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Donald Driver Poverty

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Out of the 322.3 million citizens who reside in the United States, 47 million dwell in extreme poverty. In 2015, more than 2.5 million children experienced homelessness; that’s one in thirty children. Our country has battled the raging storm of insufficiency since the thirteen colonies were established. Tragedy, instability, and history all contribute to the financial and educational demise that is poverty. Recent studies show that children who come from “underprivileged backgrounds” have an extremely difficult time breaking the trend of previous generations (Wallis 2). Destitution is as psychological as it is physical. It takes strength to break patterns of the past, but it also takes courage to fight for a better future. Adversity is a …show more content…
With a Super Bowl ring under his belt, along with four pro-bowl victories, and winner of Season 14 ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ Driver’s net worth is approximately 16 million. And although he is known far and wide to be a good player, and a great man, Driver’s past was anything but ‘16 million.’ He was born on February 2, 1975, in the slums of Houston, Texas. Driver encountered many hardships during his early youth. The entire family was forced to live out of a U-Haul trailer for a long period of time, after a collection agency seized the family's belongings. They would also spend many nights in motel rooms that his mother had bought using their food stamps. He and his older brother Marvin III, began stealing cars and selling drugs during their teenage years in order to keep their mother and sisters alive. Driver was quoted by USA Today stating, "You try to do anything you can to provide for your family." Throughout his early years, Driver began to shine as an athlete. He excelled in not only football, but also basketball and track. Even with a patchy attendance record, Driver graduated high school, and started to attend Alcorn State University in Mississippi, where he was noticed by talent scouts for his Olympic-class speed and high jump. This was a turning point in Driver’s life, where he not only met the woman of his dreams, but also started seeing his …show more content…
Born on September 23, 1980 to broke and drug-addicted parents, Liz was the second child to enter the Murray family. Sleeping on roach infested floors, and eating toothpaste became the immediate norm. Her parents would often spend any money -welfare checks, cash sent from relatives, or change from the children’s piggy banks- on cocaine. Liz would later reveal that she “never felt any resentment” against her parents, and instead saw them as “slaves to an invisible object”, poor children who couldn’t control themselves (Murray 54). From the very beginning, Murray saw it as her job to take care of her parents. When her Godfather kicked her out of the family apartment at age fifteen, Murray already had a sporadic truancy record, and no job. At first, Murray thought homelessness would be freeing, but that image was quickly squashed after several cold nights alone on a park bench. Murray would sneak in with friends at night, and leave before their parents woke up in the morning. She would beg or steal food, wearing only the clothes she had taken from the apartment. It wasn’t until her mother’s tragic death from AIDS that Murray decided she did not want to repeat the life-cycle of her parents. "I realized that my self-image as an independent woman of the streets was a delusion. I was 16, with a poor

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