This reading completely threw me for a loop. Sure, I have heard of the South Bronx before, but all I thought of it was that it's the ghetto and there are a lot of violence around that area. I had no idea about all the hardships people around there face each and every day. So many are terrified with fear and, in a way, they should. The amount of murders and thefts that take place in the South Bronx is out of this world. All people can do is hide in fear and stay inside where at least they can't be seen by the outside world. I really took this reading to heart when Kozol explains the lives of children in the South Bronx. I just hate to hear about how children suffer in places throughout our world, but to know that this suffering is occurring so close to where i live is astonishing. I mainly felt the worst when Kozol says, In emergency conditions, if space heaters can't be used, because substandard wiring is overloaded, the city's practice, according to Newsday, is to pass out sleeping bags."You just cover up ... and hope you wake up the next morning," says a father of four children, one of them an infant one month old, as they prepare to climb into their sleeping bags in hats and coats on a December night.
When i read this part, I immediately thought of a scene in the movie Cinderella Man. In this scene, a boxer's family lives in a basement with no heat. This is because it is the middle of the great depression and the family has no money. Th kid's have to bare the terrible cold weather and they begin to get sick. Now, obviously these two scenarios are somewhat different because the children that live in the South Bronx are not living through the great depression. However, the way they are living can easily be compared to the way people had to live back then.
A lot of people could bring up the point to say that all we have to do with this problem is have people in power read these findings by Kozol and they will come to help. However, I believe this would never happen because anytime people in power hear about a situation they will quickly say that "this is a huge issue that we must act on immediately." Although they say this, these people don't really understand what is truly going on. I believe we should stick these people into the places like the South Bronx and have them live the lives that these children and people live every day. Let them see, first hand, exactly how these people live their lives and what they go through to survive. I believe that is the only way to fix the problem at hand here.
This is a link to a website that talks about life during the Great Depression
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