Why do we always send the poor?

Brief article about how poverty impacts people's lives; how many poor people end up in prison or the military.

Lately I’ve been living in a rural part of Upstate New York, in what is considered part of Northern Appalachia. I’ve been quietly observing for the most part, but lately I’ve been outraged by the sheer number of people who I’ve talked with who have multiple family members “serving” in Iraq or Afghanistan, as well as multiple family members who are in jail or prison. One family I know, just to give an example, has two sons and one daughter stationed in various parts of world, fighting the “war on terror.” I feel outraged that probably 25% of my graduating class “served” in the military, simply because they felt there was no other option for them after high school.

In this part of the country, unemployment tends to run at a much higher level than in many other places. Probably nearly half of the adults I know in the area are only seasonally employed on farms, wineries or in the small tourist industry in this area. Poverty is a constant problem, and some families are so poor they have no electricity or running water. Outhouses are still a somewhat common sight around here. I remember classmates complaining of hunger, children who got teased because they smelled bad due to no running water, classmates “bathing” in bathroom sinks between periods…

These same children grow up to be cannon fodder. I hate to say it like that, but they do. We all wish for Cinderella endings for people so impoverished, but here in the United States, that is unlikely to happen anymore. I remember endless rounds of Army, Navy and Marines recruiters in our school, simply because we were poor and therefore vulnerable to the promise of travel, money for college, the promise of “belonging...”

I guess I was one of the lucky ones. I got a few scholarships and got to attend a four-year college for photojournalism. I’ve heard that some of my classmates haven’t been so lucky. Some have survived years and years of fighting “our” wars, but that does not mean that they have survived physiologically. Many don’t have any sort of explanation for why they were in Iraq or Afghanistan, or what they where suppose to be doing over there.