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America Doesn't Just Throw Out the Crib [1]

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Date: 2022-07-20

Wasting Our Future

Americans produce 268 million tons of trash each year. Unless, of course, you count the infants, toddlers and children tossed into homelessness each year. When we count the number of kids America condems to homelessness, that tonnage increases by roughly twelve percent.

Stick with me, we’ll do the math. Two hundred sixty-eight million tons annually translates to about 735 thousand tons a day. According to the U.S. Department of Education, there are more than 1.5 million school kids experiencing homelessness. That doesn’t count their little brothers and sisters. And it sure doesn’t count little kids without bigger siblings. So – conservatively speaking – best guess extrapolating from Dept of Ed figures – we got three million kids without homes. If we consider the average child weighs 60 pounds each (less for the babies, more for the teenagers) – then the total we waste each day increases by 90,000 tons.

Those are some big numbers – 90,000 tons of children, America’s future – chucked to the curb.

Somebody call Emma Lazarus! She’s the woman who wrote the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty. Tell the “mother of exiles,” we found her “huddled masses.” Over by the dumpster, you’ll see her “wretched refuse… the homeless, tempest-tost… " America has discarded her own children. Shelters, fleabag motels, storage facilities, tents and cars, that’s where 90,000 tons of our children live now. Not in the dumpster, but right next to it.

What’s that? Didn’t know that three million babies, kids, students and teens have no home? You thought people chose homelessness, not that it was thrust upon them in the delivery room? Don’t beat yourself up. Confusing you is part of the plan. How else can your valuables end up in the dustbin? I mean, you’d never have let anyone dump the trash, if you’d known they were there.

But letting you know they’re there is where the good folks from #memorialblanket come in.

A group of your fellow Americans are trying to spread the word. This December 21st – the longest night of the year – in an effort to debunk the myths of homelessness, volunteers will blanket the west lawn of the United States Capitol – literally – with blankets that will represent those discarded millions. Not just the 90,000 tons of kids, but the weightier grownups too.

Sounds great? Want to get involved? Memorial Blanket dot org can help. In the build-up to the holiday season art installation, folks are staging events right now… to raise awareness and encourage participation. Events like one held Wednesday, at the Parent and Children Center in Brevard, North Carolina. There, adults painted baby and toddler feet and let them run wild on fabric that will be made into blankets for other children – children experiencing homelessness. If you can stand a little cuteness overload, take a minute and watch the news story done by WLOS the local ABC affiliate.

You can learn more about this effort at memorialblanket.org – it’s the website where you can sign up to get the newsletter, donate some funds, or volunteer to make a blanket. That one night, the winter solstice, won’t end homelessness. But, hundreds of blankets will paint a stark picture of the kind of space hundreds of our neighbors would occupy if their homeless hangout was the lawn of the U.S. Capitol instead of a car at the far side of a truck stop.

Pitch in – have fun – invite our volunteers to speak at your book club, house of worship or social gathering. Together we can share a little warmth and maybe even rescue some children from the nation’s homelessness dumpster.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/20/2111662/-In-America-We-Don-t-Just-Throw-Out-the-Crib-We-Throw-Out-the-Baby-Too

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