It is not acceptable that we continue to see thousands of acres burn because of forest fires, because of poor management on our forests, big kill, and we have these catastrophic situations take place when we are not able to take action.
The drug war has been a war where the direct casualties have primarily been America's poor; America's minorities; and often, unfortunately, America's vulnerable, in terms of people with disease and addiction and mental health.
The effects of unresolved trauma can be devastating. It can affect our habits and outlook on life, leading to addictions and poor decision-making. It can take a toll on our family life and interpersonal relationships. It can trigger real physical pain, symptoms, and disease. And it can lead to a range of self-destructive behaviors.
Though many of the poor have come to see the affluent middle class as its enemy, that class actually stands between the poor and the real powers in this society - the administrative octopus with its head in Washington, the conglomerates, the military complex.
Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment.
Without an advocate for the poor, without a new state of mind in America, the country lies on the brink of anarchy.
I have been very strongly advocating that poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labour. It perpetuates poverty. If children are deprived of education, they remain poor.
We are a nation founded as a rebuke to tyranny. A nation of revolutionaries who refused sovereign reign from afar. Hear me - we're a nation that says give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. A nation built on our differences, guided by the belief that we're all created equal.
There are plenty of African-Americans in this country - and I would say this goes right up to the White House - who are not by any means poor, but are very much afflicted by white supremacy.
Imagine a society in which there were neither rich nor poor. What evils, afflictions, sorrows, disorders, catastrophes, disasters, tribulations, misfortunes, agonies, calamities, despair, desolation and ruin would be unknown to man!
Modern elites live in bubbles of liberal affluence like Ann Arbor, Brookline, the Upper West Side, Palo Alto, or Chevy Chase. These places used to have impoverished neighborhoods nearby, but the poor people got chased out by young singles living in group homes, hipsters, and urban homesteading gay couples.
It's risky to show poor Americans. People see it as a downer. But I really wanted to make a tightly wound piece of storytelling that also happened to explode the myth of American affluence.
Very few people can afford to be poor.
The standard of 'affordable' housing is that which costs roughly 30 percent or less of a family's income. Because of rising housing costs and stagnant wages, slightly more than half of all poor renting families in the country spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing costs, and at least one in four spends more than 70 percent.
Donald intends to represent all the people, not just some of the people. That includes Christians and Jews and Muslims; it includes Hispanics and African Americans and Asians, and the poor and the middle-class. Throughout his career, Donald has successfully worked with people of many faiths and with many nations.
We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old - and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.
Class certainly loomed large in Katrina's aftermath. Blacks of means escaped the tragedy; blacks without them suffered and died. In reality, it is how race and class interact that made the situation for the poor so horrible on the Gulf Coast. The rigid caste system that punishes poor blacks and other minorities also targets poor whites.
Children under five are the poorest age group in America, and one in four infants, toddlers and preschoolers are poor during the years of greatest brain development.
Dependency arguments often come from elites - either aid agencies or governments - and say something about attitudes to poor people.
