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Jul. 28th, 2003 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lady_kishiriaSo last night around 9, I went to take out the garbage. We have a big dumpster in a cement enclosure, and you have to throw your garbage over the wall of the enclosure. I did so and almost hit Johnny, which is what we call the old Asian guy who makes his living (or supplements an income, we´re not sure) as a garbage picker. I apologized and asked if he needed cans, because we keep ours in a plastic bag and leave them for him, or hand them over if we run into him. He did, so I got the cans and 6 beer bottles and brought them on down.
It gets me that the media makes such a big deal over the poverty of the third world when it exists just as much in the US and to a lesser extent in Canada. I have known of people in Toronto who were garbage-pickers. True, you don´t find whole villages living at the garbage dump, as you do in Mexico City and even in Tijuana, but just the fact that there are people who rely on this to make rent is a disgrace.
While I´m very big into telling people about what goes on outside of the industrialized world, I do wonder if all the emphasis on the miseries of the third world is meant to make us collectively feel better about the problems here (meaning both the US and Canada).
It gets me that the media makes such a big deal over the poverty of the third world when it exists just as much in the US and to a lesser extent in Canada. I have known of people in Toronto who were garbage-pickers. True, you don´t find whole villages living at the garbage dump, as you do in Mexico City and even in Tijuana, but just the fact that there are people who rely on this to make rent is a disgrace.
While I´m very big into telling people about what goes on outside of the industrialized world, I do wonder if all the emphasis on the miseries of the third world is meant to make us collectively feel better about the problems here (meaning both the US and Canada).
