For a Woman on the 6 Train

[dcsmart]

by Billy Wharton

To start, I admit to being a thick-skinned New Yorker. After nearly forty-years here, there is little that this city can offer which would evoke even an emotion. This is particularly true in the New York City subways. Rats run across the subway tracks. People commit any number of lewd and crude public acts on a daily basis. Just a month ago, a drunken fellow passenger decided to convert the subway car into a urinal. I fled with other passengers who seemed to revel more in the spontaneous camaraderie of the experience rather than disgust in the offensive act. Things changed during a recent ride on the 6 train.

For the past few months, there has been a noticeable difference in the homeless population I have encountered above and below ground. Most New Yorkers, myself included, have become accustomed to the city created during the violent regime of New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Intent on enforcing his “quality of life” agenda, Giuliani used the police to drive the homeless out of public view. The severity of the economic crisis is reversing this. The homeless are back in New York City. There are more homeless, many more – new people with fewer of the habits and appearance of hardened street people.

On Friday, April 3rd, I was riding the 6 train downtown to participate in a protest against Wall Street. A woman entered at 42nd street. She was in her late 20s, neatly dressed with all appearances of a sturdy working class person. Noticeably pregnant, her jacket was clean, shoes relatively new and hair neat – all signs that she had been recently well tended to. As she sat down, I and others noticed a hand-written note paper clipped to her bag. “I have a six-year old girl. I am pregnant. We have been forced into a homeless shelter. Please, God help.” She sat with a hand out meekly looking for donations.
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FULL ARTICLE
http://socialistwebzine.blogspot.com/2009/04/for-woman-on-6-train.html

SEE VIDEO AT SAME LINK

[Bertha Venation]

1. Dear god.

[bobbolink]

2. And this is precisely WHY people are WRONG who keep asserting that all the new poverty

"will change things".

NOPE.. the attention will only go to the muddleclass who have fallen.

Those who've been in poverty all this time will STILL BE IGNORED.

[Naturyl]

3. Yes, because they are "hardened street people" and of no value.

Now that people of value who actually matter (middle classers) are beginning to show up in breadlines, people are suddenly paying attention.