I'm so tired of all this outrage over the plight of the poor Black people left behind in New Orleans. Since when did America start giving a shit about the poor? When their suffering is blown up and plastered all over the news, suddenly righteous indignation starts bubbling up from all over. Hell, even
FOX news is outraged! God damn, can you
imagine?! The POOR were left behind to die!!
Uh, no shit. That's how it works. That's how it goes on day after day, and how it will continue to go on long after Katrina fades from the headlines.
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I see it every day. I'm a social worker. Poor people suffer in silence and I don't see their stories on the news. Maybe an abused child will garner a brief rash of outrage, but it dies down soon enough. You see, I don't think we
want to deal with the poor in America. They're
supposed to be forgotten, swept into the gutter, left behind to die. That's how it works.
There are good Christian people working with the poor. (And I mean real Christians, not the George W. Bush/Pat Robertson variety.) It's not about Right or Left. It's about will. And I guarantee you that after the political storm moves off, the poor will go back to being forgotten. The poor don't need outrage. They need people to start seeing them and giving a damn... even when the cameras aren't on.