When Charity is Misplaced: The Outsiders Revisited

All over the country heartsick and caring people poured their hearts, souls, time and money to the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Externally at least, we are an extremely generous and compassionate society. When the cause is visible enough and huge enough to warrant global attention. Then everyone from Presidents to rock stars get involved.

Yet again, the day to day Outsiders, those whose plight never seems to garner much attention, who are looked through and rarely thought about, go on struggling, day after day. These people consist of battered abused women and children, displaced seniors, the mentally ill, and worst of all our veterans. The veterans who fought so we can go about our lives enjoying the blessings they gave their hearts and bodies for. Many are disabled, and draw a check, but cannot afford to pay the deposits or meet the criteria for getting a place to live.

In Sacramento California, my home town, McClelland, a former Air Force Base, completely refurbished, and filled new places with not only furnishings, but everything needed right down to spices, for transplanted Katrina victims. The irony of this won't be lost on many of you, I'm certain. If they could do this with extant housing for people hit by natural disaster, why hadn't they ALREADY done this for our disabled vets???

What does it take for this country to begin treating it's own needy in a considered humane manner? Not all disasters are global or national in impact, but at the end of the day, they erode our national character piece by piece. Most of you cannot envision how a person got to be an Outsider, and in my first article, I tried to demonstrate how easy it is for most of us to slip between the societal cracks, that are widening every year.