Unbearable

 

It's an established fact that road trips can be good for the soul (the body is another question) and that COVID has played hell with road trips for the last few years. So I was glad to take a good one this week with some remarkable women from West Virginia. 

Styling themselves "momma bears," they came to Washington to make their voices heard on the need to preserve the expanded Child Tax Credit, which ended Dec. 15. Previously, they tried about everything they could think of. This time around they went for an unusual visual effect. 

To wit, teddy bears. Five hundred to be exact, with each bear symbolizing 1,000 West Virginia kids who will be pushed back into poverty unless the credit is renewed. The moms told their stories, then spent the rest of the day talking with congressional staff about the issue. Here's some coverage from the Washington Post and Huffington Post and here's a video of the event.

The teddy bear event was also the start of a national effort to encourage allies to connect with the "unbearable" campaign and start making noise on social media. It can be as easy as posting or tweeting about the credit with a message as simple "Make childhood bearable again" and using the hashtag #unbearable.

It's far from a certainty, but there's still the chance to get the Child Tax Credit across the line at some point.  Let's just hope not too many kids and families get hurt before that happens.

(I should warn the reader, however, that our experience is that once one goes down this path, it's almost impossible to avoid making cheesy bear puns. And if you add Spanish, there are "oso" many more.)