Opportunity ‘to correct the profound inequalities’ in state

For the last 15 years, I’ve lived in West Haven working, paying taxes, and raising two children as a single mother.

My job is cleaning a hospital and so I’ve been on the front lines of the pandemic, exposed to the virus when I go to work. Connecticut’s immigrant workers have been forced to risk their lives in the pandemic because we have no safety net. We are growing food in the fields; cleaning the supermarkets, schools, and universities; and caring for your children, your elderly, and your loved ones.

Yet, even though we pay into the system, we are excluded from unemployment insurance, federal stimulus checks, and

Husky health insurance. Undocumented immigrants in Connecticut pay $400 million in federal, state, and local taxes every year.

The pandemic has revealed how our jobs are essential but our lives are not valued. The pandemic has exposed that many of us who are providing life-saving work do not have any health insurance. And it’s not just immigrants. More than 200,000 people in this state have no health insurance.

The pandemic has revealed that inequality kills. The people who are dying at high rates are the ones who do not have any paid sick days, who do not have health insurance, who do not have the luxury to work from home or stay home from work.

It’s time to create a Recovery For All in Connecticut, not a recovery for the few. It is not acceptable that in such a wealthy state, 30 percent of Black children and 30 percent of Latino children live below the poverty line.

Our children deserve more. Mothers like me deserve more.

Last year, I went to the emergency room because I was hemorrhaging. The hospital gave me blood and performed an emergency hysterectomy. I was admitted to the hospital at 7 a.m., the surgery was at 10 a.m. and they discharged me at 1 p.m. They sent me home in pain without adequate care. I later learned that they should have kept me in the hospital for one to three days. Thank God I am here now. I only ask that this state, to which I contribute with my taxes, guarantee humane and dignified medical care for people like me. We want to be cared for in the best possible way, just like everyone else.

I salute both of West Haven’s state representatives, Dorinda Borer and Michael Dimassa, for championing the Recovery For All bills. It’s time for Rep. James Maroney to stand with the people of Connecticut by publicly supporting HB 6187 and SB 821 and committing to voting it out of the Finance Committee. Our legislators have an unprecedented opportunity to correct the profound inequalities in this state, to value our lives, to fund the health care services that we need. They must have the courage to seize this moment and address the structural inequities in our system that have devastated working families for generations.