Misery doesn't really love company-not if the person in misery has an ounce of decency.

My ex said that if I loved blacks and poor people so much, I could learn the hard way about how much help they would give me if the situation changed, and I was the person needing help. (Have I blogged yet about how racist my ex was, and how he got worse in the last terrible years we were together? He hated everyone!)

What happened was that I learned that people like my ex are every bit as savage as I originally thought them to be, and that they think if someone is alone, that undefended person is fair game.

Which I already knew.

I also didn't need to re-learn that poor people of any race or creed are the same-some are good despite the exhaustion inflicted on them by animals like Crusty and my former employers, and some are every bit as brutal as Crusty and my former employers.

Crusty used to go on about "survival of the fittest..." and I learned early on to block it out-which always totally pissed him off.

On occasion I would ask him to define 'fittest', but I digress...

Today one of my co-workers confided that she had to find a place to stay for two weeks while she waits for her apartment to be ready-she has two or three school-agers at home, so it is something of a miracle that she was able to find something at all.

So naturally something has happened to cost her money she hasn't got...

She has been staying with her aunt and uncle, and the uncle has been eating the children's food. She told us (the woman whose son was murdered was in the room when I asked the young woman if she was alright) that she can't even bring home a loaf of bread, cereal, or milk, because the minute she sets anything in the pantry or 'fridge her uncle takes it, often eating it in front of the children, who are now only getting one meal a day at school.

She said she 'lost it on him last night' and was subjected to his drug fueled verbal abuse-which her children witnessed. The end result was that she has to leave her aunt's house.

She is a year younger than my oldest child, my daughter.

I started crying because I understand how awful it is to have your food taken the minute you get it through the door-it has been happening to me-I have lost even more weight this past six months since moving to Atlanta and am hungry most of the time. But at least I don't have to watch a blood relative steal my little one's food, and I was filled with anger and grief. Once I would have been able to get her a safe place to stay with her children, but since Thanksgiving 1998 I have been in rather desperate straits myself.

The rest of the day went better for her, because I think she believed me when I told her that if I had my own place she and the kids could have tucked up with me; I think it helped that our co-worker was sympathetic, too. We brainstormed for a bit, trying to figure out how to help her, but in the end, there wasn't anything we could do besides pray for her and the kids. We tried to talk her into asking another of our co-workers if she could stay at his place, but she has to get her little ones to a school too far away...she said that she was going to have to ask her ex to help her-then she told us that she had been trying to keep the location of her new place a secret from him.

She didn't go into detail, and she didn't have to. We knew what was going on. Been there-done that. Dammit.

I don't think she felt better because we knew from experience about how awful her situation is; I think she felt better because we cared enough to ask, cared enough to be angry on her and the children's behalf; cared enough to not judge, cared enough to try to help her avoid having to ask a dangerous man for help.

I think in 1997, someone declared war on all women and children.

I was going to school online for a while, trying to finish that elusive degree, and through a research class, had become interested in the examination of the global disenfranchisement of the middle classes.

My research indicated that my feeling is right on target-someone has declared war on women and children, having decided them to be un-fit, somehow, for the brutal new world they are trying to foster, and that the war began in full on earnest in 1997.

I don't think our so-called president hates blacks, per se, I think he hates poor people, especially those who has any self-esteem, and sense of dignity.

I think he is trying to cash in on cheap labour, and I think he is attacking American families to achieve his agenda with his tax cuts for his cronies, his funding cuts to aid to families, and his encouragement of swine who are not satisfied cheating American widows and orphans of their homes and rightful wages-I think he is in it over his head trying to bring illegals here so as to drive wages even further down, to further disenfranchise his own fellow Americans. My former employers love the guy-Mr. Boss used to say that "Poor people can't afford dignity..."

"As you do unto the least of these, so you do unto me." I think God defines the third commandmant as those who call themselves Christians while stealing food and shelter from the helpless to be completely guilty of abusing His name...He isn't too big on those who defraud the widowed, orphaned, and the employee, either.

Misery doesn't love company-my co-worker is in a very bad place and I know she doesn't wish this on anyone else, nor do I want to for a minute think she might have brought this on herself (Oh! That standard and perfidous justification!), and I know for an absolute fact that I don't wish this on anyone, for any reason.

Dear God, help this child of yours to a true sanctuary; protect her from this man she was trying to get away from, and oh my God, please protect her and her children from any evil, danger, sickness, harm, temptation; and Father please, arise now and defend us by thoroughly routing these monsters who seek to murder the spirits of those of us who walk in Your Way.

We are beyond exhaustion Father, so either rout these swine who will not know evil, or renew our strength until the day Thy will is made manifest and done, even unto them as deny Your Love, not only for themsleves, but in their arrogant vanity, seek to strip it from those of us who turn our faces, hearts, minds, and bodies to You.

Hear oh Thou God of Israel! Hear the cry of Your daughters-chaste, we are raped and accused of whoring in the congregation by our rapist!! Prudent, we are defrauded by the elders! Good mothers, we are berift of our little ones, cast out into the streets, made homeless!

ARISE OH GOD! Hear the lament, and come to the defense of Your daughters!