I’m in desperate, sudden need of financial aid. It’s an emergency at this point. My boyfriend and I both suffer from mental illness.
He has not been going to work. At all. In 14 days he went for 3 or 4 shifts. I currently do not work due to my mental illness and receive EI which disappears faster than it’s deposited into my account due to bills, food, transit fare, medications etc.
My boyfriend has stopped going to work again. It feels like I have become the sole provider and have less than $20 to last us two weeks and he still has bills he needs my help with. I just picked up my medication ($132 for a month’s worth). My boyfriend has picked up a smaller supply of meds because he can’t afford it. We don’t qualify for any other financial assistance because on paper my boyfriend should be making enough money to just barely get us by but how can that happen when you don’t go to work?
I’m DESPERATE.
If you are able to donate at all so we can buy groceries and afford our rent this month PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE donate.
I’m just a nobody with thoughts and opinions, but I needed get
them out. So, I decided to share them with all of you. It’s long, and I don’t
really expect you all to read it. I don’t consider myself any kind of expert,
nor do I imagine that you should put any kind of value in my words at all. I
could be wrong about everything. They were just in my body, and wanted to come out.
With the events of the past couple weeks, it almost seems
like punctuation at the end of the sentence that has been the last several
years. However, I’m afraid that punctuation is an ellipsis.
It seems like we’re living in a society that was built to
fail. Our priorities are in the wrong places and people aren’t getting what
they need. Earlier this week, a report came out showing that we spend more on
prisons than we do on education. I guess the plan is to wait until they’re
incarcerated so they can get their GED. America, we’re failing our children.
We like to act like the past was so long ago. Like slavery
was in some far off and forgotten time. However, here’s just a friendly
reminder that Jim Crow laws didn’t come to an end until the 1960s. It’s been 52
years since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Roughly 23% of the population is age
55 or older according to 2010 US Census data. Roughly 23% of the population were
alive while Jim Crow laws were on the books in this country.
But we can’t act like everything stopped in 1964. The same
ideology is still systemic, it’s just less overt. Whether it’s shady hiring
practices or profiling motivated traffic stops, racism is alive and well. Yes,
all lives matter. However, if your neighbor’s house is on fire, you don’t run
up to the fireman asking for them to throw a little water on your house too. I
know the fire thing has kind of become a meme, but it’s an apt analogy. [Fellow]
White people, we’re all already fully aware our lives matter. We don’t need to
say it. We like to delude ourselves into thinking that we are living in the same
America as everyone else, but the fact of the matter is, we don’t. Black lives
matter. When, and only when, we can legitimately say that all the fires are out
for good and we’re all living in the same America, then we can say all lives matter.
Until then, it needs to be known. Black lives matter. America, we’re failing
African Americans.
The police are an entirely different matter. I hear about the
police involved in the recent shootings and I hear that they are three-year-veterans
and four-year-veterans and I wonder what that really means. I looked around at
several different law enforcement training programs in my local area. While
those near you may be different (they may even be younger), what I found was
kind of surprising. The minimum age qualification for a trainee was only 20
years old. This means that the aforementioned three-year-veteran is only 23
years old. The program lasts 6 months and includes 4 courses. At the end of
this six months, they receive a certificate that gives them the ability to get
a job where they receive a badge, a gun, and a responsibility to uphold the
law.
The fact that their training only last six months and is
woefully inadequate means that most of their training has to come on the job.
They’re reliant on senior officers who were once like them, who relied on their
senior officers and so on creating a cycle. It’s not a far stretch to the
understanding that some of the sentiment from the aforementioned Jim Crow era
has seeped through the ages. There’s a likelihood that they may not even know
some of the tactics they’re taught to employ are racially motivated. They’ve
just been taught down the line from a time not that long ago when it was much
more prevalent. Or, they do get a crooked cop in their ear as a mentor. Too
young, naïve, and indoctrinated to question what they’re told by their
unethical senior officer.
Don’t misunderstand me. Being a police officer is a very
difficult, low-paying, dangerous, and often thankless job. They save countless
lives and are a vital part of our society. They certainly don’t deserve to be
killed. Not all cops are bad people, racists, or psychopaths but the initial
training program is woefully inadequate and leaves gaps that allow for unsavory
elements to creep in and become a part of the culture. And police officers are
just people. Sometimes, regardless of how hard we try, in the heat of the
moment, people make bad decisions. There are times though, when they are bad
people and intend harm. There must be
some kind of understanding that part of the problem is that, when a bad
decision is made, it seems like the police come together to protect their own.
Investigations become insular and the lack of transparency gives more questions
than answers. There is a need for transparent, independent investigations into
situations such as these. That way, the negative element can be removed and the
good police officers can keep their reputation intact. America, we’re failing
our police.
Group after group after group of people that we have failed
as a country, but they’re not the only ones. LGBTQA+ community, we’ve failed
you. Immigrants, we’ve failed you. Women, we’ve failed you. Take a quick look at the country’s crumbling
infrastructure and you’ll see that America has failed every man, woman, and
child within its borders. All of that being said, America is still one of the
greatest countries in the world, but what does that say about the
qualifications required to make a country great. Making America great again has
become a slogan, but I don’t trust any politician or business person will be
able to do that. They’re a large part of how this society created to fail came
to be. It’s going to take all of us, each and every one, to actually make
America great again. Reach across partisan lines, across racial divides, across
social ideologies, and make real, effectual change.
Normally, I’m of the opinion that you shouldn’t talk about a
problem unless you can talk about a solution. But, in this case, I’m not even
sure there is a solution. It seems like we’ve been screwed since the day we
burst from the womb, we just didn’t realize it. All we have left to do is talk
about it. Maybe that’s a start.
