Have you wept over the death of someone killed by the police in your immediate circle?
I have.

Have you stared into the haunted eyes of a child whose father/mother/family was arrested last night?
I have.

Have you wiped the tears of a young person whose father is sitting in prison?
I have.

Have you sat in court rooms and listened to judges berate poor people for not paying to provide their own attorney?
I have.

Have you watched the face of a child fall after a grown up says that cops put the “bad guys” in jail and the child responds, “My daddy’s in jail.”
I have.

Have you held the hands of parents fighting to keep their children from state custody?
I have.

Have you watched department officials refuse parents access to their children and then cite “absence” or “failure to comply” or “lack of progress” as the reason they’re unfit to parent?
I have.

Have you handed a child a cup of water only to discover that it was yellowed and foul-smelling by rust and sulfur in the pipes?
I have.

Have you sat with a young mother struggling to find even just a a part-time minimum wage job to make ends meet because she as a “record” and can’t get anything better?

Have you walked alongside young parents who turn to organized crime to feed their children because society won’t allow them to make more than poverty wages otherwise?
I have.

Have you demanded access to services for a child only to hear from the state-provided “psychologist” that they’re just too busy to be bothered?
I have.

Have you watched children with learning disabilities languish on “waiting lists” for years without ever getting serviced with an IEP required by federal law?
I have.

Have you watched teenagers get taken from their parents and put in ADULT homeless shelters because there were no foster families willing to take a teen?
I have.

Have you walked the halls of elementary schools where children are so overlooked that *teenagers* roam the ELEMENTARY SCHOOL classrooms and don’t even know basic math?
I have.

Have you looked into the eyes of an incarcerated woman facing years in prison who was forced into sex trafficking by a man who pretended to be helping her?
I have.

Have you asked a white, middle-class church for help in meeting the needs of your poor community, and nobody showed?
I have.

Have you listened to white, middle-class Christians wonder whether a poor person is manipulating them by asking for help even as they give help to middle-class, white people without any questions at all?
I have.

Have you watched poor ppl & ppl of color be the hardest working & most family-centered ppl you’ve ever known only to hear a middle-class white person say from their couch that the only reason “those ppl” have it so bad is bcuz they’re lazy & bad parents & drug addicts?
I have.

If the challenges facing poor communities and communities of color were also true in middle-class, white communities, there would be a national outrage like we’ve never seen.

But because happens to “those people” the country assumes it’s their fault and moves on.