F#ck the Poor!

When I was coming up, I used to hear people say “It’s a sin to be poor.” What they usually meant was that the financial and material struggles they contended with was sinful in their scope. They implied that there was some moral aspect to the poor-related vicissitudes they faced, despite the fact that they were never below the national poverty level.

Fast-forward to today. Anyone living in the good ol’ US of A could say the same thing. A recent tidbit of news circulating is that in New York City, developers of high-rises that house mostly the monied, will have a “poor door” for the few with low income who live there. To me, this smacks of the “Colored” doors seen in the American South during the Jim Crow era (and some parts of the North too).

Not just in NYC, but in other parts of the US we see this “fuck the poor” attitude. Despite growing numbers of the unemployed and foreclosed, we have representatives in Washington cutting away at long time safety nets for such people. Today, we see more concern for banks, corporations, fat-cat politicians, and celebrities than We The People (or the 99%). We have major cities phasing out low-income neighborhoods for higher-income residents; or increasing the property taxes to chase the low income folk out.

Even amongst We The People (me too), we have this “fuck the poor” attitude. We complain about how our taxes are supporting “welfare queens,” or “lazy” people on unemployment or disability. We play “blame the victim” with those who lost their houses due to the mortgage mess, or were downsized from a company through no fault of their own. We say, “had they been more careful” or “they should’ve been saving their money”. How quickly we forget that a catastrophic illness to us or a family member could wipe out our “wealth” in an instant.

Plus, how many of us are complaining about the fact that our taxes are financing a bloated military that’s dragging the US into bankruptcy while making us pariahs in the world’s eyes? How many of us are protesting the real “welfare queens,” corporations that are given “personhood” status; the very same corporations that laid off some of us while they still generated a profit? How about these career representatives in Washington that are making a killing now, and with their future pension? Have any of us called for scaling downtheir pay and imposing term limits?

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