Thursday, July 12, 2007

Too poor to stay, too poor to move

“I was born poor; I’m probably going to die poor; and before the storm came through I was doing pretty good,” Ms. Anderson said. She and Mr. Evans paid $325 a month for half a duplex in the Uptown section of New Orleans, with “a little porch watching the laundrymat,” she said, “and a backyard.” The streetcar took her right to her job at the Columns, an elegant 1883 hotel in the Garden District. Mr. Evans built cabinets and countertops.

Now they live in a monochrome apartment complex. An empty swimming pool bakes in the Memphis heat, and frayed ropes dangle where the swings should be. FEMA pays the rent. Their social life consists of church on Sundays. For the first time in their lives, they are on food stamps, and to make them stretch, Ms. Anderson shuns the nearby Kroger in favor of a distant Save-a-Lot. Without a car, she trudges home from the bus stop with frozen turkey legs in a canvas bag over one shoulder."

All this couple wants to do is work for a living wage. How dare they?

This is the America we dare not face or talk about. These people were poor in a community that poor educationally and economically. For years they managed to make a life for themselves. Onethat many of us can't even begin to wrap our brain around.

But instead employers will import/exploit immigrant labor. Is this the cornerstone of our repbublic?

Alexander H. Stephens one opined "the democracy's worst defect, demagogues rousing the poor against the rich, never occurred where the poor were nonvoting slaves"

Furthermore, black serviles SPARED WHITE CITIZENS FROM DEGRADED MENIAL WORK.

Sound familiar?


Who was Alexander H. Stephens? The Confederacy's Vice President.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The rich in this country are becoming more and more arrogant, certain of their superiority and equally certain that the poor are lazy complainers who deserve their plight. This must change. It can either change peacefully through political change or it can change in violence when enough poor reach the point where they have nothing left to lose. We have got to make this our number 2 priority in 2008 (ending the war #1).