The Wolves Are at the Door
Tim Barrus: New York Times
I deal with adolescent boys who live with HIV. Many have had upfront experience with the foster care system. Food was scarce on a good day. They dumpster dive.
Snap itself was built around the fact that kids could get some food in school. There is no school. This makes the allotted amount of money that can be spent on any meal come in at one dollar. One dollar per meal.
You live on it. You thrive on it. You learn on it. You survive on it. You endure it. It hurts. It is a fist in your stomach.
American culture is rock-bottom fundamentally irresponsible, and downright psychotic.
And mean. And mean.
The message to these kids is very clear. We will set you up to crash-burn and fail. We will not allow you to succeed.
How does an adolescent male live on food that is identical in price to the average cost of a tube of toothpaste.
Even when things are booming, we wash our hands of them. The African-American males condemned to this grinding machine are slotted for prison. The white ones just go homeless and are addicted. We control them. We do not not feed them.
Everyone says America must change. America has had lots of time to change. The rich get richer. The poor are invisible. How is a patriarchal hierarchy going to change anything. The rich and the powerful will not allow it. They’re definitely threatened.
Kids are hungry and no one cares. That is the bottom line. The garbage they end up eating from the commercial food chain is exactly the same food they scrounge for in dumpsters.