Poverty In Bryan Stevenson's 'To Right These Wrongs'

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To parallel the course and open with one of my favorite quotes pertaining to poverty by Bryan Stevenson –lawyer and social justice activist, “The opposite of poverty is not wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice.” When discussing the insights that I have gained from this class I find it crucial to mention that the greatest insight gained from this class were the misconceptions about poverty and those who live in it. For example, that those in poverty are lazy or that people believe that the deck is not stacked in favor of the wealthy and that America really is the land of equal opportunity or worse of all that government funded assistance programs create entitlement and a sense of dependency among those who live in poverty. It is critical To capture my frustrations in this course, I will begin with an anecdote from Thomas Washington, a North Carolina native, UNC nursing school alum. I met Thomas on the D bus, on my way to work in the morning; this was unplanned and unscripted, his story frustrated me most was that of (he asked me not to use his name) Thomas Washington. He graduated from UNC about two decades ago with a bachelor's degree in nursing. Tommy graduated top of his class and began working in a community health center in Virginia upon graduation. Tommy's parents did not graduate from college, and both had a history of mental illness and drug abuse. Two years after he began working a Registered Nurse Tommy began struggling with depression - not yet having paid off his student loans or gained enough income he fell into constant bouts of anxiety and depression. Tommy’s mental health cost him to lose his job and soon after his sanity. A few years ago Tommy was formally diagnosed with schizophrenia and has been living in the streets of Orange County for just under a

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