This weekend, I watched a ’60 Minutes’ show that took me inside the lives of homeless kids in Central Florida.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that the child-poverty rate will soon hit 25 percent.
By the end of the segment, I felt sad and embarrassed to be an American. We have allowed the wealthiest 1 percent our citizens to amass 50 percent of our nation’s wealth. We spend more on military defense than the rest of the world combined. We invest $110 billion in corrupt and repressive regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but we can’t house and feed our own children.
As a nation, we should be ashamed, disgusted – and motivated to make change. There should be rage equal to what we’re expressing in the fight to preserve the rights of labor unions. The budget deliberations in our nation’s capital are likely to make things worse.
Go watch this segment. Look in to the teary eyes of children who go to bed hungry, who hope no one at school will know that their dad is standing on the roadside begging for help; children who live in minivans, and get dressed every day in Wal-Mart bathrooms.
Take just 60 seconds to make change by making the decision to take action. Please share what you do at the #60seconds hashtag on Twitter, post a comment to this blog or my Facebook page. I can’t wait to see what you have to share.
love it – just tweeted!!!
I agree.
The guilty party is the corrupt system that creates such social and economic deprivation. While most of us would try to clean up detritus of this system-caused destruction, the real need is to stop the system from continuing to inflict so much damage. We need to change it.
How do you go about it, Jeffrey?
This is so upsetting, and yet also inspiring. There are people out there ready to help in whichever way possible.
Most upsetting is the shelters separating families who’ve already lost everything, telling them they now have to “lose” each other. How much more inhuman could some become? There seems to be no limit to the cruelty some are prepared to exert on the vulnerables. Maybe those should be set on the streets with nothing if only to teach them what it feels like. Those shelters have lost any sense of dignity.
And we have a segment of our youth today that is going to grow up with incredible traumas and a deep sense of guilt while they are the victims of a unthinkable system based on society’s greed. Yuck
I will continue to try and change the world through business, one person at a time. I will also amplify the voices that are being overpowered by loud and obnoxious banter. I will seek to build bridges rather than divides, to find language that inspires rather than reprimands, and to seek out opportunities to do something for someone other than myself and my family.
I have heard a few people talk about this segment, it sounds like a very powerful indictment of what passes for our “classless” society. I will be honest that I often don’t watch these segments because it gets me emotionally involved and then….what? I know these devastating problems exist so…what do we or does anyone do with all of our outrage or empathy? Rather then just a ticking stopwatch it might be helpful for programs to provide opportunities for viewers to do much or little towards addressing the problem featured in the segment.
Outstandingly interesting bless you, I think your trusty audience might possibly want a whole lot more posts such as this continue the good hard work.