Dickey,

Well, my friend, we are now down to arguing over how many angels can dance on the end of a pin...

I just don't see where the questions you have asked are relevant to this discussion of any other discussion fir that matter...

Fold live where they can afford... If you can afford a $1300 a month apartment yet choose to live in a $475 apartment in a neighborhood where you will be dodging bullets on a daily basis, fine... Move there... You mentioned the area in the Rock Creek area where there were $475 apartments... Please just ove there... If you are white and look middle class, you will be dead in matter of days... However, if you are a black woman makin' $8 an hour with 3 kids you might be able to live there without be killed but, then again, yer kids might not turn out too good...

The only folks that live in these areas live there becuase of default and not choice... Many folks just need the assistence from family that live in those neighborhoods...

I'm not too sure what choices you think that poor people have and I am kinda curious as to just what you thinbk poor people think about their world??? Do you have any idea??? This ain't about yer daddy sellin' apples during the depression... It's about a much different paradyme... And I'm guessing from the poasitions that you take on variuos issues that you don't have a clue what it is like to grow up in an impoversihed family...

Yeah, you perhaps have learned enough from ***your*** eductaion and ***your*** experiences to make choices that would allow you to escape a temporary bout of poverty... I could as well... Most, if not everyone I know her in Mudcat could, too...

But we're dealing with reality here... Not pure academics... Not preaching to folks who don't have our expiences to draw from... If we, as a nation, are going to ever win the so-called "war on poverty" it's going to take folks like you to make a fundamental shift in attitude toward facing reality... Reality is what social workers face every day of their working lives...

You reality doesn't mean jack to someone who has grown up much differently...

That is what I tried to explain to mg but I don't think she ever got it and accused me of being rude... No, I'm not being rude... I am being real... I have been in the trenches, have suffered from the dialy disapointments of seeing folks make what seems to middle class educated people, ahhhh, "bad choices" and from it all I learned that the only way I could be effective was to become more "clinet centered"...

Yeah, I keep coming back to this concept of "client centered" and if we are ever going to make any progress we are going to have to accept,***** without judgement*****, where the folks we want to help are in their lives...

And we are going to have to have the resources that we once had at our disposal to throw into the mix as we ***try*** to nudge and cajole and teach and nurture folks to make changes...

...and that ain't easy, Dickey...

Take yourself, fir example.... You are a very dogmatic person who is highly resistent to make any changes... So are most poor people...

But, and I will put this into the mix, Dickey, I will give you credit for hangin' in this discussion (even though most of of yer hangin' has been of the ahh-hah-gotcha-Bobert academic variety...) becuase it shows that you have at least some rudementary curiousity about this terrible American problem...

Bobert

p.s. Just needed to do that little bit of house cleaning... Maybe tomoorow night for the story I promised...