Este post é deprimente,
de modo que não o aconselho a quem se sinta abatido com as injustiças da vida.
Relata a moda dos dias que correm neste país desde 2008: pessoas da classe média
que perderam tudo o que tinham (incluindo a sua dignidade) e que agora fazem
parte do grupo dos sem-abrigo. Muitos vivem debaixo de pontes abrigados do frio
por caixas de cartolina; outros, como os exemplos citados neste artigo, vivem
dentro dos próprios carros, aos quais se agarram com unhas e dentes e que fazem
tudo por tudo para não perder, visto lhes permitir uma certa mobilidade para
poderem procurar emprego ou irem à caça
de comida. Enquanto que uns passam a noite em parques (nos quais, durante o
dia, outras pessoas fazem jogging ou passeiam os cãezinhos – ignorando ou
completamente alheios ao que se passa nesses mesmos parques durante a noite - )
outros passam as noites nos parques de estacionamento de igrejas. Tanto uns
como outros são forçados a sair de manhã cedo porque, como diz o ditado, “out
of sight, out of mind” e, tanto uns como outros, são vitimas de descriminação,
da falta de um Estado social e da falta de escrúpulos dos causadores da trapalhada
que actualmente assola grande parte do mundo ocidental.
Este artigo relata também o choque e desespero dos
entrevistados, pessoas que, dum momento para outro, perderam tudo e agora vêem-se
em situações até há pouco tempo inimagináveis.
Quando me lembro
que há quem defenda que assim é que deve ser ou que os culpados são os próprios
pobres porque não têm ambição ou porque são preguiçosos, sinto logo um calor na
cabeça e a tensão arterial a subir.
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-sharp-sudden-decline-of-americas-middle-class-20120622
- “The Safe Parking program is not the product of a benevolent government. (…) An appeals court compared one city ordinance forbidding overnight RV parking to anti-Okie laws in the 1930s. (…) local activists launched the Safe Parking program (…). But since the Great Recession began, the number of lots and participants in the program has doubled.”
- “People are crying, they're saying, 'I've never experienced this before. I've never been homeless.' They don't want to mix with homeless people. (…) they're lost, they're humiliated, they're rejected, they're scared, and they're very ashamed. (…) all of a sudden, you're in your car.”
- By 2009, formerly middle-class people like Janis Adkins had begun turning up – teachers and computer repairmen and yoga instructors seeking refuge in the city's parking lots. Safe-parking programs in other cities have experienced a similar influx of middle-class exiles, and their numbers are not expected to decrease anytime soon.”
- “It can take years for unemployed workers from the middle class to burn through their resources – savings, credit, salable belongings, home equity, loans from family and friends. (…) Janis Adkins (…) "She's the tip of the iceberg," (…) "There are many people out there who haven't hit bottom yet, but they're on their way – they're on their way."
- “Government-aid agencies and private charities demand that applicants show a bundle of identifying documents (…) Many people don't have all of the required documents; homeless people often have none. (…) at the aid agencies where they applied, (…) many (…) denied basic services for lack of paperwork.”
- “(…) welfare applicants must (…) disclose every possession and conceivable source of income they have. (…) many people (…) couldn't get food stamps because (…) car is worth too much(…) ‘OK, you have a car. But you've lost everything – your house, your job, your pride – and all you have left is that car and all of your belongings in it. And they say, You still have too much. Lose it all.' You have to have nothing, when you already have nothing."
- “When welfare applicants finally prove that they exist, and show their material worth to be nothing, they usually receive far less than they need to live on.”
- “Most of the social-service systems in the United States function not to help people (…) get back to where they were, to a point of productive stability, but (…) to merely reduce the chances that they will starve. Millions of middle-class Americans are now receiving unemployment benefits, and many find themselves compelled by the meagerness of the assistance to shun opportunity and forgo productivity in favor of a ceaseless focus on daily survival. The system's incoherence and contempt for its dependents fluoresce brilliantly in the wake of a historic event like the Great Recession. When floodwaters cover our homes, we expect that FEMA workers with emergency checks and blankets will find us. There is no moral or substantive difference between a hundred-year flood and the near-destruction of the global financial system by speculators immune from consequence. But if you and your spouse both lose your jobs and assets because of an unprecedented economic cataclysm having nothing to do with you, you quickly discover that your society expects you and your children to live malnourished on the streets indefinitely.”
- “These systems (…) degrade and humiliate people. They're not solutions. They're Band-Aids on wounds that are pusing and bleeding."
- “However long it takes to lose everything, to get to the point where you're driving away from your repossessed home, the final unraveling seems eye-blink fast, because there is no way to imagine it. (…) you (…) won't have a mental category for your own homelessness (…) reality (…) seems to have sprung from nowhere.”
- “When negative thoughts come, it's important to be able to say, 'It's just a thought,(…)Just let it go.' When I get really down, I try to look at a worse-case scenario, like the pictures of the Haiti earthquake. I go, 'What could I do to help?' Things like that drive me forward." She also reminds herself to be grateful (…). Gratitude snuffs out self-pity.”
Vou ter que me lembrar deste último parágrafo;
tenho, realmente, muitas coisas pelas quais estou grata. Há sempre quem esteja
pior e acho que nada me livra de, um dia, chegar a uma situação semelhante. O
meu maior medo é de um dia me ver sem um tecto e dinheiro para as mais básicas
necessidades; só espero que, se isso algum dia acontecer, não me encontrar
sozinha pois assim acho que não seria capaz. Mas também sei que não sou mais
que os outros.
"Homelessness gets in your bloodstream (...) and it stays there forever."
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