Marco and Cherese from invisible people on Vimeo.

As a society it comes down to this: what do we do for those who fall through the cracks? Marco and Cherese are not invisible. I for one see them all the time here in Washington DC. I have a Conservative friend who says people are poor because they want to be poor. Obviously, he hasn’t met people like Marco and Cherese.  Cherese has worked at jobs in the past and Marco tries to find work whenever he can. They both live in an RV right now.

Meet Marco & Cherese. They are living in a small RV and their primary income is panhandling. Cherese was the victim of a hit-and-run on an exit ramp, suffering a broken collar bone and a broken arm. Since she doesn’t have health insurance, the hospital just let her go, assuring her that the breaks will heal on their own.

Marco & Cherese are just like you and me. They’ve made a few mistakes in life (who hasn’t?), they’re extremely faithful, and they are good people just trying to survive the nightmare of homelessness.

Cherese was also a drug addict which obviously contributes to the predicament she finds herself in. She got counseling and was clean for a long time as she mentions in the video. She is human after all and humans make all sorts of bad choices. We’re bailing out Wall Street bankers like John Thain at Merrill Lynch for their failures, but we can’t help others? They talk about more and more people hitching trailers onto their trucks because homelessness is growing. This economy may very well send more to those ranks. So how do we as a society deal with this?

Many people would rather ignore it all. We simply cannot ignore it. Whenever a society becomes so polarized with its economic classes there are repercussions. Those gated communities and security guards cannot protect you forever. There has to be a balance. While we all can’t be millionaires (actually from what I understand its more like billionaires now) we all should be at a certain economic equilibrium. Talking about the middle-class can at sometimes seem cliche to me, but I think this is where we should strive to get everyone who isn’t already there to. We also have to support the middle-class and not let it shrink. I think the Middle Class Taskforce is very important in this regard. Can we also have a Poverty Taskforce too?