Councilwoman writes about the poor in Reading

Excellent read from Donna Reed:

Like many of you, I saw my e-mail and Facebook accounts fill up in the past two days as folks linked their postings to Tuesday’s New York Times piece and today’s accounts in the Reading Eagle.

I’ve read comments on these postings, on print and broadcast media sites, and on blogs that bemoan the condition of our city.  I agree this is not good news, I agree that it’s depressing and disconcerting, I agree that something – God may only know what – needs to be done.

What I don’t agree with and what makes my blood turn to ice are many of the comments I’ve read and the pure vitriol I heard on a downtown Reading radio station’s local talk show this morning.

Hatred, bigotry, condemnation filled the airwaves.  Resentment directed towards a specific ethnic group.  (Anyone recall 20^th Century history and the rise of a man named Hitler?) 

Approving references to a comment from a current county commissioner about building a wall around the city – and how that won’t work.

Are there louts among us who take advantage of the welfare system?  I have no doubt.  Are they the majority?  Please someone, anyone show me the documentation to prove that.

What I’m starting to see is the same sort of desperation my dad described from his youth:

Along Penn Street I see (two consecutive days this week alone) men foraging through trash cans for food.

A fellow pushing a shopping cart, filling it with aluminum cans to cash in for money to survive.

Couples – middle-aged, Caucasian – sitting on church steps in Reading, the bags of their belongings at their side. 

A constituent in the Fifth District reporting a suspicious man stalking …. a garden for food.

A friend speaking of an elderly woman, a neighbor, checking the trash bags in Centre Park for food late at night and finding leftovers to take home.

A mother, her daughter and her child pushing strollers laden with possession-filled trash bags struggling north on Route 183 just south of the city line – where were they possibly headed?

 A homeless man, a downtown regular, sweltering through steamy late-summer days in layers of coats and hats.

A makeshift settlement on the West Reading banks of the Schuylkill, just east of the busy West Shore Bypass, marked by tents and blue tarps continuing to expand.  (It will be easier for all of us to see when the leaves drop in a few weeks.)