By FROM THE STREETS BY CHARLES SPRINGER
I have read recently where ol’ king George will cut social services, and add to the military and homeland defense. I smiled as I read this because in an earlier issue of the paper there was an article of how a family in Pennsylvania lost everything they had due to a series of unfortunate events. Starting with a lay-off, and then escalating to an illness, finally the person who was laid off was unable to find a job. This family lost their house and a few things, which are taken for granted in our society today. In a more recent issue of the New York Times, there was the story of a woman who was laid off and has been looking for work for six months. She may lose her house and have to move in with family at the age of fortysomething because her unemployment has run out.
I find it quite amazing that in this once-rich nation in which we live, a person has to be unemployed for more than the time in which their unemployment lasts, and that we give work to those who are not citizens of this country legally. Bush plans to cut spending even more to social programs which would help the economy by stimulating spending and keeping more people from becoming homeless.
Have we as a nation grown so blind as to not be able to see what is happening? How can this economy rebound if there are no jobs for people, thereby stimulating manufacturing and sales jobs here on our soil? And if this trend continues, how long will it be before the booming real estate market goes pop and the dollar becomes worth nothing but the cloth it is printed upon? And if you think there are homeless now, wait for the next six months to a year and you will see more and more homeless as the jobs leave and the wages continue to go down.
Soon this country will be no more than a third world country and Europe, China, Japan and Korea will be the economic leaders, leaving this once proud nation in the dust.
I find it quite amazing how blind we are to the whole situation our country is in, how we turn a blind eye to the growing situation of homelessness and its causes as they unfold before our eyes, and the divide between rich and poor becomes not a crack but a chasm. This is how it was when I was in China and how it is in most other countries where our so called American corporations send our manufacturing jobs. Is this how we want our country to be remembered, as a country where its own citizens are thrown away like litter and made slaves for profit? Is this what we want to give our children and our grandchildren, a nation of debt and homelessness?
This is what I see in the trends we have set up for ourselves in the last few decades. I see this nation becoming a third world nation, and our children and grand-children working for pennies, or sent off to fight and die in a Vietnam-style war. I see homelessness increasing and even those who think themselves secure will see the streets as home soon as the real estate bubble finally deflates due to the growing unemployment and lack of benefits to tide them over. I see our elderly dying more rapidly due to the cuts in Medicare and Medicade, and the mentally ill becoming more numerous for the same reason.
You who might think “not me” or “not my family” may find yourselves in the same food lines you want to abolish in Santa Monica. This is the final result of decades of our nation having short-term memory loss, and being worried about self over our fellow American citizens. And the funny thing about it is when we put ourselves above our fellow citizens, we forget that we are all American citizens and what affects one of us sooner or later affects us all — as a nation. (Charles Springer is a semi-homeless American citizen, freelance artist and writer. Charles can be reached at Chaz_59@yahoo.com)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 22, 2005. Read the original PDF.