In your face: Homelessness in America
And what are YOU doing about the vast new epidemic of homeless people flooding the streets of America right now?
America's wealthiest 1% are doing something about it -- they're creating even more homeless men and women just as fast as they possibly can!
The Department of Defense is doing something about this problem too, creating vast brigades and armies of blind, paralyzed, traumatized and/or limbless disabled 20-somethings who should have been in their prime of life right now, the backbone of America's labor force -- but are instead sleeping rough, out on the streets.
The CIA, DEA, FBI, local police forces, INS, Homeland Security, TSA, etc. are also doing their bit regarding homelessness here as well -- they are housing Americans in jails just as fast as humanly possible, with or without being charged with a crime. How patriotic is that! And you can even get thrown in a jail cell for using legal medical marijuana or driving an unregistered car (or being homeless). The vast American prison-labor system is always here to help out.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development is also doing something about homelessness in America too -- by actually supplying housing. Imagine that. And if HUD closed its doors tomorrow, America would immediately reveal its true self -- as Great-Depression-style tent cities begin springing up like mushrooms and we start tripping over the dead bodies of homeless senior citizens left and right. Without HUD, America would look like background shots from the movie "Les Miserables".
Thank you, HUD. It's nice to know that somebody else besides just America's 1% is getting a safety net these days.
But what am I myself doing about homelessness in America today? Besides giving an occasional dollar to a street person shivering out in the cold? Obviously not enough. (But I did act in a docu-drama on the subject recently. Does that count? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2cTACN-iNA)
Can you imagine what it is like to stay out all night, every night, in the rain and the cold, vulnerable to criminals and rapists, being humiliated, vilified and scorned by those lucky enough not to have been chewed up and spit out by Wall Street and War Street quite yet, shamefully begging for spare change and having no place to go? I can't.
If it was me out there on those mean streets, I'd be lucky to still be alive after only a week.
PS: Speaking of being homeless, I will be going to Haiti as part of a Global Exchange delegation at the end of March to do research on homelessness there. No other country in the western hemisphere has as many homeless people as Haiti -- even though it is still being milked like a cash cow by the world's NGOs.
According to journalist Bill Quigley, "Despite billions in aid which were supposed to go to the Haitian people, hundreds of thousands are still homeless, living in shanty tent camps as the effects from the earthquake of January 12, 2010 remain. The earthquake devastated Haiti in January 2010 killing, according to Oxfam International, 250,000 people and injuring another 300,000. 360,000 Haitians are still displaced and living hand to mouth in 496 tent camps across the country according to the International Organization of Migration. Most eat only one meal a day." http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/bill-quigley/47484/how-the-international-community-failed-haiti
And you think that America's homeless won't fare any better than Haiti's homeless if the 1% have their way? Think again. Just remember all those homeless Americans created by Hurricane Sandy -- who are still homeless now. And then thank whichever God that you pretend to follow that it wasn't you living out there in Far Rockaway.
And when the 1% finally get their hands on your Social Security money pot like they have been trying to all along, you won't need a hurricane to know which way the wind blows either.
PPS: If you want to be a part of Global Exchange's delegation to Haiti in March 2013, here's the program's contact information: http://www.globalexchange.org/tours/haiti-beyond-disaster-alternative-spring-break-trip See you there!
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And if anyone ever wants to hire me on as a travel writer, "Have laptop, will travel!"
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