Common Theme

A common theme with in that past few days is poverty. Our readings this past week were n school funding, homelessness, food justice and today the enviormental justice issue. All these topics and readings are linked to poverty. when you think about the issue of having school funds you think about the "ghetto-ist" school you know and its not a surprise that it happens to be in one of the dirtiest and probably poorest city too. For example Richmond High School. The halls have gum all over, the bathrooms are poorly treated. The teachers are usually disrespected and you wont ever see a high number of honor students but you will a high number of drop outs drug addict smokers and what not. The issue with school funding is that the communities that are in poverty are the ones that receive less attention. Moving along to homelessness, no doubt about who is homeless. Most homeless people are usually in poverty. Homeless people are left homeless because they don't have the ability to find a job or be able to feed themselves or any family members they may have. There were many statistics in the reading that proved that homeless people sometimes have families and they were once in a home but due to hard economic times they can no longer afford where they were once staying at. Food justice was primarily based in Oakland. Oakland not only though have many minorities but they also have a high number of liquor stores. So the question might be where is the link between a liquor store and people that are in poverty. The answer is everywhere. In the reading a resident in Oakland claimed that being drunk all the time is easy and affordable than having to go out drive a good 5 miles arrive at a supermarket and spend money on fruits and what not. The problem with this, is when people just don't eat what they should eating. Eating healthy foods can be a very crucial and essential value of life. A liquor store will only give you a variety of bruised mushed apples and 10 different bags of chips but no real produce or meat. People in poverty find it to be more convenient to go to a liquor store than to a supermarket. And today's topic that was enviormental justice. Something that wasn't in the reading that i know a lot about is Hurricane Katrina. When i was in the 5th grade i would write the weather column for the schools news booklet. I got to do a lot of study about Hurricane Katrina. However a i got older i learned More about what the actual numbers i wrote meant. New Orleans is probably just another Richmond or a Oakland in CA. And the problem with that, is largely packed urban communities like these don't always get the attention they need. When Hurricane Katrina came by the government didn't think that New Orleans had such bad dam, and because of the lack of attention given to New Orleans it lead to millions of people that were in poverty to suffer and watch their homes be drowned.

All because of poverty -__-

-briana.martinez :(