#overt

My honey child, them housing projects Cannot contain her multitudes A sunbeam, hard upon her Just a fly strugglin’ through her braid loops Watch me prove to ‘em I’m more than nothin’ But a ragamuffin with homesick eyes Yes, when it gets to be the same old thing Shorty you ought to come and see about me My love, she is a drummer Than industrial steel, her backbone tougher The eloping night and the honey moon that trails Just dirt ‘neath her finger nails I’ll be down on them crossroads ‘Til daybreak winks a bright eye And if it gets to be the same old thing Shorty you ought to come and see about me She’s heard all the right things And they did not persuade her She has no use for your words What she wants is your labor ‘Cause when gringos speak of minorities They tend to keep their voices low Ah, but when that gets to be the same old thing Shorty you ought to come and see about me ↗

— Valentine Xavier

#bravado #love #poverty #station #valentine-xavier-bronzeville

He seems so frivolous and so careless, but he gives money to beggars, not frivolously or carelessly, but because he believes in giving money to beggars, and giving it to them “where they stand”. He says he knows perfectly well all the arguments against giving money to beggars. But he finds those to be precisely the arguments for giving money to them. If beggars are lazy or deceptive or wanting a drink, he knows only too well his own lack of motivation, his own dishonesty, his own thirst. He doesn’t believe in “scientific charity” because that is too easy, as easy as writing a check. He believes in “promiscuous charity” because that is really difficult. “It means the most dark and terrible of all human actions—talking to a man. In fact, I know of nothing more difficult than really talking to the poor men we meet.” (pp. 13-14) ↗

— Dale Ahlquist

#social-justice #men

Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it. ↗

— John Green

#introverts #profession #story #storytelling #writing

Poverty is the frontier we have to be able to cross. ↗

— Ricardo Lagos

#cross #frontier #poverty

There are many programs specifically aimed at helping people in poverty start a business. ↗

— Matthew Lesko

#business #helping #helping people #many #people

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#class #poverty #society #architecture

I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty. ↗

— Groucho Marx

#extreme poverty #i #nothing #poverty #state

We have had virtually unlimited access to abortion for nearly twenty years. Yet during that same period, more and more women and children have slipped into poverty. ↗

— Robert Casey

#access #children #during #had #into

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor. ↗

— H. L. Mencken

#caused #common #crime #kind #poor

Trickle-down theories do not address the legitimate aspirations of the poor. We must lift those at the bottom so that poverty is erased from the dictionary of modern India. ↗

— Pranab Mukherjee

#aspirations #bottom #dictionary #erased #india