THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

grade had virtually dropped wt of school. He showed me his
homework, all neatly completed, but which he never had dared to
turn in. He was forced to join a gang when he was 15, told that he
would be hunted down and shot if he didn't. He began to use drugs
and drink heavily, a way of numbing himself to his own pain. One of
his closest friends, who was a crack baby and had been addicted to
cocaine since birth, died of a massive head attack when he was 16,
trying to kick his habit. As the people around Addison began to die,
he sank into a deep depression. He contracted seven different strains
of HIV by the time he was 16 and developed full-blown AIDS just a
few months later. He had an estimated two months to live when I sat
with him that day. I met him at Pier 39 in San Francisco. I was the
only white person he knew, and compared to him I was rich. We had
been best friends for two years, and I tried to keep him alive as best I
could. But the day before Addison's 17th birthday, he took a 9mm
gun from beneath his bedding, and he shot himself in the head. He
lay dead in his mom. No one found his body for five days.
Addison was living in hell, and he couldn't handle it. But then
again, who could? Out of the 15 people that Addison grew up with in
Hunters Point, 12 died within six months of his death. Three died just
months before. They were all dead within 14 months. They lived in
an environment that was de-evolving because of isolation, drugs that
were rumoured to be supplied by the government, and because of an
American people who chose to ignore the poverty, to close their eyes
because they felt it wasn't their responsibility. For them, the ghettos
didn't even exist.
TODD and JEREMY
Todd and Jeremy ran away from home when Todd was five and Jer
was nine. They took the train to San Francisco, where they slept in
Golden Gate Park. They had lived in a trailer park in San Jose with
their father who had sexually molested them and abused them for as