A CLOSER LOOK

FROM THE MORNING PAPER

Under a picture of Eddie, a 14-year-0ld who has dropped out of school in San Bernardino, the statistics paint a very different picture of America from the one where I live.  The story begins with the headline, “No Room at the Inn for Innocence.”  Information in the story includes statistics for homelessness and poverty of children in America, and closer to home in California.  I learned, for example, that 5.7% of children in California are homeless.  They live in cars or in parks or temporarily in shelters for the homeless.  The only states with more homeless children than California are Mississippi and Alabama.  Nine percent of the children living in San Bernardino County are homeless.  

In America 22% of children live in poverty. I was taught that our country is “the city set on a hill” that all the world should use as model.  What has happened to us?  Where is the outrage? Where is the determination that the situation will change?  Trickle down, indeed.