It's sad that in a society so affluent that there are so many people without a place to stay, without anything to eat. I remember living in Boston, and seeing the mass amounts of homeless who fell asleep on church steps every night. I remember walking past them, quietly so as not to wake them, and wonder how they got there. I remember the people begging for my money in the subways. I also remember the man on the corner of my school, sitting on a milk crate, who shines shoes for a living, though I never saw him shine anyone's shoes.
I can't imagine the troubles that these people go through. I know (or at least hope) that if I ever got into a position like that, that my family would help me back up. But, the problem is, that poverty is cyclical. Most of the homeless we see grew up in a poor household, if there even was a household.
Charlie made a good point in his speech: we spend billions upon billions on our "national security", yet we still don't feel safe. It would take $30 billion to end WORLD hunger. We spend $540 billion on defense (http://www.borgenproject.org/Cost_of_Ending_Poverty.html)
We spend so much, and we still don't feel safe. Most of those people living in poverty, especially in such war-stricken places as Africa, will NEVER feel safe. Most certainly without our help.
I totally agree with you Sydney! World hunger could easily be resolved with all those billions. I can relate with your homeless experiences when i grew up in Philadelphia. No matter where you went you would see poor men with signs and the homeless sleeping everywhere. A lot of my family live in northeast and my cousins can name every person by what their signs say. So many people try to help, but the majority of our population can not make any real impact. Its so ridiculous that we would spend over 500 billion dollars on defense. They could spend half that i'm sure we would be fine.. Maybe if we help humankind as a whole we might not need to defend ourselves sooo intensely. You are so right when you say poverty is cyclical. Generations are effected and still nobody is helping. I can only be hopeful, even though its not looking very good. Nice Post Sydney!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeletei agree, good post! i think it is just so terrible that poverty is so cyclical. children that are born into poverty really just don't have a chance. last semester my writing class had to read an autobiography called the glass castle. the author was born into a relatively poor family and it really just got worse as she and her siblings grew older. going to school, she talks about how they would eat their lunch out of the trash cans because they didn't have any food or money. no child should ever have to do that.
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