Whoever we blame for poverty in this country, there's one group that's entirely innocent - the children. That's easy to forget in the endless and overheated political rhetoric of this presidential campaign.
Years ago I was standing in the lobby of an overnight homeless mission at 5:00 a.m., talking to a single mom preparing to take her children to school on city buses and still get to work in just under two hours. As I stood there looking at her three lovely children, I thought of my own children blissfully asleep in their beds at that hour because they didn't have to sleep in a shelter. And I kept thinking, why are my children so blessed? What did they do to deserve a better life, or at least one with significantly less challenges and sacrifices? And I realized that they, like the children that stood before me, had done nothing to deserve the life they had. I've had that thought many, many times - in Haiti, in Honduras, in Chicago, Detroit, San Antonio, and Austin.
So, the next time we're waxing eloquent about who's to blame for people living in poverty and the drain that it is on our economy, remember those innocent children who always suffer the most for our adult mistakes and neglect. It's not their fault.
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