The lead-up to Tuesday’s election was not unlike elephants procreating. It was done in high places with a lot of bellowing, and it will take 22 months to get a result. Today, Thursday, two days after the election, we still don’t know all the results that matter. However, I was nervous that Tuesday could have been the beginning of the end for our democracy. My hope, however, is that it was the end of the beginning of a great nation’s search to find itself and positively move forward for the betterment of all.

Did you vote? If you did, thank you because you affirmed your participatory duty. But if you didn’t vote, shame on you and please take a seat, be quiet and listen to those who did vote as you forfeited your right to comment or complain.

In my state, Colorado, the easiest way to vote is by mail. Did I worry that somehow, some nefarious individual or groups of individuals would steal my vote or convert it via machine or otherwise to candidates or causes for which I did not vote? Not in the least. I trust the system and the people who are charged with administering the one sacred thing in our democracy that perpetuates the system we love.

Am I in the trusting minority and is my trust misplaced? It may seem so with all the public, private and social media attention not to mention protests in the name of distrusting the vote. While those who are bleating that the last election was stolen and thus invalid may be vocal, they are as a group a distinct minority amongst the total electorate. However, we must forge a cure for this cacophonous distrust as it has become a significant societal problem.

I am saddened by it all, and in trying to figure out what to do about the distrust, I began to ponder what businesses in the US, who may not be high on the trust scale, could do to help solve the problem. More specifically, what could those of us in the meat and poultry industry do, if anything, with our majority minority immigrant work force? Our industry in total accounts for $1.02 trillion in total economic output, or 5.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), according to a new economic impact analysis conducted by New York-based John Dunham & Associates for the North American Meat Institute (NAMI).

With such an impact, are we not obligated to contribute to our society’s perpetuation by educating its participants? Or, as I have said in this space before, does our industry’s obligation extend no further than demanding that government defend our shores, deliver the mail and stay the hell out of our business? I would now argue that our industry’s impact is significant enough to demand that we at least attempt to help solve the distrust issue.

But what can we do? I think that first and foremost our industry’s members should initiate programs to educate our employees on the rights and obligations of citizens in our society, AKA a basic treatise on civics that would be funded by each individual meat and poultry company. That education shouldn’t be confined to the immigrant on-the-line employees since we employ so many but also others from the top of the house down. The distrust I speak of may not be just the parochial view of a few in our companies but may be held by individuals dispersed throughout a company. A civics education can illuminate how such distrust degrades a democracy and provides a light to help dispel distrust.

Similarly, I started a voluntary program of English as a second language in a meat company I was managing. I was surprised at the turnout from many who spoke little or no English. This education helped them better integrate into our society.

I think a basic civics education, which is sorely lacking from our public education curriculum, perpetuates the ability for all citizens to understand the essential principles of our democracy and how a citizen’s participation is a fundamental tenet. In fact, we all may need such a refresher course.

Do we join the distrusting naysayers causing our society’s deteriorating decay or sit on the sidelines and watch our democracy implode. Or do we take the education action step to dispel the distrust?

Elephants making love

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