Posted on 12/15/2017 3:54:40 PM PST by BackRoads775
Los Angeles, California, 5 December
“You got a choice to make, man. You could go straight on to heaven. Or you could turn right, into that.”
We are in Los Angeles, in the heart of one of America’s wealthiest cities, and General Dogon, dressed in black, is our tour guide. Alongside him strolls another tall man, grey-haired and sprucely decked out in jeans and suit jacket. Professor Philip Alston is an Australian academic with a formal title: UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
General Dogon, himself a veteran of these Skid Row streets, strides along, stepping over a dead rat without comment and skirting round a body wrapped in a worn orange blanket lying on the sidewalk.
The two men carry on for block after block after block of tatty tents and improvised tarpaulin shelters. Men and women are gathered outside the structures, squatting or sleeping, some in groups, most alone like extras in a low-budget dystopian movie.
We come to an intersection, which is when General Dogon stops and presents his guest with the choice. He points straight ahead to the end of the street, where the glistening skyscrapers of downtown LA rise up in a promise of divine riches.
Heaven.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Ahhhh, we all miss the good ol’ days of President Obama, when America had no poor and no homeless.
Then we went and elected Trump and WHAM!!! 41 million Americans suddenly living in poverty.
I was in LA over the summer and I couldn’t believe what the hell I was seeing, like something out of Calcutta - If Calcutta is even that bad now. Isn’t socialism wonderful?
Dang Brits have never understood America, never have. Socialist ones even less so.
California Voters made marijuana legal.
Voters made most offenses, mere misdemeanors, worth only citations to appear in court and/or pay fines
Voters made early release from jails and prisons the common outcome
Cops will plainly tell you that being homeless is not a crime
Add up the above, and cops usually don’t bother with these types, since they have more to lose than to gain.
That same mood is held by police chiefs, city councils, city attorneys, etc.
All of those negative impacts on California’s “quality of living” are fine with the democrat super majorities in Sacramento.
How easy it was to make these people invisible for 8 years
This is going on all over the US. I cannot think of a major city without a homeless encampment.
And they have been here for at least 15 years. Empty the state mental hospitals, as was spearheaded in California in the 70’s, pay for multiple unwed pregnancies to dissolute parents, remove responsibility from the lives of people, have no standards of behaviors, and this is the society you deserve.
bttt
I have a stupid question.
President Johnson declared war on poverty over 50 years ago.
Since we have been fighting this war, and have implemented a government program to deal with each individual aspect of human social problems, why do we still have this poverty???
When we have a government program to alleviate every problem, and have had many good Democrat president’s since the ‘60s who have only expanded such programs, then why is poverty still with us?
What did Obama do in 8 years to battle the problems of poverty?
I think that after 50 years of a car on poverty, we can evaluate the results of our efforts, and decide if we have succeeded in reaching the goals of this war on poverty.
American poverty is strange, though. So many of those in poverty are overweight!
We used to have so little poverty, we had to import it by the millions.
I live in Lowndes county Alabama. It is poor but it is sure not Trump’s fault. The blacks living here are the descendants of the freed slaves, but they are the one’s that never left looking for a better life. If you insist in living in a rural area with few jobs, you are going to be poor. There is now a Hyundai plant in the next county. People on that side of the county are doing much better.
you can't move them...you can't arrest them...they can defecate right in public and we're supposed to just not notice....they go to multiple ER's for drugs, and sometimes just so they can watch tv and get meals...
yet we can not lecture them....
I have more sympathy for the working poor and middle class....I care more for the young people trying to make it in this society, having been strapped with a horrible tax burden of income and SS and medicare...
I'm telling everybody right now...a lot of these "homeless" want to be homeless...they do not want rules nor orders...
ACADEMIC: An individual who is incapable of or unwilling to create or provide goods or services of value to others, who pontificates and expects to be paid for it, usually from public funds.
Because Jesus said so.
"The poor you will always have with you..." Matthew 26:11
Maybe if enough people from other countries read this article they WILL NOT WANT TO COME HERE ANYMORE.
.
“Professor Philip Alston is an Australian academic with a formal title: UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.”
Yank his visa.
L
there’s no recovery for people like us. I’m 67,....and on SS I dare say. We do NOT have poor in the US unless they choose to be.
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