Future Dreams, Future Nightmares

Abstract

It’s like being hidden. It’s as if you have been put in a garage where, if they don’t have room for something but aren’t sure if they should throw it out, they put it there, where they don’t need to think of it again... If people in New York woke up one day and learned that we were gone, that we had simply died or left for somewhere else, how would they feel? I think they’d be relieved... People in Manhattan could go on and lead their lives and not feel worried about being robbed and not feel guilty and not need to pay for welfare babies... I think they look on us as obstacles to moving forward (15-year-old girl living on the New York streets, quoted in Kozol 1995).