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What I Saw in the San Francisco Bay Area Broke My Heart
What will it take to heal a city?
You don’t want to visit San Francisco right now, is what many people said prior to my visit.
…full of trash, poverty and homelessness. Completely out of control.
This made my heart ache. When it comes to travel, there are always multiple sides to every story and every location. I wanted to give the city a fair shake.
People told me the same thing before I visited Seattle and Baltimore last year, and I’m glad I didn’t listen. Both are well worth it to go! As human beings we are only as strong as the most vulnerable aspects of our society and only acknowledging the beauty of our world while turning a blind eye to the not-so-beautiful is a disservice to humanity.
Still, even though I’ve been to some rather rough neighborhoods in some rather rough places, what I saw in the San Francisco metro area just ripped my soul apart. And it wasn’t just the poverty, but the sheer desperation I saw in so many faces. The confusion and the anger. As if many people had fully given up on the American Dream and were in survival-of-the-fittest mode.
