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To Die Cold and Alone
The throwaways still die homeless on the streets of America
I’ve been hearing a lot about making America great, or about making it great again. People clad in red, white, and blue clothing won’t hesitate to state they live in the greatest country on Earth. I hear how well Bidenomics is working for everyone and how inflation is lessening. The Detroit Lions even won their first playoff game in over 30 years.
Still, behind all the Pollyanna chatter and the saccharine smiles, there is an underbelly of rot. Many people are not doing well at all. They are living from paycheck to paycheck without medical insurance or reliable transportation. Some are seriously behind on their bills and hope to make their meager paychecks stretch to the next one. Many are one job loss away from being on the street.
For the past six years, I taught in the inner city. There was nothing at all unusual about seeing someone sleeping on a park bench, at a bus stop, or in makeshift shelters in the park on my drive to work. Sometimes they were bundled up in winter coats. Sometimes they had newspapers or whatever else they could find lying over them. The one thing they all had in common was that they were alone.
This weekend we were slammed with a winter storm that was more severe than any in recent memory. Nature dumped 16…
