Reply #109: True! Rinse, repeat, wash: POVERTY IS AN INSITUTION

[mntleo2]

...this is an institution based on racism, sexism (including LGTB issues), ageism, and classism. the reason it stays in place is that other classes benefit from those in poverty and it is about keeping poverty the way it is ingrained and wedged into our society.

Unless you are a monk, POVERTY IS NOT A "PERSONAL CHOICE"

Until people stop either making the poor invisible and ignoring them or drag them out of the shadows where they have put them and use them to either:

A Make themselves feel good because they thought they had a "solution" that is about assuming a person is poor because of a personal choice

B Take large sums of donations and federal grants to pay themselves and then pat themselves on the back for how "good" they are to "help" the poor

C. Blame them for all the social ills out there that their own communities are as guilty of if not worse (like alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence, and child abuse)

D Punitively punish the poor with dummas laws and policies that never affect them with their expensive lawyers, paid-off "friends" in the System, to show they are "tough on crime"

E Exploit the poor using them for "cheap labor" they themselves would never deign to do, but expect the worker to give their entire mind and bodies over for a few dollars in order to "keep the expense down" for themselves while thinking nothing of paying as much for a car as a house used to cost

F Use the poor to attend those glittering fundraisers where rich people give their tax-deductible "donations", hire their friends in upper management for those 6 figure jobs, and spend more on the gown or tuxedo for this even than what they would give so they look all "charitable" and stuff ...

G Think nothing of forcing a low income person to fill out reams of paperwork forced to reveal painful and personal information so they can "prove" they are really poor but their "benefactors" don't have to prove a thing about their own REAL tax/social/exploitive/tax-eating enablement while taking thousands of federal and donated dollars for themselves literally giving themselves 10 times the amount they "gave" from right out of their client's mouths.

I could go on but you know of what I speak ...

Cat in Seattle