tybee204
09-25-2005, 10:17 AM
Link (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050924/ap_on_re_us/katrina_poverty_exposed;_ylt=AhO4vYye4s.HjmmiAihXN yms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-)
By MARTHA MENDOZA, AP National Writer
Sat Sep 24,12:26 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO - "Let me tell you about abandoned people," whispered J.R., his voice rising above the sighs and soft snores of sleepers curled on the church pews around him.
"Those people who were abandoned in New Orleans," he said, "they were abandoned long before that hurricane hit. We all were."
Ordinarily the faces of America's poor are as hidden as their stories. But Hurricane Katrina has spotlighted the deep poverty that this country has failed to solve, a world of people who live without Social Security numbers and without running water, people who are too poor to shop at Wal-Mart and whose children go hungry.
Even as the economy strengthened in 2004, Census Bureau figures show 37 million Americans lived under the poverty line, a jump of 1.1 million from 2003. People living in poverty have, in fact, been increasing steadily in this country since 2001.
For years, advocacy groups and researchers have shouted the statistics: 45.8 million people don't have health insurance; 25 percent of American's blacks (and 44 percent of Houston's) live in poverty; 36 million Americans are hungry or at risk of hunger.
The raw, inner city poverty of New Orleans can be found in most major cities, from New York's Harlem — where a one-in-50 infant-mortality rate is comparable to Sri Lanka's — to southern Dallas, where crime rates are twice as high as the rest of the city.
Rural poverty is less obvious but just as intractable.
In the colonias of southern Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, you'll find tarpaper shacks, dirt roads, outhouses, unbathed school children.
More at link
By MARTHA MENDOZA, AP National Writer
Sat Sep 24,12:26 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO - "Let me tell you about abandoned people," whispered J.R., his voice rising above the sighs and soft snores of sleepers curled on the church pews around him.
"Those people who were abandoned in New Orleans," he said, "they were abandoned long before that hurricane hit. We all were."
Ordinarily the faces of America's poor are as hidden as their stories. But Hurricane Katrina has spotlighted the deep poverty that this country has failed to solve, a world of people who live without Social Security numbers and without running water, people who are too poor to shop at Wal-Mart and whose children go hungry.
Even as the economy strengthened in 2004, Census Bureau figures show 37 million Americans lived under the poverty line, a jump of 1.1 million from 2003. People living in poverty have, in fact, been increasing steadily in this country since 2001.
For years, advocacy groups and researchers have shouted the statistics: 45.8 million people don't have health insurance; 25 percent of American's blacks (and 44 percent of Houston's) live in poverty; 36 million Americans are hungry or at risk of hunger.
The raw, inner city poverty of New Orleans can be found in most major cities, from New York's Harlem — where a one-in-50 infant-mortality rate is comparable to Sri Lanka's — to southern Dallas, where crime rates are twice as high as the rest of the city.
Rural poverty is less obvious but just as intractable.
In the colonias of southern Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, you'll find tarpaper shacks, dirt roads, outhouses, unbathed school children.
More at link