GUEST COMMENTARY-The awful story of Shanesha Taylor is what's wrong with the state of our union: The Arizona mother of two got called to a job interview she desperately needed.
With no place to leave her two young kids - no neighbors because she's homeless, no co-workers because she's jobless, no paid childcare because she has no money, no free childcare because our government - she left them in her car, with the windows cracked, at naptime.
When she came back 45 minutes later, police arrested her on two child abuse felonies and put her kids in state custody.
Leaving small kids alone in a car is a terrible idea. Here's another terrible idea: Arizona cutting almost half its childcare budget, along with health care, job training and housing, while spending over $1 billion on prisons.
Those skewered policies and priorities have consequences. One is named Shanesha Taylor.
"Every day in this country women (are) forced by circumstances into doing things they don’t want to do. For many women, it is the only static condition of their ever changing lives: to regularly feel required to make hard choices among, at times, very poor options.”
(Abby Zimet writes the Further column for CommonDreams.org)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 27
Pub: Apr 1, 2014
