Intervention Poster for Poverty!

 

I chose to do my poster on poverty because I’ve felt it and seen it. Before I was even born my mother was addicted to all kinds of opioids and amphetamines, I was the youngest of my siblings so my older siblings got to see more of her addiction which was the catalyst of us living on the streets of Newark but for probably a year after that, I was placed in foster care and from what I can scrape up from my memories which isn’t much other than pure feeling they didn’t treat me right. Eventually I was picked up from my Aunt (mother’s sister) and taken in. My aunt wasn’t too well off either but she wasn’t addicted or on anything so it was better than past scenarios. We moved all around Essex County from old apartment to moldy house to cockroach infested building. As a kid I was happy though because it was all that I knew. It wasn’t until one day around the age of 5 or 6 that someone told me that I looked “raggedy” that I started to question my life up until this point. My aunt eventually realized that this place wasn’t good for us considering there were shootings every other weekend so with her we moved in with my other Aunt that’s still on my mother’s side in Sayreville which is pretty suburban with a good school system and less violence. I pretty much lived there from age 7- present day. 

The quote in this photo spoke to me in many ways. I escaped poverty myself but many people still live in it. Going to school in Jersey City makes you see that because of how many homeless people there are. This quote from Mother Theresa speaks on the invisibility of homeless people. The social stigma people have placed on the homeless only perpetuates this invisibility, i’ve seen and felt it. Some people view the homeless with just pity and walk by, in worst cases they view them as extra obstacles to try and get through to carry on with their day but what people forget is that they are people just like us. The modern ego has made a lot of people blind and less empathetic, way too involved in themselves to the point that they can’t see the world around them falling apart. We now have social media where people can add even more to their ego, with a profile, brand, etc.. the invisibility of these people only increases as society and technology advance.

Fixing poverty is up to the people just as much as it is the government. People would pretend to be homeless for YouTube views than actually give a homeless person a dollar or some food. Once we reflect on our society’s values and perceptions we can begin to change our own. I took this photo of myself whilst waiting for my train to get to class, I wanted to make this project a little more personal so I presented myself in a rather depressing light, to show the despair that comes with not being seen and took away a lot of brightness and added grain so people could kind of feel with their eyes the typical world of someone living in poverty.