Who Are We Helping?
In the statistical data we read addressing the growing number of poverty in this country, the ship seems to be sinking. It does not seem that the things that truly need to be addressed are being addressed. In poor communities there is a huge lack of ESL classes in our schools, we don’t have community programs to teach people English, after school programs in the poorest communities do not exist. To me this is where our problem exists.
The gap in wealth in this country if we exclude the filthy rich one percent is mainly due to lack of education and resources. I am a single mother so I feel I can speak of my own experience. First of all the people out there who continue to bring multiple children in to the world of a single parent home need to be educated. We need more programs that address issues of accountability and responsibility. There have been times that I needed some assistance and until recent years I did not have a job that provided or afforded me the luxury of buying health insurance. Thankfully I did quality for CHIP as my daughter was growing up. I always worked my hardest to stay off of assistance and typically even a small amount of income disqualified me from other public assistance. I did not want to be on assistance, not raise a child who believed it was any bodies’ responsibility other than my own to care for us.
There are many families that end up in single parent homes due to divorce, death or abuse. I strongly feel that all children deserve the opportunity for an education. However, if your parents do not speak English, how do they help their children with education? How do we, as a community as society educate and build work skills if beginning from kindergarten we exclude the poorest parts of the population. We have created a system that enables some people to live off of us, raise children who are shown that example and on the flip side we completely ignore the largest minority and poorest populations. It is appalling to me that drug addicted people I have known have been on assistance for over ten years and never forced to get a job. Housing seems to enable people to be lazy. I am a strong supporter of drug testing for people on assistance. I believe that the focus of our county funded, public assistance programs should start with the poorest communities. I believe that one of the top priorities in the country should be teaching English to immigrants and their families.
One of the greatest things I ever heard come from President Obama was that pushing immigrants, illegal or not, out of society is only hurting us. There are thousands of people who could be part of the workforce, who could get an education and make us stronger as a society, there are here and doing what we have done in the past does not work. I believe every person in this country should have the opportunity to make a better life for themselves. Not just the rich, who can buy a better life! I believe as long as we continue to allow this treatment of people, the wage gap will continue to widen. The lack of educated people in this country will continue to fall.
We need to start programs to address the social issues, we need to address responsibility, create programs that provide incentives to people who are doing the right thing. A reorganization of the structure of current programs is needed. Instead of encouraging single parents and poor families not to work for fear of losing their assistance how about programs that enable people to work. I remember being so hard up for food at one point, what about a program where working families can purchase 100$ worth of food stamps for 50$. Encouraging people to work, to feel proud, empowering people is what we need to do!
I believe if we continue to use our voice, to get more young people involved, to continue to educate in our colleges on social health and diversity, giving service in our communities we are going to see a huge shift in the overall acceptance and culture of politics. I believe the complacency we have seen in the past is changing and old views are being replaced with new possibilities. The spectrum must include all shades and the more we address all of them, not just the ones that are “pretty” the more progress we will make towards a society who embraces its differences and grows because of them.
