Washington, DC, November 19, 2012 -- After volunteering with different groups providing services for the homeless, Cory Clark and Dani Finger decided to investigate first hand poverty and homelessness in America and what those struggling for their survival endure and why no one seems to have the answers to the poverty problem.
They left their home in the Fairmount district of Philadelphia a little more than two years ago, with little more than a desire to change the world, guts, more talent between them then a hundred of the finest in their fields, and a whole lot of compassion for the people who are suffering.
"We wanted to see for ourselves and understand what the most vulnerable are going through, we know there are solutions, we even know what they are, but we just couldn't understand why others weren't arriving at the same places we were, so we had to see the bureaucracy, greed, and apathy in action from the ground perspective," said Clark.
"I see poverty as violence," Clark says, clarifying the statement, "the denial of human needs for the sake of profit, is tantamount to murder, yet this is what our society advocates, people are forced to buy everything that they need to live, I don't mean this figuratively but in a very real sense, we are forced to buy food, water, shelter, our warmth, and if you can't afford these things you risk death, that's violence."
Each day since arriving in Washington, DC, they have panhandled to acquire the things they've needed, from food, clothes, and supplies so they could do their work and, yes, even cigarettes and coffee.
"People on the street are constantly fighting for survival often against the horror of invisibility, people will go out of their way to pretend not to see you just so they don't have to recognize that they have a social responsibility to the poor who are often mentally ill, and many of which are military veterans, and when you're faced with so much insecurity and callousness people turn to vices in order to survive mentally, for us that's cigarettes and coffee, for others it's K-2 or alcohol, who are we to judge them while they suffer through so much," said Finger.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
