We are unemployed, and we need Senate’s help
I amout of work.
We’ve been told that a relief package is being considered in the Senate and again I’m being asked to swallow hard the fact tha tU.S. senators don’t care about us. I tried to believe they did, but they have made it painfully clear they don’t even “see” people likeme.
Senators and people who aren’t going through this do not understand what’s really happening to us. I’m giving upmy privacy on this issue because I feel I must reach out before we are pulled through another performance of hope, hope, nope.
My husband and I are college-educated. We are hard-working, wonderful people. It’s gutting to admit but, as a person whose industries for herself and her husband were destroyed by the bungling of the virus, it’s painful to struggle with no income. It’s been brutal.
While I appreciate those who believe “something is better than nothing,” people likeme are living through this daily, hourly. Without moremoney, the package will give us only enough to starve to death in our minivan while we work to find jobs… most of which no longer exist.
The current offering as reported isn’t enough to cover emergency costs (power, medicine, shelter, food). I wish the senators would explain howthey expect people to function on so little. I’m a minimalist. We live small and this is not feasible. We made the CARES Act stimulus package work through true grit and a savings account. The new package offers far less.
Imagine trying to get into Disney World with $70, but the ticket costs $100. $70 is a lot better than nothing, but it’s not going to get you into the park. Disney World is solvency. It’s the ability to function and regroup sowe can execute a plan and avoid losing everything.
When people saywe should be happy with any amount of aid, knowthat it’s just away for people who aren’t suffering to feel like something meaningful is being done. That may assuage their conscience, but does nothing to affect change. My husband has a disability, and the money for his needs is gone. Taking political parties out of it, it’s worth considering what the actual reality will be for the people this package is meant to serve— those doing the working, the paying, the living and the dying.
Sometimes, for the briefest of moments, I feel bitterness well up inside. It shouts, “Of course people who got to keep their jobs and their lifestyles feel comfortable commenting on the aid we deserve. What a pleasure it must be for U.S. senators to wander through their day, blissfully unaware of the caliber of disaster weaving itsway through the fabric of our nation at their hands. They don’t have to feel this incessant deep, gnawing erosion of joy, of safety, of dignity.”
But expressing a hateful outlook is not who I am or what I stand for. I amjust at the mercy of the Senate to seemy life move forward or backwards. I reject victimhood, and yet I “am” a victim of this government’s failed response to a medical crisis.
To those government officials and fellow Americans who don’t see this from our perspective, let me try to explain it to you. When you’re going about your life tomorrow and you get hungry, or you reach for your medication, imagine being given the option in that moment to have your medicine, but not food; or food but not shelter; or shelter but not food or medicine.
We exist in aworld where people can be in a constant state of emergency through no fault of their own. The observations of thosewho are not suffering are hovering above a reality of life in America that is so fiercely, graphically “real” right nowthat it’s challenging to understand the impulse to comment on the superficial, in lieu of looking deeply into the soul of America and Americans.
People likeme, are people like you. We never thought thiswould be us either. In the blink of an eye, you too could be facing this fierce, graphic reality. See us. Hear us. Help us.