UN poverty official touring Alabama's Black Belt: 'I haven't seen this' in the First World

[G_j]

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/12/un_poverty_official_touring_al.html#incart_river_mobileshort_home_pop

By Connor Sheets [e-mail]

A United Nations official who tours the globe investigating extreme poverty said Thursday that areas of Alabama's Black Belt are suffering the most dire sewage disposal crisis of any place he has visited in a developed country.

"I think it's very uncommon in the First World. This is not a sight that one normally sees. I'd have to say that I haven't seen this," Philip Alston, the UN's Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said as he toured a Butler County community where raw sewage flows from homes through exposed PVC pipes and into open trenches and pits.

Alston was in Alabama on Thursday to bear personal witness to the poverty, lack of access to basic services and civil rights struggles that have plagued poor, mostly African-American residents of the state's Black Belt region for generations.

Named for its rich soil and located in the southern half of the state, Alabama's Black Belt is part of a ribbon of counties that stretches across the South and has a long history of poverty and racial discrimination.

The visit is part of a 15-day tour of the U.S. that Alston and his team are conducting to gather information for a report on poverty and human rights abuses in America that they expect to release in spring. The UN contingent, which has already visited cities in California, is also hosting a full day of meetings with civil society organizations today in Montgomery, after which it will travel to Atlanta, Puerto Rico

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[RKP5637]

1. Given that Alabama is at the bottom of the list of rankings across all states, I'm not surprised. nt

[AJT]

2. Keep them poor, uneducated and hopeless and they won't bother voting.

GOP mission accomplished.

[Botany]

3. or just stop them from voting or stop their vote from being counted

n/t

[robbob]

5. tRump loves the uneducated

[mountain grammy]

4. I think we lost the "War on Poverty."

We moved to NC in 1957 and, even to me, as a 10 year old child, the living conditions were shocking, and we had lived in a trailer with no plumbing during a base housing shortage. The shacks I saw along the road in the rural south made that trailer look pretty good.

Basic, decent sanitation and clean water shouldn't be an issue anywhere in America. Such a sad story. Our government is broken from top to bottom.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. I recall being in Mississippi in the early 1980's

and being shocked at the poverty I saw there.

In this country people take it for granted that there will be a certain amount of extreme poverty and assume it to be normal and acceptable. But you don't find such poverty or such disparities of wealth on other First World Countries. Which brings up the question: Is the United States a First World Country?

[hunter]

7. The U.S.A. has never been a "First World" nation.

We are the top Banana Republic of the Banana Republics, with enough nukes to destroy human civilization several times over, and a grotesquely oversized military and black ops budget.

We have a mostly white "Christian" First World middle class that includes a limited numbers of outsiders this class chooses to tolerate. This group is generally oblivious to the Developing Nation and Third World living conditions of those they actively exclude from their society.

I live in a middle class higher density California suburb. Within walking distance of my home there are encampments of homeless people, hidden from those who commute to work in their automobiles, encampments that have much in common with similar places I've seen in Latin America. Here in the U.S.A. these places are common but invisible to those who rarely wander more than a few hundred feet from the place they've parked their cars.

If you talk to the people living there many of them come from places with freezing winters, places where homeless people literally freeze to death, and places where homeless people are subjected to extreme violence from law enforcement on down to affluent teenagers looking to brutalize people they regard inferior. Even Hawaii has a problem with homelessness, people who come from the mainland and never leave. For that reason homelessness is a problem that will require federal solutions.

This nation is wealthy enough that we shouldn't have any significant homelessness, or the kind of poverty and institutional racism that makes entry into the middle class impossible.

[Solly Mack]

8. Hurricane Katrina exposed the racism/poverty divide in America to the world.

I recall other nations being shocked at the response as well as the conditions prior to and after the flooding - and the reactions to those in need.

Now years later, people are still shocked at how bad poverty is for many in America.

Really?

Because, what? They thought someone would take action to change it? That racism would die out? That greed would dissolve into generosity to all? That local governments would change to meet the needs of their citizens?

What - exactly - is so shocking today that wasn't equally as shocking then?

That nothing has been done?

That different people are seeing it firsthand for themselves?

Does everyone have short memories?

I think it's a good thing for the UN to tour and give a honest report of what they find. But what will America do besides ignore them?

I'm angry that nothing ever gets done to fix the problem. That Americans who protest against racism are ridiculed and attacked. That people get all hyper on the subject for a few minutes to a few days and then it all goes back to being horrible.