I walked by a Salon & Day Spa on Main St. here in Salt Lake City that offers expensive hair care, manicures, and various and sundry other pampering. Anyone who pays the price is welcome as a customer there, but I expect that most of the clients are middle class and higher, many of them rich by just about any standard.
Not 60 feet away (I know because I stepped it off) in the alley behind the Salon & Day Spa is a trailer park with 16 dilapidated trailers, I expect that most of them are 40 years old or older. (I know because my Mom lived in one just like them for several years). The skirting around the bottom of most of them was caved in, no doubt offering critters a place to stay. The trailers sit about 10 feet apart, and the grass in the trailer “park” was burnt to a crisp.
I wonder how many of the rich people who frequent the Salon & Day Spa give any thought to the people living in that trailer park? I, too, can be counted among the rich, for I was on that walk while I waited to pick up the license plate for our new car.
Though the gap between the Spa and the Trailer park was less than 60 feet in distance, the gap between the people in them is far as it relates to privilege and wealth. What can we do to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor?