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Edited on Sat Nov-29-08 02:52 AM by Finnfan
On Tuesday of this past week I helped deliver complete Thanksgiving meals to 75 families who live in the city where I teach. Accompanying me, and doing most of the work, were 2 of my former students, now 13. As it turns out, our last delivery was to the home of one of those students, who I am going to call Carrie. Carrie is a sweetheart; a kind, happy girl of average intelligence who I loved teaching because of her sunny disposition and her personality, but who also annoyed me because she never did her homework. I had never seen where she lived before.
We pulled up to her house at about 4:30 on a Wednesday afternoon. There was a young man standing next to the driveway of her apartment. "Is that your brother?" I said to her. "No. I don't know him. This is a big drug area." She said this the way you or I might say "You need to shower before you go out." Her sunny disposition never wavered.
As we walked into her apartment building (which was actually a 2-story house that had been converted into 3 or 4 tiny apartments), it was obvious that the front door had been completely ripped off the hinges. "What happened here?" said her friend Jerri, who lives 2 blocks away. "It was some Halloween thing. Oh, and remember that guy who broke into the 3rd floor?" Carrie said. "Yeah, that was messed up," responded Jerri. This conversation was played out in the tone that you or I might use in a discussion of "Who is Jenna taking to the prom?"
I grew up in an upper middle class white household. I never had to worry about my security or my basic needs. I'm the same exact type of student as Carrie: a friendly, smart, underachiever. And yet because I was white and my family had money, I never had to fret. I KNEW I would be all right.
Carrie deserves the same chance that I had, but she deals with stresses on a daily basis that I could not even conceive and that she is not even aware of. She thinks living on a street with drug dealers on your lawn and people breaking into your building are normal. Would I have survived that environment? NO, I would not.
We live in a consumer society. We don't produce anything anymore - we just buy. As a nation we don't value the little man - the small business - the way we once did. We value Walmart, who can get us what we want for the cheapest possible price. After 9/11, George Bush pleaded with the nation to "Go Shopping." That was music to our ears. We should spend money on things we want, even going into debt to do so, and not feel guilty about doing so? Sign us up!
Except that's not what we should have been doing. We should have been focusing on Carrie. She deserves the same chance to make it that I had. She should even be given a boost because, while I avoided homework because I didn't feel like doing it, she doesn't get hers done because there are drug dealers on her front lawn and she can't ever feel safe in her own home. Its not fair. I had an unfair advantage that I'm taking advantage of even now as I type on this expensive laptop.
Yesterday a man was trampled to death because of our consumer-driven society. No one was standing in front of a Wal-mart at 1AM because they had to feed their family or because they needed their children to be able to afford a good college. They were there - WE were there - because we wanted a slightly better resolution on a slightly bigger TV screen. And we wanted to believe we could get it, in this economy, for $800. A man is dead so that 5 people out of 2,000 could live that pathetic, short-sighted dream. Yet Carrie, a sweetheart who deserves a chance at life, sleeps tonight unsure of who will be entering her apartment.
Shame on us. Shame on all of us.
It is long past time to talk about the type of society we are and the type of society we will be. It is time to recognize that none of us are safe until we all are safe; that none of us will really live until we all can live. For the rest of this weekend I'm begging you to think of the man who died at Walmart yesterday - and think about Carrie. She deserves a shot at America too.
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