| With the rare exception of a special report produced | | | | violence, illness, structural unemployment, or a series |
| by educational television channels and shown | | | | of events that devastated their former working or |
| sandwiched between reruns late at night, we seldom | | | | middle class lives. Many thousands are simply the |
| see the faces of America's enormous homeless | | | | working poor. Lacking skills and contacts, they trudge |
| population. They live their street lives in decaying | | | | daily to minimum wage, low level positions: motel |
| downtowns and slum districts, hidden from our daily | | | | maid, security guard, custodian, waitress, or day |
| commute between work and the suburbs. | | | | labor. The minimum wage is a social farce for a single |
| I live in the Los Angeles County section of Southern | | | | individual, never mind someone with children or family |
| California. Within my one county are more than | | | | to support. |
| 90,000 people who have nowhere to call home. Like | | | | Can Congress or the Administration explain how |
| most of my neighbors, I never use public | | | | someone clearing less than $200 per week can feed |
| transportation or visit the poorer areas. Unless I | | | | and clothe themselves and their family and yet set |
| make a special effort, I never see the thousands on | | | | aside enough money for even the cheapest |
| the sidewalks. | | | | apartment? Can the finest financial minds in the |
| It is only when disaster strikes a poor area that the | | | | country calculate how to pay first and last month |
| country sees the face of poverty. After Andrew in | | | | rent and a security deposit when there are only |
| southern Florida and Katrina on the Gulf Coast of | | | | pennies left at the end of the week? |
| Louisiana and Mississippi, the omnipresent television | | | | Yet President Bush moved to suspend the 1931 |
| cameras caught a glimpse of what it is like to be | | | | Davis-Bacon Act for the rebuilding of New Orleans. Is |
| poor in America. We saw the faces of the forgotten | | | | it his theory that the poor don't deserve the |
| lined up in the Superdome and had to admit that the | | | | protection of prevailing wages so he can use that |
| national dream of success and a comfortable lifestyle | | | | money to protect them from terrorism? |
| does not extend to everyone. | | | | The poor and the homeless don't even think about a |
| There are those who believe that the poor bring on | | | | bomber at an airport or what's happening in the |
| their own misery. That anyone with any motivation | | | | Middle East. They have more pressing concerns such |
| would be able to work themselves out of the mess. | | | | as where is their next meal coming from, how can |
| Certainly there are thousands of homeless who have | | | | they educate their children, and where would be the |
| drifted away from the larger society because of | | | | safest place to spend the night. |
| drugs or mental illness, the have-nots who fail to | | | | And the oil companies, with their already obscene |
| qualify for the treatment and rehabilitation programs | | | | profits, get a tax break. |
| established for the more fortunate. | | | | Where are we heading, folks? |
| Many thousand more are simply victims of domestic | | | | |