Years ago, my vehicle was in an accident, and, because I couldn’t afford anything else, I had liability insurance. My vehicle was required for my job, which created a whole new set of problems. Requiring a personal vehicle for a low-wage job is a practice that should be revisited, y’all. Just sayin’.
Anyway….
I had been talking to a friend who suggested I call DHHR and ask about their car repair program. I batted it around for a couple of days and then decided I would call. It’s been years, so I won’t quote the conversation, but the main gist was that I was denied help because I only received Medicaid. I was told that they only repaired vehicles for people who were looking for jobs, not ones who already had jobs. I remember repeating her words back to her. So I couldn’t get help because I had a job, but, if I lost my job for not having a car, I could apply for more assistance and receive help.
The system.
I can almost understand the logic of it. I mean, a vehicle is handy to have for a job search and employment, especially if you live in a rural area, but those assistance programs are called the “safety net.” A net is designed to catch people when they’re falling, but the safety net makes working folks dangle from a cliff until they’re exhausted and give up eventually, falling right into the dark hole of poverty.
We hear a lot about the “neediest of the needy” receiving services, and they should. Chances are, if you’re existing solely on government assistance, you’re not living your best life, despite the stereotypes. And, my unprofessional opinion is that there are probably underlying and maybe undiscovered issues that should be addressed so the individual can begin to build a better life. Poverty may be the root, but let’s see what’s hanging out in the branches.
With the cost of things lately, most of us are feeling a squeeze on our wallets. Some of us might notice it as a little pinch but others are feeling suffocated. If this continues, a lot more of us are going to be thinking about how we’re going to make it. Heck, we drove miles out of our way the other day to go to the off brand grocery store because we’re feeling the squeeze.
Seventy-eight years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented the economic bill of rights in his State of the Union address. He said, “We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people — whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth — is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.” Wow. Over seventy years ago, our president stated that America could not be content if any part of our society was hungry, unable to buy quality goods, afford safe housing, and insecure. And yet, here we are.
He went on in his address to say, “We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” Read that again. Oppressed people allow for dictatorships to be formed. Why? Because hungry, sick, homeless, and unhealthy people do not have the energy or the resources to resist.
I don’t know about you, but I think 78 years is a helluva long time to still be waiting on this piece of legislation. I don’t know anyone who loves receiving assistance aside from the fact that they know they couldn’t survive without it. We want to work. We want to be able to afford food, clothing, shelter, and health care. We want the bootstraps. But the people in power with the privilege to actually create a society with economic justice for its base do not. They make too much money off of poverty.
What if the system was redesigned to actually serve as a safety net and, instead of forcing working people to choose to rely on assistance, caught people before they even started to fall. Why aren’t we pushing for an infrastructure of care that allows us to be the best version of ourselves? Imagine what we could do if we began drafting our own legislation for what we need based on conversations we had with each other!
I don’t care which party you belong to. None of that matters to me. I want to know what would make your life better. Let’s have honest conversations about what we’d have to make an hour, how to not make the lower and middle classes carry the burden of the richest. Let’s talk about economic justice.
Onward,
Amy Jo
