Eater of Worlds
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- Joined
- Jul 25, 2013
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You know, it's not that easy to get out of years of poverty with "get a job". There's a helluva lot more that goes into getting out of poverty than just "get a job". Many of the parents of the kids who need the free lunches do work, they just don't make enough to make ends meet, like all the parents who work at places like McDonald's and Wal-Mart full time. Plus, there are places in big cities that actually do not have grocery stores, they do not have Wal-Marts, etc. It can take parents several hours by public transportation to get to a real grocery store (not just a corner store) and several hours to get back, and the parents work so much that they simply cannot do that on a regular basis, they can't afford to pay for all the kids to take the transportation to haul them with if they go shopping when the kids are out of school. You also have the issues with learned poverty and how that works to keep poor people poor even if they get a bit of extra money.
It's just as bad to tell these people to "get a job and feed your own kids" as it is to tell someone with a disability that they have to "pull up their bootstraps and do what the able bodied do." Until you've lived life in their shoes, I don't think anyone can dismiss their situation as lightly as you do.
I grew up with very little money, no stability, days where if I didn't eat school lunch there simply wasn't food that day, with parents who went through learned poverty (which they still struggle with, and they will struggle with until they die). I've worked three jobs at one time and still didn't have enough money to support myself without assistance. I know what it is like to work your ass off and still not have enough money for your basics like heat and water. I worked at a McDonald's in a well to do area, and one of the people who worked there would take all the old food at the end of the day, the stuff that was out for a bit too long to give to people or just the leftover food we had when the place closed so that her family would have food that day to eat. She would make sure the worked until close just for that reason, and she'd go home and wake up her little brothers and sisters so that they could have dinner at midnight and they could sleep through the night with a full belly, and we would make sure that there was always some food she could take home. It's really unfair to tell these people who work very hard that "get a job" will solve their problems.
It's just as bad to tell these people to "get a job and feed your own kids" as it is to tell someone with a disability that they have to "pull up their bootstraps and do what the able bodied do." Until you've lived life in their shoes, I don't think anyone can dismiss their situation as lightly as you do.
I grew up with very little money, no stability, days where if I didn't eat school lunch there simply wasn't food that day, with parents who went through learned poverty (which they still struggle with, and they will struggle with until they die). I've worked three jobs at one time and still didn't have enough money to support myself without assistance. I know what it is like to work your ass off and still not have enough money for your basics like heat and water. I worked at a McDonald's in a well to do area, and one of the people who worked there would take all the old food at the end of the day, the stuff that was out for a bit too long to give to people or just the leftover food we had when the place closed so that her family would have food that day to eat. She would make sure the worked until close just for that reason, and she'd go home and wake up her little brothers and sisters so that they could have dinner at midnight and they could sleep through the night with a full belly, and we would make sure that there was always some food she could take home. It's really unfair to tell these people who work very hard that "get a job" will solve their problems.
how to find that out.
