something’s been bothering me for the past few weeks, and no i’m not talking about the election.
this article really started the gears grinding on it tonight. the US conference for mayors released their annual report on “hunger and homelessness” recently. it confirmed what anyone with their eyes open already knows, which is that more and more families are asking for assistance. worse still, the homeless population in our country is increasing at an alarming rate. it’s easy to see why. state services are getting slashed. there are no jobs. our reservists are coming home from the war – some with life changing injuries – to no job and massive debts…
a couple of weeks ago, just as fall was starting down here, i carpooled to work with a friend of mine. this friend takes a slightly different route than i usually do if i’m on my own. his route takes us underneath a freeway bridge on the east side of town. we were driving under the bridge and i was letting my eyes and mind wander and i saw that there were people living under the bridge. they were crammed up towards the concrete rafters where the road meets the slope of the underpass. on that day there were only two of them.
when we drove by two days later there were three sleeping people huddled underneath the bridge.
it wasn’t shocking to actually see a homeless person. my suburb is lilly white but our proximity to both dallas and fort worth ensures that we are not spared the sometimes harsh urban realities. what surpised me was where they were. i drive under that bridge all the time and this was the first time i’ve ever seen someone living there. earlier this spring i also noticed that we had panhandlers on the freeways which bisect our burb. most of the time you only see them in downtown dallas, and to a lesser extent in downtown fort worth.
when i noticed the bridge dwellers, i wondered how many people drove right by them without giving them a second thought. i consider myself to be an empathetic person, and i even entertained the thought of visiting them and bringing them some coats. i didn’t end up doing that, but i honestly can’t get them out of my head.
i wonder what happened in their life that led them on the path to homelessness. did they get fired? are they ill? family troubles? there are so many reasons why someone would end up on the street that i think that makes it even harder to deal with the problem.
but the fact that we even have this problem in the twenty first century is patently absurd.
in school i was taught that america was the richest nation on earth. we had the best resources, the most innovative people, and the drive and determination to make progress. but for all these advantages, we somehow have still managed to not provide the simplest form of comfort a human being can have – a roof over their heads.
sure, it takes more than a place to crash for a person to fulfill their potential, but they sure as hell are not going to be able to do it living in a box or a dumpster or a beat up car or a doorstep.
now back to the numbers. i’ve been reading dueling studies tonight, one by the mayor’s conference and one by the uber-conservative heritage foundation. i can see how the mayor’s methodology might be flawed, but the heritage foundation retort just throws up a giant smoke screen. they dissemble and obfuscate in an attempt to make you forget that there’s a real problem underneath all these numbers.
basically it’s a quibble about terminology. apparently the mayor’s conference defines hunger one way and the USDA defines it another way. the USDA says hunger is “physical discomfort caused by actual food shortages due to a lack of funds to obtain food”. that is the only definition used by the heritage foundation and therefore results in very conservative numbers. granted we don’t have people starving in the streets like other parts of the world, but that’s not the point. the mayor’s conference includes food bank use in their determination of what constitutes hunger. now, the USDA also keeps it’s own surveys regarding food bank use, and strangely enough if you read far enough down the heritage foundation report, you’ll find they gel with the numbers from the firm that did the mayor’s conference survey. like i said, they obfuscate and dissemble.
so the number of people seeking yearly assistance from food banks is twenty three million. that’s an insanely large number. and the heritage foundation would prefer to quibble over what “being hungry” means. being hungry means you’re fucking hungry. there really isn’t a middle ground there. and if even one person in the world – much less this country – is starving then we have a problem.
but most people don’t think about that stuff, or maybe they just don’t want to think about it. some of them even have the ability to walk by a panhandler downtown and maybe even think that he’s a lazy bum who should just get a job.
but i think for people who have a sense of humanity, we wonder how our brothers and sisters can just walk by. and we wonder why they are sometimes consumed by personal greed when others are suffering. and we don’t want to waste time quibbling over terminology when we are trying to solve a problem.
i can see how some people might say the democrats have lost their soul. you never hear them talk about things like this any more. and you’re sure as hell not going to hear most republicans bemoan the lack of social services for the poor.
we need to help the american people reconnect with their populist roots. we need to help them understand that if any of us are in need, we are all poorer. the reverse of this is that if we do all these things, we are all richer. and we need to remind people of that.
i’m tired of the talk about moving to the center. all that does is create the perception that our principals are not worth standing for. our policies aren’t moderate enough so therefore we have to compromise. it creates the perception that the other side’s policies are more appealing.
bullshit. we need to stop with that chickenshit talk. be partisan again. fight for what we believe in in every district in every state. stop being such fucking pussies.
no, i don’t want tim roehmer to head the dnc, nor do i want martin frost or harold ickes or any of those middle of the roaders. sure there is room for them in the party. i am pleased that democrats who oppose abortion are able to vote with our party most of the time. i am pleased that neocon dems like joe lieberman are able to vote with us on the environment. but they do not represent the base of the democratic party. they don’t represent the people that helped the democrats to control congress – thereby dictating policy – several times in the twentieth century.
i am sick and tired of being screwed over as a constituent by these compromisers. if we allow them to dictate the democratic party agenda then WE LOSE. and eventually we won’t recognise the democrats anymore. hell, we barely do now. right now i feel just about how i felt leading up to the 2000 election. basically, i feel used.
oddly enough, soon i’m going to have the opportunity to speak to each of the candidates for DNC chair in a conference call with some other bloggers. i have the opportunity to ask them one or two questions, but i can’t figure out how to convey how i feel about our party situation without sounding bitter.
i could probably use some help. if you could ask one question of the candidates for DNC chair, what would it be? right now i know i want to ask them how they plan to run a 50 state campaign during non-presidential cycles. i also want to ask how they plan to assist in revitalising the state parties. if you can think of anything else, leave it in the comments. i’m turning the rant *off* now.
