Letters to the Editor
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out of sync
I have lived large portions of my life on the margins, especially ages 13 to 18 or so. I have never been affiliated with official street families, but as an 18 or 19 year old, I definitely fed and let others stay with me, especially younger women. I knew if it wasn't with me that they were prey to older men with mal-intentions. I know what it is to be "helped" but to also "owe."
This woman speaks as an authority on this subject, but I think that she is very limited in her knowledge of the whole picture. Particularly when she is asked about where this violence comes from, her response of fantasy games floored me. She has failed to see beyond into our prevalent culture, our government, tv, movies and so forth. She is happy to implicate fantasy games as the source of the lifestyle and fails to acknowledge how many people in our country are on anti-depressents, she doesn't critically analyze the other sources of a far over-reaching fantasy mentality that is shared by the status quo.
She also seems to support that people who come from "good loving families" should have nothing to worry about. I think that certainly as much physical, verbal, emotional and sexual abuse occurs there as anywhere else, it is simply more well hidden, less proper to speak of, no reason to leave home ... you have a future ahead of you ...
I am not defending street kids or our current social system to the max, but I will emphasize that they are, we all are, very limited in our isolation and personal opinions. The solutions are not sustainable when funding and directors fluctuate from term-to-term or administration-to-administration and the solutions come from outside the problem, from the top-down ignoring the core, the center. Why don't we engage the kids, the community, the street moms and dads and the real moms and dads and dialogue about the roots of these issues? Yes, it will take time, energy, and maybe even money ... but why sit on the sidelines and judge while inciting fear about the exotic other?
I think that the kids mentalities are perfect mirrors of aspects of our larger culture as well on the micro-level of their personal family culture, history and experience. I think that what we are all truly afraid of is acknowledging this because it implicates us and doesn't just put off the problem to some extraneous mythical force beyond our control.