Tolerance

The last few days, I worked through my bad feelings, my terrible cough, and bad feelings to get our Christmas Baskets. This morning, I feel like a mack truck ran over me. LOL

HOWEVER, I feel so good this morning knowing that I live in a community where there are those that will go out of their way to make sure that their neighbors are okay.

Mount Rainier, MD has remarkable residents and former residents. Great business partners and a concerned and involved faith-based community.

As I was leaving Rainier Manor yesterday, the resident manager wanted to know where could she send her check to help build funds for next year. She said that every year her residents in need could count on Thanksgiving and Christmas for being remembered by the City.

The words that struck a cord with me was "being remembered." It is important to be remembered when you are old. It is important to be remembered when you are young. It is just important to be remembered. Just stop and listen to people talk about their past, and inevitably you will hear about who they remember.
This Christmas season, I remember the residents of Mount Rainier who believed in me enough a few years ago to make me their Mayor. For their vote of confidence, I will be forever grateful. Each year since my election, I have looked for ways to make each of us better, not just our buildings, our streets or our businesses -- but each of us.

I think we are better today. We have a caring community. We care about people, equality, and equity. We care about fairness, and we care about justice.

This holiday season, I am encouraged and excited as I look toward 2017 to see how we (Mount Rainians) are going to evolve further. We have honestly and openly started talking about what diversity means. I believe we all agree that Mount Rainier is diverse, so diversity is now a given in Mount Rainer.
More importantly, we have started a more serious conversation around inclusion. For years now, we have had a diverse community, but our community has not necessarily been about inclusion.

In past years, we have moved and operated in our circles without always asking "who is missing?" This past week, we asked that question and vowed to reach out to our apartment dwellers, to welcome the faith-based community, to include our neighbors that may look different than us, and yes, just to say hello to each other in passing.

Yes, folks, we decided we can beat a hundred even a thousand racists just by acting locally with the people in our community. There was even recognition that we might not all want to go to a fish fry, but some of us would, and that is okay.

The message is if you live in Mount Rainier, you are welcome here and will be treated with fairness, decency, and respect, and we expect the same from you when you are inside our border. Hopefully, it will spill over, but that is another step in the process.

Today, Mount Rainier acknowledges your right to exist and coexist with each other. We agree that we are stronger because you are here.

As we embrace Christmas and embrace the members of our community who celebrate Christmas let us also embrace Hanukkah (Chanukah) and the members of our community who also embrace Hanukkah (Chanukah), and yes, we encourage you to also embrace Kwanzaa and those who embrace Kwanzaa.
To do this does not mean that you must give up your beliefs. It does mean that must accept and be okay with the beliefs of others so long as they do not infringe on the rights of others. That is what America is all about.

My motto is to do unto others as I would want them to do unto me. Not a very hard concept.

Peace and blessings always, enjoy the holiday season!