It’s been 50+ years since President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “The Great Society” strategies were enacted to extricate America’s poor people from the clutches of economic inequality. Taxpayers spent an estimated $13 trillion to $22 trillion on programs, infrastructure, and cash payments to redistribute wealth.

Rioters in various parts of 2015 America claim that systemic economic injustice is still holding people down. The Great Society had some wins and losses. What now?

And what of the police officers, national guard, fire fighters, and other first responders whose lives are endangered by mobs intent on destruction?

Gang members said they were not trying to hurt police, just calling attention to police injustice at large.

Should the public, as Baltimore’s mayor suggested, offer space for mayhem? The taxpayers who carry the financial burden for an entire community deserve better.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is certainly coming under fire for saying, “We also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.”

A day later, she blamed the media and said her words shouldn’t be twisted.

Many are citing Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1960s phrase “A riot is the language of the unheard.” HISTORY

BALTIMORE 1968

Others point to America’s white founding fathers as the counterpoint to today’s racially-inflamed civil unrest.

And what to make of majority groups of white people sports fans destroying property and using up community assets like police, fire, and EMS over nothing more than the outcome of a ballgame?

Are sports fans unheard? Are poor people unheard after trillions of dollars spent with hardly a bump in moving the poverty needle?

The language of the unheard also includes respecting the community, hard work, faith, listening, determination, and embracing education.

— Terry Meiners (@terrymeiners) April 29, 2015

The uber wealthy, celebrities, artists, and communications specialists aside, the truth is that 95% of people are unheard. Most go about their lives with fortitude, sweat, and passion to leave a better life for their children. Hard work begins at home with parental leadership, structure, discipline, and a child’s willingness to follow that model every single day forward.

Thoreau: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” The truth is that most people are unheard. Neighborhood destruction solves nil.

— Terry Meiners (@terrymeiners) April 29, 2015

The vast majority of people are good, quiet, law-abiding contributors. Don’t let a few malcontents grab all of the headlines.

But it won’t stop opportunists like Rev. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Jamal White, or various celebrities from stirring the pot. A clearly inebriated Eddie Griffin says America treats young blacks as “a throwaway generation.”

Thoreau: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” The truth is that most people are unheard. Neighborhood destruction solves nil.

— Terry Meiners (@terrymeiners) April 29, 2015