Poor People

Remember this picture? It was taken in 1936 byDorthea Lange and became known as "Migrant Mother." The subject was Florence Owens Thompson, only 32 when this photo and several others were snapped in Nipomo, California. Ms. Lange never even asked Ms. Thompson her name. While Florence Thompson was able to move her family beyond poverty into a middle-class existence, she was always a bit resentful that she unwittingly became a poster child for poverty without seeing any financial benefit from the honor.

This stoic woman put a face to poverty during the depression. No easy task for any time during this nation's history and that's the point of this post. I ran across the following anonymous quote the other day:

"It is the essence of the poor that they do not appear in history."

What a notion. What an astounding judgement and how it saddens me that it is true. The picture above was taken in 1936, more than 70 years ago!!! How many pictures of poverty have you seen since? And if you have seen pictures of poor people, how many of their names do you remember? Did you even know Florence Thompson's name a minute ago?

The only thing that has happened in 70 years to make people look at the poor in this country is Hurricane Katrina. Yet even with devastation and death and wanton neglect, it was somehow the poor peoples' fault that they died. A huge chunk of US population doesn't ever ever want to have to look at poverty again. Maybe next time it will be harder to blame the poor for being poor or dying or not doing a better job of helping themselves...after all, this is America, land of the free, home of the brave. Only poor people aren't brave are they?

In the throes of trying to survive in New Orleans in the days following the levee breaks, our national media latched onto a handful of individuals who fired guns at helicopters and suddenly that handful represented what was wrong with ALL the victims of Katrina. Not only were they poor, not only wouldn't they help themselves, not only were they lazy for not trying to leave when they had the chance, they were ungrateful murderers too!

Spike Lee tried to set the story straight but a whole lot more tried to turn Katrina into a "They deserved the fate they got" scenario. Anonymous was right on. He/she knew exactly what they were talking about.

Florence Owens Thompson died in 1983 at the age of 80. Her gravestone reads, "Migrant Mother - a legend of the strength of American motherhood." I've always thought that a "legend" was a made-up story that some people believed because it was told over and over, but made-up nonetheless. There's her picture, in black and white, and her very existence is still perceived as questionable in its truth. It is how, I fear, the people of New Orleans will be remembered and diminished and minimized in the future ... because the poor don't appear in history.

Happy Easter!

Whether it's eggs you're after or to bite the ears off a chocolate bunny or to find a renewed sense of self in this world, here's hoping Easter brings you more than you hoped for, more than you needed and more peace ... always more peace.