The worst about us is how we treat the least among us [View all]

[phantom power]

... but this takes horrible to a whole different level:

A homeless Scottsdale, AZ woman was arrested and her children placed in protective custody after she left them in her car to go to a job interview. Think Progress reported that Shanesha Taylor, 35, left her two-year-old and six-month-old in the car with the windows cracked for 45 minutes because she didn’t have anywhere else to leave them.
[...]
When Taylor arrived back at the vehicle, she was arrested by police. Her children were handed over to Child Protective Services.
“She was upset,” said Scottsdale Police Sargent Mark Clark to WFSB. “This is a sad situation all around. She said she was homeless, she needed the job. Obviously, not getting the job. So it’s just a sad situation.”

Taylor was charged with two counts of felony child abuse.

There is a lot that is wrong here.

Forget for a moment that, yes, it is very dangerous to leave a toddler and a baby in a closed car in the Arizona heat even if it is only late March. Instead imagine this woman with her two children facing the prospect of living out of her car in the Arizona summer. Imagine trying to sit through – and focus on – an interview for a job that you must have because your kids are sitting out there and their future depends on you to – let’s not sugarcoat it – get that job.

Then you come back out to your car, only to be arrested, jailed, have your kids taken away from you, your hope for that job snatched away, and now you face the possibility of prison time and losing custody of your kids.

The picture of Shanesha Taylor with tears running down her face is what that looks like. It’s the look of having lost everything, of having hit rock bottom.

It’s the face of a world without hope.

As Think Progress noted, Arizona has cut 40 percent ($81 million) of its total child care budget, yet the state spends slightly more than $1 billion maintaining its prison system. We want people to ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’, but we don’t provide them with the basic needs that they require to just survive before they can thrive: food, shelter, support.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/28/the-worst-about-us-is-how-we-treat-the-least-among-us/