Essay Example on Sacrifice Zones: The Poorest Places in America

Some of the poorest places in America are faced with many challenges, including economic, environmental, and political problems. Some of these areas have been termed as sacrifice zones for various reasons. Despite these zones having valuable resources such as mines, agriculture, and many other economic resources, they make up a list of the poorest regions in the United States. They include Florida, New Jersey, Immokalee, some parts of West Virginian, and Camden. The journalist, Chris Hedges, in the video, refers to these places as sacrifice zones because they are explored by companies from other parts of the United States to enrich themselves while leaving these areas to suffer from poverty and other economic challenges. This essay, therefore, responds to the suffering in sacrifice zones, regions where people have been intentionally sacrificed to poverty because of greed.

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From the video, Chris Hedges describes how these areas are explored, the people in the regions suffer while those in power thrive. For any society to succeed, it is essential to have good leadership, a well-planned and implementation of economic progress; however, in sacrifice zones, people live in poverty. They are regarded as powerless because of their inability to provide enough for their families and t society. Most of the people in these areas are weak, and they work in various companies where they exposed to poor working conditions, low wages, and lack of legal observations.

In sacrifice zones, the environment has been destroyed to benefit the outsiders, Chris Hedges talks of environmental destruction, human destruction, community, and families as well. It is painful to rip off resources from the people living in the sacrifice zones without benefiting the locals; big companies control most of the economic operations taking place within these regions from other parts of the USA. Their resources are used to develop infrastructure in other areas because they have no power to speak up and fight for their rights.

Besides, people from the sacrifice zones have their life expectancy low as compared to productive zones of the United States; the reasons behind this phenomenon is a lifestyle and the source of income. Most of the people, especially men, are working in impoverished conditions, most of them suffer from back pains and other poor health conditions that are not easy to track because they do not have access to quality healthcare services. The government should be at the forefront of fighting the problems and reduce exploitation in these areas to restore humanity. The mechanism of governance in sacrifice zones has no proper control of the illegal activities taking place in the cities, some of which include substance use. The use of drugs among the young population is one of the leading problems in the sacrifice zones.

It is because of greed from the influential people and companies that have made these areas miserable. People who seek to enrich themselves have destroyed the regions. Companies involved in mining activities, especially in some parts of West Virginia, use environmentally destructive chemicals. Also, some of the machinery used is heavy. The extend in which sacrifice zones have been destroyed requires attention to save the people, environment, and resources from further destruction. Illegal operations in the regions identified that the government is inconsiderate of the suffering and the results of the exploitation taking place. Based on natural resources, most of these areas are among the richest; however, it surprising that they are the poorest regions in the US; they have been forgotten.

In terms of infrastructure, agricultural development, and healthcare, sacrifice zones have been neglected by the government and the local leaders. High mortality rates are evident in the sacrifice zones (Thompson & Leonhardt 2020), most of the people are drinking, chronic health conditions are also apparent among the working class in with the communities in the regions because of exposure to poor environment and working conditions.

Reference

Thompson, S.A & Leonhardt, D. (2020). How Working-Class Life Is Killing Americans, in Charts. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/06/opinion/working-class-death-rate.html