Poverty Is Not an Accident

Poverty Is Not an Accident
Nelson Mandela

Thursday, February 03, 2011

Yeah, we're just a bunch of stupid hillbillies, oh Enlightened One from the city!

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Quoting from his facebook post an Albuquerque Democratic party dude: 
This morning I read about a family car that veered off the road yesterday in central NM. The children were dressed in PJs and without shoes! Wind chill was in the negative teens.
WTF!
Were it not for NM DOT employees who followed the skid marks into a ravine, all four would have surely died of hypothermia.
Why do people walk around underdressed in subzero weather? Do they think their cars will save them?
It got a facebook comment from someone named Karen.

My reply:

Karen, I sincerely doubt the "parents are zeros." People do the best they can with the information they have. A lot of people in rural areas are really suffering in this weather and there is no way to really "prepare" for it.

Last year, I saw a horse that had frozen to death, blown over by the wind, legs straight out, as though still standing. Its companion was backed in a corner of the corral, staring and screaming.

None of us out here has had running water for 2 days and don't expect any for 2 more, for instance.

I got frost bite in 10 minutes, yesterday, just trying to put a mattress on top of my goat's houses for extra warmth. My goats slept in a back bedroom with a mattress on the floor, the door closed and a space heater on. Still, this morning, they had frost on their whiskers from their own breath and tender hooves from frost bite. They spent the night on a carpeted floor, with sofa cushions and a mattress.

Several people have almost crashed into my yard, because the intersection is uphill in 4 directions and ice with packed snow on top. It doesn't matter how slow you drive.

And most of my neighbors have never lived, driven or dressed for such bitter weather in their lives. Quite a few of us here are undocumented immigrants from the deserts of Northern Mexico, not North Dakota. They don't have any education in science; they can't even conceive of temperatures as brutal as these.

A car full of kids in jammies with no shoes would indicate someone left their previous location IN A HURRY, probably because they had no heat, and were desperately trying to get to the home of a friend or neighbor for shelter, but couldn't navigate the frozen, snow packed, unplowed and unsalted roads.

It's easy for you, Danny; you can just walk across the street for groceries. We have to drive many miles for food, neighbors, medical help, anything. And most of us don't have any university education. Hell, quite a few of us never passed 3rd grade; it was too important to start working to support families.

And if you "liberals" are so judgmental of our hardships and economic distress, can you IMAGINE how the GOP (which runs most of rural New Mexico) treat us??

I'm tired of being hated for being poor and endangered by it all the time! Come out here; try to live here and THEN cluck your tongues at us!

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