Blog Action Day: Poverty at Home

I find it difficult at times to be in such a position of privilege and opportunity knowing that their are so many people in the world who don't have simple things that I take for granted such as cleaning drinking water, several hot meals a day, and adequate access to education. I go to school in a "college town" with so many people who seem to have nothing and no one to turn to on the streets and it's very hard to drive past these people or walk past these people and not have the means to really help them. Some of my closest friends and I met a man a few weeks ago by the name of Johnny. He was downtown drumming on a paint bucket, but you could tell that he was a man that actually has talent and potential. My friends knew him and I had only just met him but they were offering him words of encouragement letting him know that it is never too late to try to make something of your life. I couldn't find the words to tell him, however, to make it better. I was sure that he had probably heard similar things from people before and I am not the type of person to humor anyone. I think that perhaps college students see things through a naive, child-like lens and everything looks bright for the future, but some people can't just make things happen because they go out and get a G.E.D.

There are so many people who suffer from mental illness that slip through the cracks. There are people who have made mistakes in their pasts which prevent them from getting jobs easily. It saddens me deeply that we live in a country that stresses so much the importance of trying to stop poverty in other nations, while we have so many unresolved issues at home. Don't get me wrong--there are places in the world that don't have governments taking care of their people like they should--but we just committed $700 billion dollars to "fix" the economy. There is a serious problem when in America we are not taking care of our own, but continue to sink further and further into debt. How much could just one day of military spending contribute to those without 401K's? I know there is no easy solution to the problem, but the way our country has been run for the last eight years has made me realize how much we ignore the less fortunate in order to maintain our status as an economic powerhouse of a country. It has gotten to the point where if you talk about everyone having access to health care, you're automatically a socialist and that is just ridiculous. My only point is that we spend money like we can't get rid of it fast enough and that only makes us more self-centered as a society. We must not only change the way our government is run, but we must change our own attitudes. We can no longer take things for granted and assume that everyone on the streets are "addicts" or "too lazy to get a job."

Life isn't easy for anyone in America right now and that's what is so difficult about defeating poverty at home. As much as you might like to help others out, you feel almost forced to be more protective to what you've managed to secure as your own. Why do we live the way that we do? We are we not more of a collectivist society? I wonder if we will ever overcome our greed and free ourselves from the reality of what we've become.