POVERTY POWER Poverty has, long ago, become a political power.
The term which now has little to do with the segment we used to call “poor” people. It is, today, used as a term which is bandied about when we seek federal largess or when we seek to make a candidate appear in a good or bad light. The candidates actions or stated opinions are applied against a template prepared ahead of time containing diagrams, charts, graphs, list of statistics and attractive artwork depicting the blessings of “pie in the sky” promises. It can be used to sooth a populace or keep it feeling insecure.
There was a time when we considered the word “poverty” to be a term we used to describe the economic levels of a person or of a social or racial group. Mainly we thought of “poverty” in that way - short of money, lacking in luxuries. Much of that has been changed since the Federal government felt compelled to chart and diagram
the language used in describing poverty. Oddly enough, the criteria
by which the new rating placement were based on, so often, on other charts which showed what that poor person might have earned had he or she not been poor.
In recent years we have come to depend on terms such as “Cost of Living.” It and “Studies show... have pretty well veneered our usual poverty terms. The term “poor” has actually become a mark of special distinction in the mind of many. It is interesting to me that some of these people are actually third and fourth generations of welfare recipients which casts some distrubing shadows over our past attempts to help the downtrodden.
We have had a special opportunity to learn how all of us can live better lives after witnessing the events which have taken place in recent weeks. New Orleans, in particular, and many other cikties and town alon g the Gulf Coast have suffered trememdous losses in lives and property. It is easy for us to sit back and potificate on “what went wrong” both in the planning for such disasters and actions taken or not taken under stress. Even as I type these lines another tremendous hurricane is building in the Gulf of Mexico and it will hit the mainland -somewhere – Saturday morning.
What can we do - now – to help the people in those areas to be ready to face such a threatening storm?
A.L.M. October 19
, 2005 [c421wds]
