07th May 2006
Looking for an End to Her Skid
Steve Lopez is one of my favorite writers because of columns like this: Looking for an End to Her Skid.
Steve writes about what is really happening in the greater Los Angeles area complete with the absurdity of Sharon Stone saying that everyone wants to see her breasts (Note to Sharon: I would pay not to). He writes about the lack of public transportion amid the worst traffic, the grueling day of a migrant worker who can’t take off work on May Day in solidarity because he needs the money, the apathy over war, and the challenges of being homeless.
In today’s column, he writes about Lee Sevilla, a 71-year-old woman who lives in her Dodge Neon with her dog.
Lee had a couple of awful life experiences: a divorce, a child who committed suicide, followed by a low-paying jobs. That made her homeless in Southern California. For those of us who live paycheck to paycheck, the edge is far closer than we think it is.
Lee says, “I just don’t understand how we can go to Iraq and build up that country, but not be able to figure out how to get homeless people off the streets or build affordable housing.”
I don’t understand either, except to say that powerful lobbies and powerful men seem to be in control of how the money is spent in this country and money is allocated in order to make the richer far richer, which in turn makes many of us without homes, cars, and scraping to survive even as we work full-time.
