Don’t get me wrong - I am all for causes that can actually effect changes but this idea of that on October 16th and 17th we are finally going to change the face of poverty by standing up is ridiculous in the simplest of terms.

While we might stamp our feet to symbolically stamp out child poverty all we have done since the Year of the Child is given ourselves sore feet and stupid government programs like Leave No Child Behind; which has in many cases made the situation worse.

It never fails that every month or so some new cause sweeps through the tech world at which point we all wildly post to our blogs how unjust this is or that is to show how socially caring we are. Then by the time the next latte is served we’re all back to the next hot startup or who’s sitting at the top of some list.

I will give Chris Brogan credit though for being out there first as the only Web 2.0 tech blogger among the 100 or so tech specific blogs I read on a daily basis to bring the whole Stand Up/Speak Out campaign against poverty to the forefront.

While his heart is surely in the right place and any fight against poverty is a just one, anyone who thinks a two day event; which will be passe by the next news cycle, is going to make any difference to the social crushing effects of poverty is living in a world with too many fluffy white clouds.

Sure it’s a great way to get one’s warm and fuzzy on as we dreamily believe that we are going to wipe poverty from countries like Kenya or any number of the 3rd world countries where poverty is inescapable. I guess it is easier to feel sympathy for a child in some remote village in some remote country we will never see than it is to give a damn about a child right around the corner from where you live who goes to school hungry and with threadbare clothes.

No, in those cases it’s easier to blame the parents for being losers, drug addicts or worse. It’s easier to look upon then as social service rejects than it is to see them as victims of a social system that places more value on the number of homes you own, the number of planes you own or the number of millions or billions of dollars you have in the bank.

We ease our conscience with social salves of things like a computer for every child thinking that this will be their pathway to a better life. What good does that computer do when the child and their parents are forced to live in homeless shelters or worse under those bridges you drive your swanky SUV’s over as you head off to your safe insulated world.

The fact is that the vast majority of Americans and Canadians are only one paycheck away from being homeless, from having to beg for clothes for their children, from sending them to school with empty stomachs and no free computer is going to change that; if it hasn’t already been pawned to buy a week’s groceries.

It has never been just a matter of child poverty because you cannot have that without the whole family living in conditions you don’t want to think about. As much as the well off might want to hide under statements like “they could work if they wanted to” or the good old stand-by “they’re just lazy bums who don’t want to work” the fact is that the largest majority of the newly poor and homeless may have occupied that cubicle next to yours or stood beside you on that assembly line.

Poverty may not recognize global boundaries  but as long as we deceive ourselves into thinking that it is more important to help those in far away countries before helping those who might have been our neighbors and friends the idea of trying to fight poverty is pointless.

No two day event or any program to give a child a computer is going to make any difference to the ever growing ranks of the poor. Until we look to our own communities, our own state or provincial governments, our own federal governments to actually care about the people - all the people - who they are suppose to represent over individual and corporate interests nothing is going to get better.

And the only thing that standing up will get you is sore feet while another family becomes homeless or joins the ranks of the working poor.

Listening to: Yello - Essential - Rubberbandman

[tags]poverty, education, homeless, technology[/tags]

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