It’s been almost a month since I testified in Congress, but I was recognized the other night and had my family’s meal paid for by someone who told the waitress he had seen my video, and I was “the shit.”
She said, as she walked up to the table, “So I guess you’re famous or something because …”
She watched a bit of the video at our table but stopped it to share her story. Five years waiting tables and she has to turn down a promotion every time it’s offered because she’ll lose her health insurance. Another waitress walked by and was brought into the conversation, owning the exact same story: Can’t get ahead and can barely get by.
One morning last week I heard from a high school friend of mine. She shared that she worked retail for $13.25 an hour and lost her assistance, so she was forced to cut her hours back to part-time so she could keep her insurance and the measly $15/month in SNAP benefits.
No Longer Invisible
Since the video, I’ve heard the same story hundreds of times. Sometimes the wages are higher or lower, and sometimes the mom is married or single, but it’s the same story: People are working and struggling and tired. I have heard from women all across the U.S. with the same story. It was as if the video testimony opened the floodgates, and all of the exhaustion, stress, worry, and aggravation has been released.
The most common thing I hear is that we are feeling as if we’re seen for the first time. I also hear, “Thanks for telling my story” quite a bit because the working poor aren’t really seen. They’re caught in the gray area between assistance and self-reliance and struggling to keep moving. It makes me wonder what images people think of when they hear the word “poor.”
What I see is working folks, typically those working jobs that aren’t really sexy to talk about, who have worry lines on their faces and whose exhaustion shows in their eyes. They’re tired. They’re tired because not only are they working physically demanding jobs for the most part, but the stress and worry of not having enough add to the weight on their shoulders.
So, what now? In all seriousness, there has been a lot of momentum building in the past month. Hundreds have personally reached out to me to thank me and to share. I’ve had conversations with most of them, even if it’s just a sentence or two. But it’s time we build something from the broken glass of the rattled windows, folks. We can be complainers or we can be doers, but we can’t be both.
Why the Wait?
So, what are we waiting on? If you live in West Virginia, get five or 10 or 20 people together who are living the same struggle, and let’s talk. The weather is about to break, and I don’t have to worry about snow impeding my travel for much longer. I have a vision of what it’s going to look like when we start to build this movement. If you don’t live in West Virginia, reach out to me when you have a group together and we’ll do a conference call or something to at least start the conversation.
Here’s what I know: NO ONE else is going to fix this mess. We’re only going to see change if we demand it. And right now, when we finally feel safe to say the things out loud that we typically hide about our financial struggle, is the time. So, let’s do this. We have to keep the conversation going. And we’ll have no one to blame if we don’t but ourselves.
There’s power in numbers, and believe me when I say that I know there are millions of us out there with the same story. So, what are we waiting for? Let’s #RattleTheWindows.
Onward,
Amy Jo
