| With the rare exception of a special report produced | | | | working or middle class lives. Many thousands are |
| by educational television channels and shown | | | | simply the working poor. Lacking skills and contacts, |
| sandwiched between reruns late at night, we seldom | | | | they trudge daily to minimum wage, low level |
| see the faces of America's enormous homeless | | | | positions: motel maid, security guard, custodian, |
| population. They live their street lives in decaying | | | | waitress, or day labor. The minimum wage is a social |
| downtowns and slum districts, hidden from our daily | | | | farce for a single individual, never mind someone with |
| commute between work and the suburbs.I live in the | | | | children or family to support.Can Congress or the |
| Los Angeles County section of Southern California. | | | | Administration explain how someone clearing less than |
| Within my one county are more than 90,000 people | | | | $200 per week can feed and clothe themselves and |
| who have nowhere to call home. Like most of my | | | | their family and yet set aside enough money for |
| neighbors, I never use public transportation or visit | | | | even the cheapest apartment? Can the finest |
| the poorer areas. Unless I make a special effort, I | | | | financial minds in the country calculate how to pay |
| never see the thousands on the sidewalks.It is only | | | | first and last month rent and a security deposit when |
| when disaster strikes a poor area that the country | | | | there are only pennies left at the end of the |
| sees the face of poverty. After Andrew in southern | | | | week?Yet President Bush moved to suspend the |
| Florida and Katrina on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and | | | | 1931 Davis-Bacon Act for the rebuilding of New |
| Mississippi, the omnipresent television cameras caught | | | | Orleans. Is it his theory that the poor don't deserve |
| a glimpse of what it is like to be poor in America. We | | | | the protection of prevailing wages so he can use that |
| saw the faces of the forgotten lined up in the | | | | money to protect them from terrorism?The poor |
| Superdome and had to admit that the national dream | | | | and the homeless don't even think about a bomber |
| of success and a comfortable lifestyle does not | | | | at an airport or what's happening in the Middle East. |
| extend to everyone.There are those who believe | | | | They have more pressing concerns such as where is |
| that the poor bring on their own misery. That anyone | | | | their next meal coming from, how can they educate |
| with any motivation would be able to work | | | | their children, and where would be the safest place |
| themselves out of the mess. Certainly there are | | | | to spend the night.And the oil companies, with their |
| thousands of homeless who have drifted away from | | | | already obscene profits, get a tax break.Where are |
| the larger society because of drugs or mental illness, | | | | we heading, folks?Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical |
| the have-nots who fail to qualify for the treatment | | | | psychologist with deep interests in Social Psychology |
| and rehabilitation programs established for the more | | | | and politics. She has performed therapeutic services |
| fortunate.Many thousand more are simply victims of | | | | for more than 20 years and has studied the effects |
| domestic violence, illness, structural unemployment, or | | | | of cultural forces and employment on the individual. |
| a series of events that devastated their former | | | | |