Our narrator, Nicole, is a person that was born in to a family of welfare who the best of her life. She took away from what she learned from her mother and grandmother, and made her way to college. She had faced adversity, and the film showed us just what that was like for people to go through the hardships of being on welfare and being a single parent home. The fact that someone is willing to tak a job and then hide the fact that you have a job just to continue collecting welfare is just painful to know. The fact that this happens in a city thats only 60 miles or so away from me is just kind of gut wrenching. Not only this, but the way that the mother was expected to raise children. Finding work for the mother was rough as she tried and tried to get work, but couldn't because of her lack of education as well as no one being able to watch her kids at times, and having to deal with being a single parent with little access to help for her children.
The film shows a window to this family during one of the hardest times a family could possibly have, and that is the death of a member. Fourteen year old Terrell. During the course of the filming of this film, he was shot to death in the streets, and his brother used drugs to make himself feel better throughout the death of his brother, so as to prolong the experience of pain and misery from his loss.
Nicole herself did very well, as she managed to find someone to mentor her and take her under their wing. Her mentor ended up playing a father figure in her life, and as a girl who was raised without a father, that can be about as close to the real thing as you can get when you're suffering from being in a poor economic situation, and just trying to make it in school to get in to a good college, or really any college at all.
The movie made me think more about our welfare system, and just how many people are abusing it when so many people out there in the world could be using this money that some people are funneling in to their own accounts for use on alcohol and drugs, or whatever it is they're buying that isn't doing anyone any favors at all. Of course, I know the majority of people who have welfare coming in are using it on exactly what they need it for, however there are still way more people than there should be that are using it for things that have no business being bought on a government dime. If there were stricter restrictions on who could receive welfare and maintain it, I believe that we could have a much better system that is working for people who truly need it, and possibly have that money funneled more in to the people that need it, and not just in the executive pockets or anything. I would suggest drug testing to receive welfare, as a start. Not being a, economic master, I can't say what all would need to be done financially, but I do know that if people that are using their money for drugs, they have no business getting the welfare. People are living in the situation Nicole's family had, and that's just not something that should happen, and an issue we do have some control over.
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