Original Air Date: 10.12.05
I am very fortunate to have grown up in a family that was, for all its faults and dysfunctions, fairly financially stable. However, after my parents parted ways, there were many times where my mom would so eloquently tell me, "We didn't have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out of."
And no, she did not grow up on a farm, raising chickens or "in the sticks."
But the statement always intrigued me. I'd never heard of a place that allowed you to just grab any pot you could find, piss in it and toss it out the window, but I desperately wanted to find it. As a teenager, that was the kind of rugged, carefree living I wanted to experience firsthand.
As long as I was never standing outside of that dreaded window.
But, no matter how many pissing pots we were missing, my mom always worked very hard to provide as best she could and make everything seem as normal as possible. And looking back, even when it was bad, it could've been much, much worse.
Today, on The Oprah Winfrey Show, O is joined by CNN Reporter Anderson Cooper, Maria Shriver and O best gal pal / editor-at-large of O Magazine, Gayle King. Each traveling to different parts of the country to investigate and uncover the forgotten families of poverty. Their situations and their stories are difficult to comprehend.
A mother who lived in a min-van with her three children. They ate peanut butter and crackers.
For breakfast, lunch and dinner. Because that's all they could do.
There were families that can't afford to hook up water in their homes, so they "recycle" the water or pump more from the ground.
Dishwater, bath water, water to wash clothes. From the ground.
A town, 70 miles from Chicago, with no banks, no drugstores, no medical facilities, no running water, no sewage system, no city services like garbage collectors or fire stations and no paved roads. A town where the average YEARLY income is $9,700. A town where a family with four children, sells duck eggs to make money, raises goats for milk and meat and lives on $579 a week.
Survives is more like it.
And the father who gave blood in order to get gas money so he could take his three children to school. He lost his job, as did his wife and now their family says "good night" to one another in a homeless shelter. The daughter cries.
Or the mother who had to choose between dinner or putting gas in the car so she could go to work the next day.
Her kids went hungry that night.
There are no new clothes. No shoes. No telephones or internet. Time after time. Story after story. Some, if not all, that will move you to tears.
So, as always, have Kleenex nearby. She might spring a leak.
From her eyes.
Let me leave you with this:
• 37 million people in this country live in poverty (the population of Greater New York / Tri-State Region, the Greater Los Angeles area and the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex combined)
• Detroit is America's poorest "big" city
• Over 10,000 people are homeless each night in Detroit
• 1 in every 3 people living in Detroit lives at or below the poverty line (the minimum level of income needed to sustain a standard quality of life)
• In the United States, in 2007, the poverty line for a single person under 65 was $10,787; the poverty line for a family of four, including two children, was $21,027
• 42% of single moms in the United States live at or below the poverty line
• 63% of children living in poverty are African-American or Hispanic
• If they had the next two paychecks taken from them, most Americans would lose their cars, their homes and end up in poverty
As you read this on your $2,000 computer, after you finished watching SportsCenter on your $2,500 TV, remember the $100 bar tab you had a few weeks ago. And remember that you paid it without even thinking. "It's only $100," you thought to yourself as your $300 iPhone buzzed in your pocket. You hopped into your $30,000 Tahoe and headed for home.
It was several hours that would take some families four years to afford.
Next Episode: How the Gift of Fear Can Save Your Life
We all have that little person inside of us that freaks out at some of the most random moments. It might be time to start listening to that voice.
Until Monday.
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