Friday, November 14, 2003
I could have never been a good social worker. Or therapist. I get calls from constituents sometimes and it's all I can do to not scream out at them to get their f****** act together and get with the program! These are people with no education, no job prospects, no homes, drug addictions, dysfunctional families, disabilities, and a lot of bad luck. There is one guy who has lost four jobs in three months. He needs to work 10 hours a week in order to qualify for MassHealth -- which is what he needs to be entitled to the meds THAT HE DESPERATELY NEEDS. Every time there is a kink in the road he calls his Representative for help. We have helped him a lot. My colleague is still very patient with him but I just can't do it anymore. Take your meds and get your shit together!
But this is an unreasonable stance. A lot of these people are in a dark place that many of us may have touched a few times in our lives, but we have always come back out again to the light of hope. I know I have been to that dark place. And when you are there you really don't see any way out of the dark. But suddenly there is a family member or friend who helps pull you out. A job lands in your lap. A mainstreamness about you lands you back on your feet. But these people don't seem to land back on their feet. They just lurch from one catastrophe to the next. There is one sixty-nine-year-old woman who calls me almost every day. She was abused as a child. She has disabilities. She is lonely. She is fiercely religious. She can't afford the $14 per month co-pay increase that her basic insurance wants her to pay now. She cries. And she forgave her father before he died for beating the holy shit out of her and her mother when she was growing up. She stays in the town she lives because she loves the people who helped her: the police and the church. There is another woman who moved to a campsite with her foster son because she couldn't afford housing anywhere.
A report just came from the University of Massachusetts that one in three children goes hungry in the city I work to represent. Right next to that city is the town in which I live -- a yachting affluent community to the hilt. Can somebody spare a billion...
But this is an unreasonable stance. A lot of these people are in a dark place that many of us may have touched a few times in our lives, but we have always come back out again to the light of hope. I know I have been to that dark place. And when you are there you really don't see any way out of the dark. But suddenly there is a family member or friend who helps pull you out. A job lands in your lap. A mainstreamness about you lands you back on your feet. But these people don't seem to land back on their feet. They just lurch from one catastrophe to the next. There is one sixty-nine-year-old woman who calls me almost every day. She was abused as a child. She has disabilities. She is lonely. She is fiercely religious. She can't afford the $14 per month co-pay increase that her basic insurance wants her to pay now. She cries. And she forgave her father before he died for beating the holy shit out of her and her mother when she was growing up. She stays in the town she lives because she loves the people who helped her: the police and the church. There is another woman who moved to a campsite with her foster son because she couldn't afford housing anywhere.
A report just came from the University of Massachusetts that one in three children goes hungry in the city I work to represent. Right next to that city is the town in which I live -- a yachting affluent community to the hilt. Can somebody spare a billion...
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