Struggling youth and the people who struggle with them

Be sure to read this piece on Salon about struggling underprivileged youths and their "mentors," which are like the Big Brother/Sister program. The writer, Martha Baer, is a friend; see links to other articles by her at her website.

One of the interesting facts the piece hints at, but doesn't address directly, is the way AIDS has affected the working class population -- not the middle-class Castro District gays but the working class, ethnically-diverse, possibly closeted gay and bisexual men who don't live in the gay ghetto. The girl who is the subject of the piece is the daughter of a gay man dead from AIDS, but her whole social background is a completely different context: working-class, ethnic Daly City; heterosexual drug-using broken families; people with court dates and parole officers -- the landscape of the TV show "Cops." Yet the girl moves to "as close to the Castro District as" her father's ex could afford to move, and lives for a time in this middle-class gay environment: but Martha's story isn't really about that, "a story in itself."

I find myself drawn to these fish-out-of-water sitcom-ready situations, and wanted to know more about that part, but Martha's piece is really about the sense that the girl's whole background and social context conspires to drag her down despite the best efforts of Martha and the other middle class people in the girl's life.

Great piece. Read it.