Throughout these last couple days of class we have gone over some of the programs and other organizational that are created to help with the decreasing the percentage of a hunger and homelessness. Even though we have been progressing with more programs and organizations hunger and homelessness seems to continue to grow and the programs/services are beginning to have cut backs and the help for those in need is becoming more restricted. Cutting back these programs/services causes those who were in the border of getting out of extreme poverty to go right back down and lead to more and more families who are in need. America keeps on saying they are creating more and more need based services but more and more people are becoming homeless, is it the economic downfall we had? Will it get better? But why has it mot progressed since the 1970’s? There are a lot of questioned that are just up in the air. I just do not understand if the government doesn’t want to fund why is there laws being passed in smaller communities prohibiting fellow citizens who want to give and help those in need.

I am glad to be participating in the internship it allows me to understand this hunger and homelessness issue that is being dealt in America. After going to icare shelter I have been shocked. I think I am learning the one side of homelessness that I have never really thought of, which I will later discuss in our class presentations. The people there seem shy I wish they were more interactive but I hope to get more about the stories and programs that are said to be given in the shelter. Shelters are the beginning process to helping those recover from hunger and homelessness and I am happy to be a part of there process and I hope to find the real issue to why homelessness is increasing and why America is decreasing findings and prohibiting the help when a large portion of our population is becoming poorer and poorer.

For today’s class we had to read part 4 of The Book Of The Poor. This section was titled “Lets Do Something”.  This really stuck out to me as I am coming back from spring break. This is because I spent my spring break working in Colorado with victims of the flood that happened back in 2013. After eight days of having to help people clean scraps up from all around their broken homes, pull water damaged insulation out from underneath houses, offices, churches, etc., cleanup miles of devastated land and broken rivers and streams, and help people try to move on from losing everything, this chapter really stuck out to me. Specifically Chapter 32 titled. “Our Evolving Standard of Decency”. It stresses the importance of understanding the word decency and being able to look at our past and future and use the knowledge collected from both resourcefully to make things work. I knew nothing about Colorado or its people and I had no real connection to what I was doing upon arrival. However, by the first day I knew that I was glad I was there to help. I was shocked at how devastated the land was and how little I had even heard of the flood back when it had happened. Entire neighborhoods, towns, etc. had been effected by water damage and flooding. Some of the devastation was mind-blowing. It was hard to believe that water could be powerful enough to collapse homes, and uproot cement sidewalks. There were people who had been away rom their homes for months and had no real idea when they were going to be able to move back in. There were entire trailer parks that were completely destroyed, but because the government wouldn’t label them as lost causes, they were not being taken care of. Everything was just rotting and beginning to pollute neighboring towns. I was astonished at how much was being done and how much more still had to be taken care of. The work was hard especially because everything was frozen. But the people who we met were so grateful, that they really did instill this new idea of “decency” in all of our hearts. It was heartbreaking to see how hopeless some of them had been when we had first arrived. However, every time we accomplished something new there was a visible change in the way that the people in the town began to react to their own situations. In the book, author Kenan Heise breaks down the meaning of decency as, “Technically, decency’s Latin root, decus, means what is fitting, what is honorable, what is of human worth.”(pg. 132) As complete strangers we had to come into peoples homes and help them pick up the bits and pieces of their lives. We had a schedule while also having to remain sensitive to their needs and emotions. While doing so they made an effort to help us to get to know their town and their history, they introduced us to as many members of the community as possible, they fed us, made sure we were taken care of, and were constantly thanking us. All in all, it was one of the more meaningful examples of human worth and decency that I have gotten to be a part of. I am glad that this was the reading that I got to do upon my arrival home from Colorado. It really solidified the whole experience for me and I am excited to discuss it in class.

Mind The Gap

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.  Abraham Lincoln

Even in the mid nineteenth century, we were feeling like the American dream was in jeopardy as evidenced by Lincoln’s quote above.  Today, however, the dream of a chicken in every pot or the dream of owning your own home is eluding more and more Americans at an alarming rate.  The problem is definitely economic.   Lisa Wirthman in her Denver Post article “Mind the Gap” reports that the richest 400 individuals in American have more wealth than the bottom 150 million individuals combined!    She points out that the shrinking middle class is a problem for all of us, in large part because there are more of us.  If the middle class folk continue to work longer hours that never net them higher wages or increased job opportunity, who will be spending?  The middle class, she points out, are the real job creators.  And even scarier, as we concentrate the wealth in the upper tail of the curve, we are also concentrating the power in the hands of the wealthiest Americans.  So…we will be led like sheep to slaughter as the kingpins feather their nests.

Wirtham suggests some solutions:

• raise the minimum wage – this would impact 16.5 million people with a net loss of less than 500,000 workers and improve life by decreasing turnover and training expenses
• make child care more affordable so that 50% or more of a single mom’s salary doesn’t go to childcare before rent or food
• put money where it counts – K12 education and higher education:  the greatest predictors of mobility are education and the ability to own a home.  Many of us are leaving college with tens of thousands of dollars in debt from student loans…we won’t be homeowners any time soon.

The problem is huge, but the solutions are there.  We need to wake up now and ban together to support bills that can and will help the masses.  We outnumber them, but we are giving our power away with apathy!

While doing some extra research during Spring break I came across an article from 2011 that was titled “15 Facts about U.S. Income Inequality That Everyone Should Know” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/05/us-inequality-infographic_n_845042.html?utm_hp_ref=homelessness#s261400&title=Wealth_Inequality). The article went through a series of charts that detailed the growing and pressing issue of income inequality in America and gave some important facts and figures that many people in America probably didn’t know at the time. It is interesting to read this article from the Spring of 2011, because that is around the time of the very beginnings of the “Occupy” movement. This article may have sprung from the knowledge that people were beginning to gain about the issues of income inequality and class stratification within American society or even have been an influencing factor in the growth of the movement. Reading through the article I was reminded of many of the things we’ve learned in class and been given lectures on, and even though this article is outdated by a few years now, it is interesting to see that not much has really changed.

The Occupy Movement was such a big deal in the fall of 2011 and protests all over the country were broadcast on national television, and it seemed like all of America was poised to see a real change happen. Unfortunately, the movement died out without any real changes being made to the issues they were addressing. Today, people still talk about the income disparity in America, but there have been no efforts made like the Occupy Movement to do much of anything about these issues. It seems like there is a constant narrative about how these things are bad and we should do something about it, but no one has any solutions on how to fix these issues. In 1917 (the last time the income inequality in America was this high) it took a full on Economic Depression to get the country back to a more even stratification, but this latest recession seems like it hasn’t had any effect on the differences in income and wealth.

This class has taught me so much about the issues that our country and our world are facing these days, but I’m still looking for ways to combat the issues that we are learning so much about. It seems to me that there should be a change made in the income inequality in our society so that there could be more good will between classes and a greater way of living for many in our country. My question here is: what can we do about this issue? Is it simply a matter of taxing the rich and getting them to put their disproportionate amount of money to good use? Or is it a structural problem that needs to be addressed as well? Perhaps we need to overhaul everything and start again, or should we just wait for the natural ebb and flow of economic societies to balance everything out? Is there an “easy fix”? Is there any real fix at all? I’m not sure if there is at this point, but I know that there need to be changes made in order to make life better for a large number of people in our country.