I grew up in a small, depressed
Appalachian town. My family had enough to eat because we had a large
garden that yielded enough fruits and veggies to last throughout the
year, and because my Italian grandmother, who lived with us, knew how to
turn some cheap flour and yeast into wonderful homemade baked goods. We also regularly fed many of the kids
from the neighborhood, who would flock to our house when they smelled
the delicious aromas emerging from the kitchen, where Grandma held court
each day. But we couldn't feed them three meals
each and every day. So much of the time I saw my less fortunate friends
and their siblings munching on mayonnaise sandwiches, or, if they were
lucky, SpaghettiOs with buttered bread.
The parents in that town were not lazy. In fact, many of them worked harder than any Congressman or CEO. My father was an auto mechanic. In fact,
he was a mechanical genius, having built his own tractor (for the
aforementioned garden) from spare parts. But he had neither the
education nor the opportunity to make it big. He wouldn't have wanted
to. He was comfortable in his little garage, adjacent to our modest
house, fixing the townspeople's cars and trucks. But he could charge
only what the market would bear. And, in that town, people didn't have
much money to spend.
Most of the other fathers worked either
in the nearby coal mines or for the Pennsylvania Railroad, which ran
through the town. Often, the workers would go on strike, and I would see
my friends panic because of the hardships they would endure when the
household income went away for a time. But collective bargaining is a
human right, and labor strikes are a frequent part of that. Without the
unions and strikes, things would have been even worse. Fortunately, many
of these families received food stamps.
Today, two of the GOP's main goals are to
cut social services like food stamps (now called SNAP) and to crack
down on the unions - with the ultimate goal of eventually destroying
both. And they are doing this at a time when our troubled economy has
created more families that desperately need these support systems. These
people are not lazy - there just aren't enough jobs to go around. And
many of the employed are stuck in part-time jobs, or are struggling to
make ends meet at minimum wage.
Still, the GOP just continues to feed us the myth of the lazy poor, as they have for decades. They have the nerve to call themselves
"Christian". But, as I recall from reading the Bible, Jesus fed people
liberally without judging them. The loaves and fishes, if you believe
the story, came with no strings attached; they were simply an act of
Christian generosity. Sadly, Christian generosity is something we rarely see these days in Washington or on Wall Street.
by Mary Shaw, a Philadelphia-based writer and activist, from here
The final paragraph neatly emphasizes the hypocrisy, double standards and couldn't care less attitude of those who 'have' when discussing how little they understand of the true situation of the 'have-nots'. Religion aside, empathy doesn't suit their purpose in the blame game.
JS
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