Many thanks for sharing this story Danah, the world needed to hear this and acknowledge it. I’m originally from the San Francisco Bay area, for which I moved to the midwest in the mid 90’s only to return in 2008 to realize San Francisco had transformed into the land of the homeless! It wasn’t the once beautiful city I remembered. I was horrified to say the least.

What sickens me more than anything is the “Well to do’s” assumption that homeless and poor people are the result of their mistakes, its nonsense. The upper middle class come from predominantly well off families, and for them, the road to success is much easier than it is for those who’re born into poverty. Working class America needs to stop stigmatizing these people as failures of themselves, and realize the truth, they’re the result of a failed society that shows no empathy.

I hear people all the time go on and on about how hard they worked to get educated and managed to get where they are. News flash folks, many Americans work just as hard as you, including the poor and homeless! Unlike the losers who have mommy and daddy to pay for their education, some of us had to seriously struggle financially and work 100 hours a week at the same time just to achieve the same end results. I have no pity for the educated, stop stop glorifying yourselves. I have over 30,000 hours in the IT industry under my belt, and I don’t consider myself any greater than any other human being.

I came from a poor family, but eventually managed to get educated, but it wasn’t a walk in the park. Even with a college education today, I find myself the poorest I’ve ever been, lost a business I worked to death to build, and can’t find a job anywhere.

The fact is, The American dream is a lost one. I know the truth of why San Francisco fell from societal grace, and its the result of an economy that only favors a handful of Americans and shuns the rest, no thanks to the losers for political leaders we trusted our lives with.

My heart goes out to those homeless people of San Francisco, and anywhere for that matter. I understand, I get it, I once was it, and if things continue the way they have been with our economy, I may be joining their ranks once again.

I personally think the answer is to force our politicians into homelessness and take everything they have and give it to the poor. Then maybe they would understand how hard it is to rise up from nothing in a society that serves to benefit the self infatuated and turn everyone else into modern day slaves.