When Men are Down and Out - Does Anybody Care? [View All]

[qwlauren35]

I spent yesterday campaigning for Kweisi Mfume yesterday in Baltimore's Druid Hill Park. Mfume is running for US Senate, and I want to believe that he should get there. But I was struck by what I ran into while campaigning. As I talked to the MEN, two issues emerged.

The first, of course, was from the felons. Forget voting, they wanted JOBS! I remember about 10-20 years ago, there was a lot of hoopla about helping youth get jobs, but that dried up. And now, when our many of our youth really NEED jobs in order to get right with society, too many of them have already "messed up", and all of a sudden can't get hired ANYWHERE, no matter how hard they try. We want men to be able to take care of families... but if they can't get jobs, it's not going to happen...

The second, was from the veterans! In talking to them, I found out that our "wonderful" VA hospitals, where we assume our veterans are being well cared for, have a tendency to offer methadone and morphine as "solutions" to veteran ailments. And these same hospitals willingly offer access to the veterans to the pharmaceutical companies for drug trials and experiments. Some veterans are more messed up after they come out of a VA hospital than they were when they went in. And this becomes yet another group of men who then cannot take care of their families.

What I want to know is: what's the plan for addressing these issues? Oh, I hear about helping felons be able to VOTE... who does THAT benefit? What they NEED is jobs. Who is addressing this? And for the veterans - do people even KNOW? Do the politicians KNOW? Is there anyone out there in a position to take on the military (they run VA hospitals!) AND the pharmaceutical companies (who benefit from "legal" drug addicts!) in an effort to save our men from medical abuses?

If anyone has seen any work being done on these issues, please let me know.