Respect your Elders

How Elders Can Rebalance The World — A Jewish Magazine, an Interfaith Movement

When we started out virtually all of my friends said to me, “Barry, what are you doing? We have the critical issues of the day, and you are going to a nursing home every day? How do you justify using your talent, your capabilities, your time and energy, in a way that’s not related to the crucial issues of the day?” The reality, though, of nursing homes is that they are a microcosm of everything that needs repair in society. The major workforce is primarily the working poor. Typically, they are African Americans, Hispanics, Laotian, East Indians, Pakistanis, and poor white people. The homes reflect America’s priorities about healthcare. They reflect the inability of government to work effectively. The reimbursement system is driven by special interests, and regulation has been as much a part of the problem as of the solution. If you go up and down every single issue, from ageism to creating an environment that gets people well instead of making them sicker, you find them all in a nursing home.

Alter Barry Barkan has been helping elders in the Bay Area find their voice for over 30 years. In this article, he traces the activist angle of that work and points out where Elders might lead us.

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