There are a lot of degrees of poverty, of course. Lately, here in rural Oregon, I have seen something new to me. It has been hot. Forest fires have raged around us. In the middle of this discomfort and fear, for the first time in my life, I have seen whole families walking down the road with all their possessions in garbage bags. Where are they going? I don't know.
When I was at the all organic Ashland Food Co-op last week, there was a family outside asking for help. I stopped and gave them some money. The young child looked at my grocery bag. I asked him if he wanted some grapes. His hand shot out to take them. I apologized that they were dirty. The mom who looked like she was going to faint, remarked that they were too. They had nothing.
This is shocking stuff. This is an area with abundant resources. If you are near water and throw a seed at the ground it will grow. Food stores and restaurants throw away tons of food everyday. I spend my time worrying about contact lenses.
I think we are letting this problem get away from us, or have done. It is much harder to solve a problem after it has become a disaster than to stop it in its tracks before the massive crisis is full blown. Will the next stage here in the USA look like the famine relief or refugee relief pictures we see from other parts of the world? Will we need to have big trucks or planes throwing huge bags of rice off the backs of trucks and hungry people scrambling or fighting for the spoils? The people of New Orleans can tell us how that worked. Not very well. The people of Haiti can tell us how millions of aid dollars didn't really relieve anything.
I know that a lot of good people are doing everything they can to relieve the plight of the poor. It seems to me that Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty would be the righteous war for us to fight. We need jobs, we need education, we need hope.
Night after night on the news around here there are what sound like poverty related crimes. Crimes of resentment and despair. There is something amiss with the conflicting viewpoints that we are the best country in the world and the every man for himself ethic. When a person gets too far outside the system, it is very hard to get back in. I predict a wave of immigration from the USA to Mexico and points south. At the very least you don't have to pay for heat and there are abundant and cheap buses there.
My friend Louis tells me that he doesn't see many signs of the problem on the Northeast coastal US. It might be that the desperate poor have migrated west as they did in the dust bowl. It may be that the ghettos are better defined back there. It may be that any homeless and desperate person wouldn't even get a chance to walk through East Hampton, NY or Greenwich, CT. My refugee foster kids used to get stopped by the cops while walking home from school in Marblehead, MA. They were asked what they were doing there. Later, Marblehead bragged about its diversity. (which pretty much all came from my house and Shelly's house.)
I think any solution to this problem has to be both personal and collective. I am reminded of the time during our war on El Salvador when many people went down to help the poor there. At the same time, our government was pouring money into the systematic destruction of the country and the murder of the poor who objected to our policy. It didn't stop until congress stopped funding the conflict and individuals worked in solidarity. Both actions, national and individual are necessary.
I don't even remember how far the planning for the War on Poverty got before the Vietnam War derailed it. I think we should look at any planning that was done then and consider reviving and expanding it. We don't seem to have any problem funding wars. Maybe using the same language would get things jump started here.
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