The Forgotten

Initially when I watched the documentary, I became aware of just how big this problem was. Almost every weekend I go clubbing in Downtown and I see all of the homeless people lining the streets. I see them begging for money and to be perfectly honest, most of the time I see them as a nuisance. This leads me to think that his intended audience are younger individuals like myself, that he hopes to inspire to make change in the upcoming years. But i do have to give it to him: his effective use of pathos throughout the documentary definitely pulled at my "heart-strings" and overwhelmed me with sympathy. His uses of images of Homeless people begging for food or just wandering around in hysteria drew me in but in my opinion failed to get more in depth. He even uses images of homeless people standing in line at soup kitchens or many of them grouped around to show us just how many of them are out there and how out-of-control this problem is becoming. As i initially stated in the beginning, I've been exposed to plenty homeless people before and this hasn't even been the first documentary I've seen and what i hoped this one would've fulfilled would've been my need to know WHY? Why are people homeless? How does that happen? How do you go from having a life to becoming part of a forgotten civilization? I would've like it if additionally to proposing a solution for those who are already homeless, if he posed a solution for preventing homelessness. In addition, i thought one of his most ineffective points was when he introduced the gentleman who had hit rock bottom and was formerly homeless. How was he able to rise from that? The gentleman proclaimed to have once been homeless, yet there he stood fresh and clean in a clean pair of clothes. Maybe this is the solution. If he did it then so could others! Yet we wouldn't know because there was never any elaboration on what he did to bounce back. Though this documentary succeeded at making me feel sad for all the countless homeless people out there, how many people out there are going to rise up in support of a cause they know nothing about except that it makes them sad?

Hmm...

My thoughts on this issue are many. This is an issue that I'm very passionate about so please feel free to just put the paper down at any time. This issue is an issue that is very close and dear to me. My best friend is a gay male. He's not just my best friend but almost like my brother. It kills me to think that if later on in life he falls in love with a man, he won't be able to express his love and get married with his husband. What kind of ignorant country do we live in where someones personal life is being intruded on in that way. Of course this is a moral and not a civil dilemma! There are so many ignorant pigs out there who seem to believe that gay marriage is an abomination and it makes me sick. How exactly is it any one's problem that i choose to marry a women. They say America's a free country well I'm here to say that that's bullshit. America's a country full of rights at the convenience of what "head of states" seem to think is right. By taking away a gay person's right to marry, that's imposing on there civil liberties. If yo restrict someones rights then you're treating them not much better than an animal. It shames me to say that issues like these are what drives political scandals such as finding male political candidates in bathrooms trying to pick up men. It's our society that has shamed them into marrying, only to later have their true natures revealed. It's a damn shame that this is what we live in...this world sucks.

Please, take me!

It's easy to say that we'll create something that theoretically sounds like it'll work but once put into action we realize that it doesn't. This, i think, is the case with the No Child Left Behind Act. Although it's called no CHILD left behind, it's basing it's education on a teachers performance. Not to mention the fact that one of the parts that this act entails is a comparison between 2 completely different classrooms filled with completely different students. Like the teacher said, it's like comparing apples and oranges. The man performing about the act stated that he would want his child to learn from his mistakes and not just pass them without learning the material. This act can easily cause teachers to give an 'incomplete' instead of a D or an F. Furthermore, this all kind of snowballs if you think about it. When you give a child an incomplete without him learning anything, you pass him onto the next grade without previous knowledge of what was taught in the previous grade. What happens next is if a teacher happens to grade her students as they should be graded and these students aren't putting as much effort as the ones she had last year, her school gets money taken away. Things like this make me doubt much of the faith that i have in our government...