Mary - Why I want to end poverty

As an adult, most people don’t think of me as poor. That’s because I went through a lot of years of college and so some people refer to me as Dr. Minor, or they used to anyway.

As a kid it was much different. We were a typical military/catholic family, and I was the seventh of eight children. Many of the kids I went to school with were from wealthy families and I was more of a “hood”. I know that is hilarious given how much I resemble the Pilsbury dough boy today but that was then, and this is now. Much of that persona had more to do with my older siblings who were in and out of the juvenile and then the adult justice system.

One of the advantages of growing up poor is that it doesn’t seem to stress me out to live frugally the way it does for a lot of people. I’m used to ebbs and flows.
It has always amazed me how some people whose job it is to help poor people seem to not like poor people very much. They usually like me because I speak the code and I am mostly good at keeping my mouth shut and so sometimes they might forget that I am poor too,

And I get it. People are messy. I have recently moved into subsidized housing for seniors. My rent is 30% of my income, which is Social Security. I sometimes go out to lunch with friends who are very conservative and never stop complaining about my people. I usually pick my battles but sometimes I interrupt the nonsense because I just want to. It really is no different with my neighbors who are constantly complaining about a different set of issues.

I just know too many people that would rather curse the darkness than turn a light on. And that is why I am in RESULTS.