Lately I’ve been very…meh…about the state of the world and humanity in general. The general hatred of the middle class and upper class to the poor people of the world is something I cannot get over. I sit somewhere in the bottom half of the middle class myself, and I’ve been below the poverty line for much of my adult life, so I’m on Team Poor Folks.

I’ve lived in dangerous neighborhoods most of my adult life. I’ve lived in neighborhoods where I got pulled over by the cops who asked what a white girl like me was doing in a neighborhood like that (living there, sad to say) and I’ve lived in places where the woman across the street from me was a prostitute, and I’ve lived right next door to neighborhoods where the people shot the mailman and when the paramedics came to rescue the mailman, they shot the paramedics. Needless to say, those people didn’t get mail for quite some time afterward. Fortunately I lived a couple of blocks over and  continued to receive mail.

So now I live in a neighborhood that is the nicest neighborhood I’ve ever lived in. And still, we have driveby shootings and burglaries and gang problems. The difference is, that’s not my part of the neighborhood. My part of the neighborhood is filled with mostly lower-paid working class types who don’t have time to become criminals- they’re too busy working.

Yet the vitriol directed toward my neighborhood because of the few bad apples that spoil the bunch is horrible. This is a comment from a story in the newspaper about the police catching people responsible for 13 burglaries in my neighborhood:

Its like I said before just fence in that whole
stinking neighborhood and call it (My neighborhood’s name) Penitentiary. Its the
worst development ever built in the state of Tennessee so either fence
it in or burn it down and run the scum out of the county and the state.

Like I said before, the vast majority of my neighbors are working class people who are good people and not criminals. But this fool wants to burn it all down or fence us all in. It’s enough to make me want to cry and I  see these types of comments on a daily basis.

That’s why it’s awesome to see a story like this. Thank you, B-Mo, for restoring a bit of my faith in humanity.