n that poverty can be eliminated, we at least can order where we live, where our children go to school, what we read, and whom we encounter in such a way that we insulate ourselves from contacting or even thinking about the poor with their sordid lives and criminal tendencies. This is the coming solution to the problem of poverty: to make it go away by the cheap and simple expedient of refusing to acknowledge it (Bracey, 1997; Goldman 1999; Susser, 1997). The impoverished meaning of poverty, and the resulting indifference toward it, enables and encourages politicians to join the rest of us in turning our backs on the poor. The structure of our society is not condolent to helping those in poverty or to improve their situation (Bartlett 1998; Gibbs 1995; Goldman 1999; Susser, 1997). While the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, it seems that if you bend down to help someone up, there is someone else there to kick you down. Poverty is a disease of "The Money (Profit) System" (Susser, 1997). The smallest group "the rich " does little or nothing and enjoys the abundance of things made by the largest group - "the poor "- who live lives of semi-starvation and misery. The newspapers (just one of many devices invented and fostered by those who are selfishly interested in maintaining the status quo) are full of accounts of 'crimes' committed by the impoverished ('theft of trade' mainly). When people in mainstream America think of violence, they also think of poverty: the deviant, defiant, dangerous "underclass" or "undeserving poor" (Federman, Garner & Short, 1997). Such stereotypes contain a grain of truth amid their untruths; the typical American stereotype of an impoverished person is one that is marked by numerous defiant behaviors. Though often seen as drug using, welfare abusing, baby making, jobless minorities, this is rarely the case. While the myth is that the vast majority of the poor are blacks and Hispanics, the fact is ...
