Textures. I love photographing textures, but today, today, America celebrate Dr. Mark
Luther King. It is also the day of the 57th inauguration, that of President Obama. Everywhere
there will be speeches on our freedom, equality, corporate success, prosperity, or rights to
be our arms, or rights to speak our minds. It is all part of the texture of America,
what makes America great. But this texture has a dark side. In celebrating our plenty
and our prosperity, we have somehow slipped in our handling of poverty. We now have a
situation that over half of all Americans will spend at least one year below the poverty
line. One proposed final solution in poverty, of course, is to build more prisons. Is that
the best our civilized nation can come up with? But I ask myself, wouldn't it be better
to build a better educational system? After all, $6,000 per child is way less expensive
than $46,000 per prisoner, don't you think? Maybe my figures are wrong. After all, such
figures are so obscured these days. What is not obscured, of course, is that 46 million
people now live in poverty. 200% of all American children are now living in poverty. It is
ironic that on this day, Dr. Martin Luther King Day, we have surpassed the poverty levels
of the 1960s, when a president then found it significant enough to start a war, a war
on poverty. By the way, did you know that poverty was one of Dr. Martin Luther King's
main concern? We have had many, many, many wars since then, and many corporations have
gotten very rich on many of these wars. But on this day, I can't help but wonder, whatever
happened to the war on poverty, textures, a part of the American fabric. Oh well, what
can I do about it anyway?
