Worth the Fight

I am a person. Just one. I am middle aged and I have a 5 person household with all the amenities and comforts that I could possibly hope for. I am white and male and this gives me a leg up in society here in the United States. I am privileged to the point that if I encounter bumps in the road or even legal trouble I have extended family that can bail me out if I don't have enough money in my bank account (which is often).

I have been raising children for the last 16 years and they have gone without any needs beyond their little gripes about what the neighbor has like this or that phone or game console.

This is a privileged life and it makes me think about the people who have less than me and makes me embarrassed. I have no right to complain when something doesn't go my way.

Meanwhile my friends that have less in marginalized groups have next to no safety net. They either don't pay their bills and get hounded by collections or they go bankrupt. Meanwhile trying their best to provide for their family.

Now the “leader” of our country is trying to take what little people have away. The attempt to freeze most all government aid programs to citizens is gross. The people who receive social security, Medicaid, Medicare, meals on wheels among many, many other programs were about to be frozen. People don't choose to get on these programs and if I weren't so privileged I would also be on them.

People who are on these programs are not on them because they want to be. They are on these programs because otherwise they wouldn't have anything. People who are in these positions are not on them from choice. They are on these programs because even before many people were born, their path was already laid out for them.

When someone is born into a white, straight, Christian, mentally stable household and a parent who also has a household with a father and mother who also had parents who were white, straight and Christian and mentally stable, they are given a huge advantage.

Consider the fact that this means they had food in their belly at all times. They went to school where they were always safe and they were given opportunities for upward mobility when they graduated.

Consider when a single mother with a father who may have died at war or had a mentally unstable background where money was always very tight and could not always have food at the table or a warm place to stay. The child then goes to school. This child is going to have a harder time learning as he sits there in hunger and not necessarily sure whether the parents are home waiting for them, or if they are at the bar or having a bad mental episode or any number of potentially bad scenarios.

These ultimately put that child at a huge disadvantage when trying to make their way in this world. Those kids didn't have a choice where they ended up.

The government is currently demonizing people instead of helping them. The path set before these kids and adults is predetermined at no fault of their own.

The people who are in charge should be ashamed of themselves. To have the nerve to call themselves followers of Christ is pathetic. When congressman and women vote to withold school lunch programs from children while in the same breath granting themselves a higher stipend for their daily lunch is just gross and should be criminal.

In order to make this country better we have to care for those that are the least privileged, not the most.