War On Poverty

Born in the depths of the Great Depression, poverty during my young years, poverty during my long education especially, poverty during my military service, living poor ever since because I have never known anything else, in my travels around the world I was not shocked at anything regarding the depravity-poverty of human beings.

I remember in India, hovels along the roadside. Emaciated men working on the roads, women in rags working in the fields... victims of government enslavement, victims of religion, sacred cows walking around eating everything green. Same penalty for hitting a cow as for hitting a human being. (My guide told me how one of these pregnant mothers working in the fields would just squat and have the baby, wrap the baby, carry the baby on her back ,while continuing to work the rest of the day) It is hard to imagine how human beings can be more destitute.

A young man had worked for me for a short time. Victim of liberal-addicted parents (both parents alcoholic) He had drifted through the local university, degree in sociology. He had never been able to find a regular job, just part-time employment , living on the edge. Frankly, I had about forgotten him but he sent one of his friends for me.

The room, in a destitute part of town was the bleakest place I have ever seen. I had known little about his lifestyle but, here he was, dying of HIV, AIDS. Like so many, he was at the end of the road, had exhausted all unemployment benefits. (I understand there are three million people like that in this country today.) , every fragment of welfare largess. Somewhere, somehow, he had obtained some poison. He told me he was going to make one last cocktail with the poison but wanted me there in case he needed assistance in his suicide. He begged me to help him, this was his only escape from a very cruel world.

I asked him about family. He told me how members of his family, the last time he saw them, had isolated him from them, special eating place. They were afraid to touch anything he had touched, so afraid of infection from AIDS. I did get the father's name and phone number. I called him and begged him to come pick up his son. I explained to him that there was little chance of infection and that this would be the last true compassion he could show. I understand the son died and was buried in an unmarked grave.

In the early days of the AIDS scare, it was difficult to find a funeral home that that would bury a victim of AIDS.

One editor told me that I probably knew more about poverty in eastern North Carolina than any man he had ever known. Hwy. 95 to the coast if it were a state, would be the poorest state in the union. Not only was I reared on a tobacco farm in this area but I watched this area from childhood, covered every part of it, 8 years, working my way, in the summers, through universities. More homes without inside plumbing, more despair than any other place on earth, until Yankees found the coastline, Yankees found the cheap labor, as Dr. Frank P. Graham, famed president of UNC-CH said “eastern NC was ready for development, enlightenment.” Eastern NC was kept in it's enslavement by the white supremacist entrenched, democrat party. One day, in Raleigh, sitting with the late governor, Terry Sanford and the late representative L.C. Fountain, (Tarboro) I realized the shackles. They agreed that North Carolina would always vote solid democrat as long as the poor whites and blacks in eastern NC danced to their tune. The democrats could depend on the cotton mill workers, tenant farmers, blacks, Jews, Baptists, getting in line and staying in line for the democrat party. And so it has been my entire lifetime and past 140 years. I blame the Baptist and evangelicals of eastern North Carolina more than anyone else. They knew what was going on, the enslavement of people who they claimed to love. Of course, everyone was not in poverty. There were always those houses on the hill, homes of legislators, bankers, corporate owners, doctors and lawyers who lived the elitist life in their country clubs and mainline (big “I” little “u”) churches and golf clubs.

Yesterday, in spite of president Lindon Johnson's war on poverty startling in 1964, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, there is more poverty in America now than ever before forty seven million, 15.5 percent of the population, one of each six families. Shameless, democrat rule in Congress and most states. Shameless, blacks and Mexicans 27 percent unemployed still supporting anti Christ Obama. Shameless, one war after another with all the talk on forced heath care, veterans at the end of the line.

Many will remember Georgia's US senator, Herman Talmage. His father, Georgia's most famous politician and governor, “old Gene” said one time, when politicking at a cross roads. “The people of Georgia have only three friends, ME, Jesus Christ and Sears & Roebuck”. The poor people of America have little left except their faith in God and faith in the Constitution or what is left of the Constitution.