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Why do we vilify the poor?

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Why do we vilify the poor?

poverty

 

Mere minutes after her story was posted online, the critics circled from above.

But wait, she has tattoos. Piercings. Someone reported that she’d been spotted at Tim Hortons. When readers asked the question: “Why doesn’t she just get a job?,” others offered with quick certainty: “because she’s lazy.”

Someone called her a leech.

Then more details emerged. Apparently, the money she receives on ODSP comes direct from a reader’s bank account, who writes: Stop expecting MY hard earned money to pay your way of life.

Another reader, keen to eliminate welfare fraud, offers this in depth assessment: She looks perfectly healthy to me.

But the harshest criticism came from people who identified themselves as the working poor.

They struggle more than her. They work harder. They are more deserving.

They “earn” their money.

I wept reading this article.  Shame is something we fight all the time, trying to tell the stories of people living in poverty.  And it’s why, with out local paper, we didn’t want ‘our’ people profiled.  It opens them up to the trolling and bullying.

I have to go and check the comments on the articles about our local people.  Make sure the same nonsense wasn’t happening. I’ve been in this game long enough, that I’ve got pretty thick skin.  But it still stings.



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