Michael Harrington Quotes
Poverty is often off the beaten track. It always has been.
Most societies are organized in such a way that most middle and upper class people rarely interact with the chronically poor and rarely enter the ghettos where the poor tend to congregate. Even when beggars are visible in major streets, very few people, including those who may give the beggars some money, interact with the poor or relate to them in any personal way.
The Other America 1962
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Referring to President Ronald Reagan whose administration was very good for the wealthy and the large corporations but economically was the start of a downward spiral in the income of the lower middle and lower classes of the society. Reagan and many politicians of both parties were often oblivious to the lives of people not in the upper strata of society. It was not so much that they were against the middle class and poor; they just did not have much contact with them and their plight was list in the averaging of economic statistics that showed increasing income.
Edward Michael Harrington Jr. was an American democratic socialist, writer, author of The Other America, political activist, political theorist, professor of political science, radio commentator and founding member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
