
One fine June morning she left her house in a quiet cul-de-sac walking distance from City Hall. It was actually her parent’s house; she was living with them until she saved up enough money to move to the Boston area, where she had deferred admission to a graduate program in public policy. Her passion was to work for the government, because she believed public service to be her calling, and she believed in good government. This was something she picked up from her grandfather, who had been a civil servant in Iran; he was an honest government worker, who believed in the elusive concept of democracy. Thus his removal to the united States decades earlier.
Anyway, Yara headed out towards work and as she passed by two side-by-side homes near the corner, the shuddered a bit, thinking about the occupants. They were known to her as MAGA people. One of the residents, a man in his 50s, had one time let himself into Yara’s home while the family was eating dinner, to tell them what the #BLM sign they had just put out on their lawn really means. About how it was racist, and all lives actually matter. And so on.
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