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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Which do people think is the most neglected moiety in this country? No, it’s not the Blacks, not the LGBTQIA+ community, not Women or Old White Males. They all have their leaders, they all have their advocates.
Who brings you food in the restaurant? Who checks out your groceries? Who builds your car? Who takes care of your mother in the nursing home?
Those who suffered from consequences of the Coleman report, a 1966 study that ushered in an era that claimed educational spending was not directly connected to student achievement.
Mostly people without a college degree. The Joe-the-Plumbers.
These are the folks who are increasingly frustrated with the status quo. Who see touched-by-an-angel minority groups rise above them while they are left behind and have to choose between feeding their children or paying for their own insulin.
Who can’t visit their sick sister across town because they can’t afford a car repair.
Who share a one-bedroom apartment with three or four others and dine on Kraft Dinner and Snickers bars.
Parents who worked hard so their kids could lead a better life and, at a time when almost nobody but the already well-off can get ahead, their blue-collar beliefs and values are now being snubbed.
Others who had to leave school early to care for families when a parent got ill or went to prison and could never get a foot back on that ladder to the American dream. College? You’ve got to be kidding!
Still more who grew up on the street and never had much of a choice or chance.
Or who had early brushes with the law that left them with a prison past making them unemployable in numerous jurisdictions.
Many if not most of them do work, or try to, but for not-quite-survival pay. WalMart wages where they still have to apply for SNAP to put food on the table.
They are homecare helpers, check-out clerks and shelf stockers, receptionists, data-entry drones, the face greeting travelers as they leave and return from trips; they pump the gas, staff slaughterhouses, labor in the fields and the factories.
They are also the most likely segment of society to be included in the growing number (37% of adults up 5% from 2021 to 2022) of Americans, who lack sufficient funds to cover a single $400 emergency.
And they should have just as much right to succeed in our society as the rich and favored minorities and those sporting BScs and PhDs after their names.
In fact, their contributions are in many ways more indispensable.
These are the essential workers without whom our American lifestyle would grind to a complete halt.
America needs to invest in all of its people as well as in its failing infrastructure. These too often go hand-in-hand and, given the latter tends to more forcefully impact the lower faction of the former, how the country is run needs a major overhaul.
The recent census showed that 78.4% of people living in Los Angeles have a high school diploma or better. Which means that over 21% of Angelenos 25 or older – between 800,000 and 900,000 of us – do not.
However, that piece of paper, or lack thereof, is not the entire problem. It’s not having the experience of going to college, of interacting with people who have very different experiences and goals.
Of not worrying about paying the bills every single moment.
It’s not being on the winning team, at least some of the time.
It’s about raising expectations and not having them met.
It’s not being paid an honest wage with decent benefits for an honest day’s work.
Of not learning how to demand what is owed them.
Someone who is always losing out can hardly be expected to find the joy in life and living. How could they be expected to celebrate when they can never get ahead. When the deck is stacked against them right out the door.
When politicians and the middle and upper classes point to those who don’t succeed as being responsible for their own failure, they are 180 degrees wrong.
It is the system built and maintained by corporate America and their lobbyists that has caused the modern malaise and ennui that underlies their suffering, that drives the drug and alcohol abuse and suicides, and escalates income inequality.
It’s the system that condemns those without a degree and the life experiences to match to a perpetually declining life expectancy, to increasing health problems and loneliness, and to ingrained frustration with our economy and government. That seems to serve everyone but them.
They feel cast aside by their own leaders for the sake of minorities and women and illegal immigrants.
Like Palestinian refugee camps overflowing with those who have no hope for a future and so become fertile grounds for terrorist recruitment, too many disillusioned Americans have fallen prey to the rhetoric of the Donald Trumps and Ron DeSantises.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
It doesn’t have to be structured as formal GED or college classes, especially as too many of those are just one more arrow in the for-profit educational industry’s quiver for sucking money from the poor, but whatever it is must effectively meet the needs of those now marginalized by circumstance.
Politicians at local, state and federal levels need to remake the system in the name of all people to ensure that every American feels they have value and contributes to society. And the wherewithal to participate in and enjoy life.
To build support for the truly disenfranchised, and stop Trump and the MAGgot horde in their tracks, the Democrats must seize the day and commit to standing up and fighting for this faction as fiercely as they have fought for women and immigrants and people of color.
And they must take the time to listen to them, really listen, and work with those who are now trailing behind to find the best paths to empower them to become successes in the future.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
