However, in 2005 poverty was brought screaming back to the fore front of our minds after the devastation wrought in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. Hours upon hours of footage were televised nationally showing just how impoverished the areas surrounding the city of New Orleans were. So often we are consumed with the welfare of others we forget there is still work to be done at home. In his essay, Reminders of Poverty, Soon Forgotten, Alexander Keyssar delves into poverty and how Americans have reacted to it. In his essay he argues, even in the face of various disasters that have befallen some of the poorest citizens, no efforts to combat poverty have been successful.
The impoverished areas of New Orleans suffered the greatest losses because the houses were poorly built and many people were not educated on the danger of the coming storm. Even after the storm passed, any average Joe could walk down the streets of New Orleans, “Past variation after variation on a single theme: upended cars and boats, wrecked houses with roofs smashed in, front walls spray-painted with numbers and dates signifying when the house had been searched and how many dead bodies had been found” (Hertsgaard 130). The most preposterous part of the entire event was the sluggish and
Hurricane Katrina Axial College Material Week Six COM/150 EFFECTIVE ESSAY WRITING Week 6 The effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans have been long-lasting and a disaster for all families in the state of Louisiana. “Hurricane Katrina was one of the strongest storms to impact the coast of the United States during the last 100 years.” It is the third most powerful hurricane to make landfall in the United States. The duration of the storm was from August 23 through August 31, 2005. The storm had a short period of time but its damages were so tragic that left long term damages. Many living in the city fled prior to the storm, but many believed the reminiscences of the storm wouldn’t be as bad as they thought and they stayed.
For instant they couldn’t vote in their country. Black people were neglected by the police and didn’t have their support. They were victims of police brutality. Even though they had been through so much and they had suffered a lot. Black people in America had still hope for the future.
They had jobs such as railroad track layers, brick layers, grave diggers; fruit, vegetable and cotton pickers, doormen, elevator operators.Almost 1 million black farm workers lost their jobs, many moved to the cities where they shared similar experiences with the immigrants; low paid jobs and poor housing conditions.In the northern states, decent jobs went to the white population and discrimination was just as common in the north as it was in the South and many black families lived in ghettoes in the cities in very poor conditions. On the other hand one reason that black Americans did benefit as before the war less than 2% of the population in the southern states could vote but by 1945 around 15% of black Americans in the southern states had been registered to vote. Another reason that the black Americans did not share in the economic boom was that the living situations for them was appalling. 40% of housing available to black Americans in Washington DC was found to be sub standard where as only 12% of white housing fell into this category however as a result of boom the amount of unemployed black Americans fell. It fell from 937,000 to 151,000.
Relations between the United States and Guatemala traditionally have been close, although at times strained by human rights and civil/military issues. Guatemala is a country without social or economic justice, especially for the 6 million indigenous Mayan Indians who make up the majority of the population. There is a marked disparity in income distribution, and poverty is pervasive. On coffee plantations, peasants, descendants of the ancient Maya, live in concentration camp-like conditions. 40% of the indigenous people have no access to health care, and 60% have no access to safe drinking water.
A man without a place to call home is lost. I could not imagine roaming the streets or finding a place to keep warm at night. The homeless population is made up of various people from all walks of life. For instance people who’ve been laid off because of the economy or men and women whose monthly income make it impossible to afford a place to live or people who live below the poverty line. The most shocking of all to me was to find out that veterans of the armed forces (like myself), make up some of 23 percent of the homeless population.
It was much harder for blacks to get a job, and there employment position could be described as ‘the last to be hired, the first to be fired’. African Americans faced discrimination almost in every job, and they earned less, often due to the poor educational opportunities. The voting rights were different in the North from the South. In the North, almost all African Americans could vote. In the South however, the blacks were disfranchised, since the state governments introduced literacy tests, tests on the knowledge of constitution and Poll taxes, which African Americans had trouble with, because of poor education and financial problems.
This article goes back and forth in many different aspects as to what and who are considered to be poor. According to actual people their examples of poverty would be a homeless person who has no food or clothing. The government describes poverty to be an American that does have a car, stove, clothes, and televisions, mostly material items. Who is really considered to be poverty stricken? Most households that are poor experience one of these problems: The house is overcrowded, not being able to get medical care, or not being able to eat.
The price of goods was so high and was so worthless that it cost Southerners in some places several hundred Confederate dollars to buy a single loaf. As a result hunger and no nutrient became bad, in addition, much of the land from Tennessee to Georgia and up to South Carolina had been destroyed by General William Tecumseh Sherman’s troops on their March to the Sea. Many slaves in the South effectively freed themselves by refusing to work and flocking to Union lines in droves. The North meanwhile was in many ways better off in 1864 than it had been before the war, for the economy had experienced an enormous boom during the war years and had set the industrial machine into high gear. This industrial boom in the North, coupled with inability pf Richmond’s government to provide cohesive leadership, won the war for the Union.