UNDERSTANDING POVERTY

We take so much for granted. Like a simple trip to the grocery store or the beauty parlor. The simple purchase of shampoo, toothpaste, or even toilet paper is an insurmountable mountain to the poor. We walk to the bathroom for a bath and take for granted that water, warm and comforting will come from the faucet. Then, when we are all comfortable, we walk to a refrigerator filled with our favorite foods. There is no standing in line in our kitchen! We just go to the store and buy it.

Of course the economic crisis we face today makes some of those things harder for us to get, still we do get them. Maybe we cut back to some degree; by going to McDonald's instead of the steak house but still we go out. The vision we have of the poor is the lazy, uneducated man or woman, who is possibly mentally ill. The truth is often the opposite. The poor actually are people like you and me. They are people who for one reason or another lost their job. The jobs they had have been shipped overseas or given to illegals. They are old men and women who have no retirement, or who suffer from dementia. They are thrown away like so much rubbish. They sit on the cold ground, unseen and ignored. They were someones mother, and someones father and now they are thrown away. The system can't afford them, shelters are too full of them and families have deserted them!

They are servicemen from every war we've fought. They are Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. They have medals, uniforms and pictures of glory days gone by. They were wounded in harsh battles that broke their bodies and their minds. They lay in fox holes in the rain, with a rifle in their hand dreaming of the day they would come home.

They've come home to sleep on streets, with even less to eat than in the jungles around the world. They got out of the fox holes to lay on cement shivering in the cold, alone!

The poor are lawyers, nurses, sailors, and marines. Poverty doesn't discriminate against color or education. Poverty doesn't mind that you are a child whose family lost their home. Poverty steals your hope and destroys your dreams. Poverty breaks the heart and stifles the spirit. Theres death in the eyes of children with out hope. The mind can't comprehend the loss of everything. They have no soap, no shampoo, and many have no blankets. They are herded into shelters to get them off the streets. The local folks feel threatened by the sight of them. They are like refuse shoveled into cans, hidden out of sight to save the view.

They have hearts and they love. They have memories, and treasures! They have lives worth living. They have a right to life like polar bears and kitty cats. Animal activists cry for animals. Where are the cries for human beings? Who will speak up for the poor, disabled, and downtrodden?

When the Congress and Senate vote on January 1st 2009 to raise their pay - will anyone speak up? When they cut entitlement programs that feed children, help the veteran, and house the aged - will anyone speak up for them?
The simple basic human rights that we demand in other countries - we neglect! We send envoys to watch other governments treatment of its people and we cut funding for the basic needs of people who can not provide it for themselves. We are so willing to send billions of dollars overseas to refugees of war, earthquakes and famine; yet our streets are filled with refugees. These are not foreign refugees. They are American Refugees!