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From: marie@harvard.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: How about helping our own
Message-ID: <223@harvard.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 18-Dec-84 12:10:43 EST
Article-I.D.: harvard.223
Posted: Tue Dec 18 12:10:43 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Dec-84 00:30:16 EST
References: <709@loral.UUCP> <191@talcott.UUCP>
Organization: Aiken Computation Laboratory, Harvard
Lines: 43

> 
> Bullshit.  You read in the papers about Joe Schmo the farmer who can't
> afford a second TV set.  In America, the phrase, "there are poor people"
> means that some reporter found some somewhere and gave it national press.

Have you ever been poor, Greg?  Didn't think so.  I grew up in an
affluent neighborhood too.  But I know people that didn't.  And yes,
they were always hungry.  Yes, some of them had to quit school to work.
Yes, many of them couldn't hold a job because they were too
hungry/tired/uneducated.  You are full of crap if you don't believe that
there are poor people in the U.S.

> I don't give a fuck about Roberts and Heston.  Damn right it's politically
> fashionable.  The whole country is starving.  And I don't mean they are
> hungry or that they eat in a soup kitchen.  Those people are *dying*.

There are people here dying too, Greg.  Just because they don't go to
Harvard doesn't mean they don't exist.  Yes, nearly everyone in Ethiopia 
is starving.  But that doesn't mean that the writer of the original
article didn't have a point.

> Johnny the crazy man, who can't keep a job because he
> forgets he has one.  Sending him food might help some, but Johnny's real
> problem is not that he's hungry; it's that he's crazy.  And no amount of
> money in the world will change that.  
> I don't think we did anything to Johnny the crazy man.  I think he did
> it to himself.  

How the f**k do you know?  Who are you to judge why someone goes crazy?
I don't believe that insane people should be forced to live in the
streets.  I believe we should take care of those people, because they
can't take care of themselves.  Who do you think you are, blaming them
when you know nothing about how they got that way?  If you ever read
anything about it, you would realize that many of them got where they 
are now because they *started off* poor.  And never got educated.  And
couldn't get or keep a decent job.  It ain't easy, Greg, even I know
that.

So you can say "we should help the starving people in Ethiopia" but
don't you dare say there's nobody here who needs help!

	Marie desJardins
	marie@harvard