“Poor”? Or “poor poor”?
October 14th, 2011 § 1 Comment
I don’t know what’s wrong with Michigan. But I’ll get to that in a minute.
The War on Poverty is said to be the war that former president Lyndon B. Johnson actually wanted to fight. On March 16, 1964, in an address to Congress, Johnson delivered his proposal for what he called “A Nationwide War on the Sources of Poverty”. His lofty goal was not just to put a bandaid over the consequences of poverty, but to attack it at its very core; he wanted to eliminate the causes of poverty. Johnson believed in opportunity, not handouts. He believed, as I do, that nearly every person in the United States would work for their living, and work hard, if only the opportunity to do so were there. People don’t want to be poor. People don’t want to rely on strangers or the state for their own well-being. People want to earn their own way to a better life. Sometimes, they just need a little help getting there.
We’ve lost sight of the value of humanity; lost sight of what it means to live in “the greatest country on Earth”. Somewhere along the way, we’ve decided that “it’s not my job” to reach out to my fellow man. It’s not my job to help create opportunities. It’s not my job to help build a better world. It’s not my job to work with other humans to increase the standard of living for us all. But it is my job to watch you, and judge you, and make sure that you don’t end up with a better life than mine.
We play a dangerous game of reactionary politics where rules are built around the small number of assholes who take advantage of the goodness in others and of the opportunities created by a government that has the welfare of all of its citizens in mind through programs designed to help people start businesses, to pick them up if those businesses fail, to keep education and innovation thriving so that the world benefits from great minds that, without a social safety net, may never produce. We use a small number of people who take advantage and hold them up as the norm.
They are not the norm. I am. You probably are, too.
The truest measure of a great nation is not in how it treats the most successful, but in the opportunities it presents to the least successful within it. We are not a great nation.
And Michigan is not a great state. As of October 1, 2011, people are being kicked off of cash assistance if they’ve been on it for 48 months or more. Now, I know what you’re thinking. That seems like an awful long time to be receiving cash assistance from the state. But who are these people that are coming off of assistance? And instead of just taking them off of assistance, we should be asking why they still need assistance in the first place. Why, after four years, has this family not found a better life? Is it their fault, or is it that the state provides a bandaid when stitches are needed? Was job training provided? Budgeting classes? Are there any jobs that this person is qualified to do? Are they working full-time and still qualifying for assistance because their job doesn’t pay them enough to actually live on?
Are we asking any questions at all?
Michigan is also rolling out a new requirement to receive assistance – asset testing. If you own your home, but lost your job and need food assistance in order to survive while looking for a new job, well, it sucks to be you because you’ll have to get rid of your home first. Don’t you have relatives or friends you can move in with? Have a decent car because you saved money for a few years and bought it with cash before your company outsourced your job? If it’s worth more than $15,000 you’re going to have to get rid of it before we can help you. No, we don’t care that it’s your only way to get to work at the company paying you minimum wage that doesn’t cover your bills which is why you need assistance in the first place.
Assets are a big part of what helps to break the cycle of poverty. So, why are we trying to take these assets away? The term “cutting your nose off to spite your face” comes to mind.
Remembering.
September 11th, 2011 § 3 Comments
I was nowhere near New York on September 11, 2001. I was safe. My family and friends were safe. I was at work, going about my business. My boss was in his office, doing boss-y things. Our salesperson came in.
“Did you hear what happened? A couple of planes hit the World Trade Center. They’re saying it’s a terrorist attack.”
And then he went into his office. Like it was just a normal day.
Maybe I’m too sensitive, but I could barely move. I kept thinking of all the people who were undoubtedly dead, wondering how the terrorists managed to get ahold of planes. Wondering how anybody could be so angry that this was the only answer. I started trying to get to news websites, hoping that the sales guy was wrong, or that he was joking (he was quite an asshole).
The internet was broken. It turns I wasn’t the only one trying to find out what was happening.
I left for lunch early that day because I had to – had to – see what was going on. I kind of wish I hadn’t. News channels were showing footage over and over and over of the planes hitting, the towers coming down, people jumping to their deaths because that was a better ending for them than burning to death.
The image of our president, George W. Bush, sitting with a group of children, and the look on his face when he was told that a second plane hit was enough to make even me, someone who had staunchly opposed him, feel sorry for him and the job that was ahead of him.
That night, I was outside with my dog. She was, of course, blissfully unaware that anything had happened hundreds of miles away in a place she didn’t even know existed to people that were not even on her radar. I was staring up at the sky. There were no planes. The skies were quiet. For the first time, I cried.
I was so hopeful in the first weeks following the attack. The country was coming together with the entire world behind us.
Over the next ten years, something happened. We shifted focus from fighting in Afghanistan and capturing or killing Osama bin Laden to fighting in Iraq. The people were lied to. Lines were drawn in the sand. Perhaps we were pulled together, united, so quickly that we had to come apart spectacularly. And we did.
We’re to a place where we agree on nothing. If the Republicans want something and the Democrats agree, then Republicans don’t want that something anymore; they want something else. Democrats are just as bad. We make our fellow Americans feel like they don’t belong, they have no right to be here, they have no right to grieve over the happenings of September 11, 2001 because they are Muslim. A person in Iowa, who knows nobody in New York, and has never been to New York, will claim that they have more right to be upset than a Muslim person who lost friends and family and had to evacuate on 9/11/01. We have moved so far away from the country that came together ten years ago.
“You are either with us or against us.” I naïvely thought President Bush meant that statement as a warning to those who would harbor people connected with the September 11, 2001 attack. Sadly, it’s come to mean something entirely different. If you don’t fall in line with status quo, you’re unAmerican. If you don’t embrace religion, you’re unAmerican. If you don’t believe “Socialism” is a four-letter word, you’re unAmerican.
If you have the audacity to question your elected leaders, you’re unAmerican.
I love this country. And I love it, not because I was told to love it or taught to love it, but because I’ve read and learned about it. This country was not built on morality, but rather the idea of a social contract among its citizens. It was not built on doctrine, but on the idea that a country’s citizenry should be what shapes that country’s model. This country was not built on dogma, but on freedom.
Never forget what our country was founded on. Never forget the blood that was shed to give us the opportunity to live our own lives. Never forget to lift up and honor the people we, in the name of forming a free nation, have pushed around. Never forget that the Earth doesn’t need us, but we do need her. Never forget the way you felt ten years ago and how you promised to be a better person. Never forget the people who died so you wouldn’t have to.
And now, for your viewing pleasure…
I choose hope.
February 26th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
I kind of want to puke when I think about how different the country could be now if SCOTUS hadn’t decided an election for us.
And then I think of how far backward Republicans and Tea Party members want to take us and it just makes me sad. I’ve been happy my entire life to be an American. I firmly believed that this was the best country in the world. Even the name – the United States of America. It just sounds hopeful and beautiful. We’re Americans. We’ve always been in it together. Sure, we’ve had disagreements, but we’ve always made it through. We’ve always been progressive and innovative thinkers. We’ve always taken care of one another. We’ve always understood the value of life and the benefit of extending a hand in support of a struggling brother or sister.
Then in 2001, our country was ripped apart. And we went to war. And went to war again. And suddenly we became a country bitterly divided. We are at war with each other. On one side is Fear; the other is Hope.
What does the “spirit of America” mean to you? Can you even define it without using first person pronouns?
