Reality Check: Imagine living like this

[lildreamer316]

Scroll down to last pic on page:http://www.angelfire.com/nv2/philadelphia/p7.html

[rkc3]

1. Wilkommen to Amerika

[sasha031]

2. doesn't it make you proud

to have all $ going to Iraq, billionaire and corp tax breaks, crooked corps.

[SteppingRazor]

3. Ah, the City of Brotherly Love...

Has any city ever suffered under such a misnomer. I've been there about half a dozen times, and ever time something shady, cruel, illegal and/or brutal has occured. And for a change, it's never been my fault. :evilgrin:

[SoCalDem]

7. An "under-class" has always been a part of America

It's just always been "spun" and hidden from view until things get ugly (and they always eventually DO get ugly).

When "european' settlers arrived, they designated the indigenous people as their "underclass"..and then even "imported" a new underclass".

Nothing has changed all that much really..

Telling someone they are "free" is meaningless, unless THEY have the same rights and circumstances as the one freeing them..

Being "free" , but dirt-poor in the richest society ever, is not all that great..

[Missy M]

4. That's the reality of ALL American inner cities....

yet in no way should it be that way. If the wealth of this country was shared in a more equitable way we could start to eliminate the need to live this way.

[hardrainfallin]

17. yep. n/t

[pointblank]

5. Very reminiscient

of a eastern block country during the Soviet era IMO

How sad. Looks like North St Louis. How can this be the 'best' country in the world if we ignore this?

[daninthemoon]

6. Thanks for the pix. Coming soon to a neighborhood near everyone.

These pix could have been taken in almost any part of today's America. Only the building styles change. I've seen these places from one coast to the other. This is going to be the legacy of the RW and their trickle down raygunomics. If you are not one of them, you will live like this.

[raccoon]

18. You said that right, daninthemoon.

Those pictures could be taken about anywhere in the USA.

Was that KUDZU covering the telephone pole in the second photo down, page 11? Has it made its way to PA already?

In fact, I'll start a threat about kudzu.

[Tace]

8. If You're Referring To The Cage On The Front Of The House...

That's common even in Manhattan, in front of multi-million-dollar townhouses.

[lildreamer316]

11. Really? Well color me uneducated

I've been to NYC 6 times but of course never anyplace a "tourist" isn't supposed to be. It just sucks that we have to do that...overstating the obvious I guess.

[hardrainfallin]

14. the cage is not the problem. duh. n/t

[BR_Parkway]

19. They also have cages in Suburbia - the difference is who the occupants

think are the 'riff-raff' that need to be kept out.

[edhopper]

9. To be fair;

All urban centers have scenes like this. You have to understand that just like in NO, these people choose to live there. If they wanted a better environment they could have one. What is to stop them from fixing up their surroundings or moving to nicer ones?

Reply brought to you by the Heritage Foundation:D

[daninthemoon]

12. This is sarcasm, right?

[ET Awful]

10. Continue on to the following pages and look at the large number

of boarded up and abandoned buildings.

[Fuzz]

13. You know where that hit me the hardest?

Buffalo on my way to the falls. Driving toward the border on the US side it looked like that. Over the border and driving toward (the name of the town escapes me now) it was beautiful and my sister in law told me the government took care of the land and there was a school that took care of all the flowers, etc.

The difference was so stark and startling.

[Missy M]

20. And you weren't even going through the inner city of Buffalo....

you must have been driving through Niagara Falls with all the lovely chemical plants spewing pollution on our side.

[Fuzz]

23. My sister in law lives there, so I think she took us another way

one less traveled. There were a lot of residential areas.

[MN ChimpH8R]

15. I spent a lot of time in Philly a few years ago but

didn't see anything like that. Not that I doubt that it's there - it's in every large American city. The place that scared the bejeebus out of me was Detroit. Tens of blocks of nothing but boarded up buildings and empty lots all in a row. Desolation central.

All in all, I like Philly.

[sam sarrha]

16. Corporate Blight, corporations suck the money out of neighborhoods

they used to subsidize this Micro-economic trade deficit with welfare.. but the corporations wanted that too.

they only take and dont circulate money... then become Fascist when they use campaign contributions to regulate the competition with legislation to inhibit local business.

that is Exactly what my small town of 4500 looks like.. and is an epidemic nation wide..

[dghll]

21. another cage on this page

http://www.angelfire.com/nv2/philadelphia/c10.html

Camden is really really really like this.

[newyawker99]

24. Hi dghll!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[dghll]

25. thanks

[hunter]

22. The United States looks like this.

Everyone with any money is on a permanent guided tour that hides these places. It's sort of like being a tourist in the old Soviet Union -- your bus always takes a convuluted route that avoids the really bad neighborhoods.

But if you take random samples of places, as an ecologist might, a lot of the United States looks like those pictures.

In my own experience, rural poverty can be much more dangerous. The rules for keeping out of trouble in urban places are pretty much the same everywhere in the United States. But in rural places everything is at the whim of the local drug lords. I try very hard to avoid rural places where the biggest industry is making methamphetimines or growing pot.