1. The triangular schism

Let's begin with this unoriginal observation: American society, any society, is a triangular hierarchy with a few people on top and a lot more below.

But too many ‘conversations’ addressing our bottomed out social structure are burnt toast. There are so many problems with so many solutions, so many individual examples of suffering and achievement, but all we get are stale references to the 99%, the shrinking middle class, Main St. vs. Wall St, the achievement gap, food stamp statistics, jobless rates, blah blah blah. You click on an interesting headline, skim the thesis, realize you just read the same sentence three times and open a new tab.

The image of society as a mountain is pretty well documented, too. It’s a mountain in three segments and it’s hard to jump from tier to tier.

The tiny tip is snow-capped white. Beneath the peak is a schism separating it from a small, slightly darker midsection. That parallelogram is partitioned by an even deeper, at times impassable, ravine. And below this schism is a widening gradient scale that darkens as it bottoms out. It's getting wider every day.

Instead of rehashing tales from the Trite-wing Media, I want to learn about and try to understand the experiences of real people on the bad-luck side of the wide triangular schism.

* * *

I belong to the middle section of the triangle. I am fortunate. I was raised by a middle-class, married, college-educated, mother and father. I went to a respected northeastern university, I have no college loans and I have a job.

I work as a case manager at a supportive residence in Harlem. Each of our tenants moved into our building after sleeping in alleys and then navigating New York City’s vast shelter system. Before this, I worked in another supportive residence in East Harlem. Each of those tenants had a mental illness and most had a mental illness and chemical addiction (MICA -- there's an acronym for everything). Many subsist on $166/month public assistance. Some survive without health insurance. Others work part-time, minimum wage jobs but somehow manage to pay their rent on time and budget for groceries. The consumers I serve are securely anchored to the bottom of the mountain with little realistic opportunity to cross either schism.

Meanwhile, some of my best friends stand firmly at the peak. I easily bound the schisms when I visit their vacation homes, drink beer in their stadium suites and sit shotgun in their luxury cars. I’m really lucky.

I will never pretend that my life is difficult, that I am of a certain strata because I work with heroin addicts and ex-Latin Kings or hang out with executives’ sons. I am an eyewitness to the various tiers of our national mountain. I’m learning about society and here’s what I have seen. No boilerplate. No bull shit.