We have already done 'Man on the Street' interviews in 5 cities: Springfield and St. Louis, MO as well as San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. We thought we would show some of what we got from our St. Louis interviews. I find some of the interviewees responses very thought provoking while others seem to be rather simple. 3 of the most probing responses for me were...

1. One woman said most people are posing when they say they care about Africa. That a lot of times they just like wearing the shirt. If they really cared, they would be out doing something. I wonder how many people just stop at wearing the shirt?

2. One woman towards the end says we need to be taking care of poverty here. That there are children here in the U.S. with no food, no water, living in card board boxes, and dying all the time. Is this true? Don't we have sanitary water everywhere in the United States? If they were in this bad of a situation, could they not walk into a Subway restaurant and stick their head under the fountain in the bathroom? I know that may sound cold, but really, to 1 billion people in the world, having that amount of access to clean water makes those people not in poverty. Poverty worldwide is characterized as living off $2 a day or less. Who, anywhere in the U.S., could not beg for more than 2 dollars in a day? Can extreme poverty in the third world even be compared like this to American poverty? What do you think?

3. The last guy actually shares a lot of my opinions. I think the Western world has some kind of responsibility because our ancestors colonization of Sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the third world had a huge impact on the poverty in those areas. Should this fact alone drive us to think it is somewhat our responsibility to people in third world poverty? What about the idea of neo-colonialism and the impact the products you may buy has on those in extreme poverty?

Just some food for thought,
dan