I sit here and read a variety of articles and bits of news about poverty. About what has been done with various programs, govt. or otherwise. All the hundreds of millions, billions of dollars that have been spent over the years in an effort to help pull the most susceptible up and out of the clutches of poverty – I mean real poverty. The type of poverty where kids have nothing to eat in the morning. And if they do, it’s junk food left over from the week’s previous days. Kids of poverty, these kids are resilient. But kids always are. Until, after a while, after they have lived some and are in school and see how other kids who don’t have a life like theirs come to school. How these other kids live. After these kids who reside in poverty see how others live. How these other kids don’t know what these kids of poverty know. Yet, they sit right there in the same class, maybe right next to each other. One looking at the other, and the other looking at the one. One instinctively knowing the other has a plight different to theirs. And the other imagining a different life. But neither ever really saying anything to each other. And we wonder why poverty is so persistent. Why it never seems to change or get better even after all the low income housing has been built and new schools have been opened. After all the different training and works programs have been funded, staffed, and started. Yet year after year, the other looks at the one and the one looks at the other as young school aged kids and they understand through subtle and not so subtle signs . They intuit with clarity and simplicity the way kids do. Their respective places in the world are being shaped amongst themselves as kids. And as they grow in to adulthood it becomes ingrained. These young kids don’t understand entirely. But these young kids know with barely a word ever being spoken.
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