Rebecca Marino Heckman offline

feministabarista

Bexley, Ohio, United States

Starbucks Partner

http://www.myspace.com/beckymarino
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/b/597/498

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About me

Community to me is about being a good steward of the people and the space that you have a stake in- that is to say, those things of which you are a consumer or a benefactor. I think its a fallacy that some people do not consider themselves to be responsible for the planet, and yet it is the health of our water and air and land which sustain us on a very basic level as human beings.  Too often I find, people neglect or are ambivalent to the very things which their life depends upon.

I also find it sad that some people consider their community to start and end at their own front door.  Too often I think that the really daunting 'big' problems of our age, like education for so called'under-performing' youth, things like street violence, or racism, domestic abuse, and sexual assualt coud be addressed in a big way by simply lowering the all-too-often self imposed barriers which divide us from one another. 

I believe in a society where we know our neighbors and take ownership for what happens in our own back yard- where people look out for one another... 

Call me an idealist, but I just am sick of writing off so many of the challenges which divide and degrade our communities as lost causes when together in small groups people helping people is what delivered us all to the world we have today. 

I think each of us owe a little debt of gratitude to those who stood on picket lines, and who protested, and who were persecuted and who truly suffered so that someday we could vote, and go to school, and work, and so that we could enjoy the many gifts of freedom and equality which they in their lives were unjustly denied.  

I think the debt we owe to "the great ones"; the Martin-Luther King Jr.s, and Ghandi's, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's, and the like, is simply to pay it forward- to invest a little time and elbow grease if need be to make it better for the next of us....

and I don't care if that sounds cheesy- that's what I'll try to do so long as I'm around to enjoy this planet.

Specifically, I am passionately involved as a rape crisis advocate in Columbus Ohio, serving the community on Columbus' own rape crisis helpline.  I also serve on the Community board of Children's Hunger Alliance, and actively support the Girl Scouts,  Seal of Ohio Chapter, and the Marion-Franklin High School Theater Company in inner-city Columbus .   

tags

• womens-rights
• aids-prevention
• environment
• poverty
• theater
• literacy
• animal-welfare
• sustainable-agriculture

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