wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Presto: You're an IDP

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8450 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

04348
August 4, 2004

Presto: You're an IDP

by John Filiatreau

One day a gang of bearded men comes in the night and burns down your house
and barn and hacks your elderly mother to death.

Next day you learn that you must immediately leave your tobacco farm in
Kentucky and move to Maine and support your family by working in the only
industry there, the fishery.

You don't know anyone in Maine. You think the people there talk funny; and
you're pretty sure they'll think you talk funny. You're also pretty sure
they'll feel that any job you take is one taken from them.

You don't know from ships. You don't have the right clothing for the deep of
winter in coastal Maine. You don't have the right set of mind to gut fish for
a living.

You don't have any choice.

You will live with your wife and three children in a square wooden cell eight
feet on a side, cheek-by-jowl with a dozen other families living in identical
rooms. You'll have to build it yourself, on publicly-owned or unclaimed land.

If you need food, or medical assistance, or counseling, you must go
hat-in-hand to charities and ask for help. You might get some financial
assistance from the government, but then again you might not. If you do, it
might be next month or four years from now.

If you go back to Kentucky, the people who burned down your house might come
in the night to cut your throat. The fire destroyed every document you had
that proved you own that little farm. Another family lives there now.

Despite your best efforts, your children will be much more likely than other
American youngsters to die in infancy; to be malnourished; to suffer from
water-borne diseases and "illnesses of poverty"; to drop out of school; to
learn to use a rifle before learning to use a pencil; to be fearful of men
with beards.

You will die homesick. And your children will be sick for a home they never
saw.

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