on being poor Every day is a struggle, as it is for millions of other Americans whose spending power and opportunities for advancement continue to diminish as wealth explodes for the very few rich
12 ColdType | September 2014
American lives, hundreds of thousands of casualties, on a campaign to liberate Iraq, which netted absolutely nothing – zero – favorable for the US, except perhaps for the gun runners and arms traders. Iraq is lost, so are the trillions that we paid to save it as our own ship took on water and began to sink. Could we not have saved some of that money and those human lives to grow our businesses here at home, aid homeless children, improve education, build a universal healthcare system? Create new infrastructure for water and food transport, storage, and interstate commerce? Instead, we literally blew it all up in smoke, gave billions in aid and support to a bunch of jackals, who in turn, lost it to even worse jackals. None of what we spent there has helped us here. Yet, we continue to feed the war machine while millions of children in the US go hungry every day. That offends me. I know well the shame of not having enough, of driving a car or truck with late registration or no auto insurance or in need of repair, of asking for advances on my paycheck to cover food or gas, and the gratitude of accepting gifts from family and friends for things I can’t afford, like a new car or computer. I’m not financially independent and, thankfully, I’m not homeless. Yet, every day is a struggle, as it is for millions of other Americans whose spending power and opportunities for advancement continue to diminish as wealth explodes for the very few rich, those 400 Americans, for example, whose combined wealth equals that of 150 million people, half the nation’s population. For years, I’ve been told that people in America who can’t support themselves or their families, who live in hovels, or motels, in cars and trucks and dilapidated squeaky campers, who sleep in fields and under freeway overpasses, who scratch for every scrap of food they can find, are losers, lacking dis-
cipline, drug addicts looking for a fix, slackers who don’t want to work, lazy bums who only want to drink beer and watch TV. I don’t believe that, not any more. When I see homelessness and poverty in the US, I think of the greed on Wall Street, the graft and corruption in government, and the indifference of global corporations to create jobs at home. Sure, there are plenty individuals who would be on hard times no matter what condition the economy, or the potential and opportunities to improve their lives. We’d likely be stuck on the ropes, fighting for our lives, no matter how many openings to get the upper hand. Some of us simply don’t get it. We are among the hapless poor who need compassion, guidance, coaching, a friend or mentor to show us the way out, who from their vantage point outside the ring can shout encouragement and cheer us on. But we don’t live in such a world. This culture of capital-driven incentives, which breeds more greed, exalts the mean and nasty, the money-hungry, the war mongers and wealthy peddlers of cheap goods and services, where compassion for the lowly doesn’t exist, which explains why we can spend billions of dollars on war craft but are at a loss how to aid the disadvantaged in the U.S. The shame associated with poverty belongs more to those who rob the poor and blame them for all that’s wrong. The more homelessness and child poverty, the more shame to those who hoard their wealth. All that comes to mind, when I think of it, are the French Revolution and peasants who tear down the ramparts and bring to ruin the elite, the effete aristocracy, who would let the poor eat cake rather than deign to show compassion; and the biblical lament, “Woe to you who hoard your riches and refuse to hear the cry of the poor!” CT Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice. Warde blogs at http://theroguevoice.com