Death Coin for the Boatman
Tim Barrus New York Times
I work with adolescents who are medically fragile. Covid would kill them.
Poverty is killing them, and not softly.
Their family structures have broken down. There isn’t a single adult in the accumulated families of the group who has work. People are suffering and looking death squarely in the face. These kids are hungry. The equivalent of one dollar per meal, deemed as nutritional by a government that does not care does not feed an adolescent.
What I don’t understand, what I will never understand, how we can even call it a government. It is a regime, it is brutal, it will not be challenged. The people in the regime will look at you squarely in the face, and they will tell you trickle down works. But first we have to save the banks.
I thought we had already saved the banks. How many times do we have to save banks and corporations whose stock is currently soaring. Corporate welfare takes the food out of the mouths of children. How can executives even look at themselves.
I try my best to stay civil in the New York Times. But civility is not working. How do you remain calm and civil in the face of public policy that is insinuating famine in America. I live in a tiny town where farmer’s markets have always been inundated with food. It was a community gathering.
The local farmer’s market is gone. This was how we lived. It doesn’t mean anything to urban families trying their best to survive. But I am here to tell you that the delivery systems have broken down, and it’s coming.