I am a long time activist for low income people. I hear tragic stories every day and when I bring them to my legislators or stakeholders, I usually get a big yawn. I will most likely get the same yawns for posting this story. Who gives a damn about the homeless and poor? Aren't homeless people like Anna nothing but a bunch of losers, drug addicts and alcoholics (unlike the upper classes who are worse but of course we don't count THEM as clogging up our health care facilities with their aches and pains)?
As sad as I am about Trayvon Martin, I am also sad about this woman, a mother of 2, homeless and destitute who died because the hospital she went to refused to help her. When she insisted she needed medical assistance (God forbid, the nerve!), they handcuffed her and sent her to jail because they thought she was on drugs.
She wasn't.
The stereotypes about the poor literally KILLED this beautiful woman.
Her name was Anna Brown. Here is a picture of her: http://www.change.org/... .
Anna had gone to the hospital with excruciating pain in her legs. The staff thought she was on drugs so they denied her their services. They called the police when Anna refused to leave after trying to tell them she was in great pain, most likely desperate because her children needed her but she was too sick. The police dragged her to jail where a couple hours later she died in the cold floor, alone and without any support. I might add here that this hospital is a "non-profit" hospital, supposedly a church hospital who gets $Millions in government funding in order to care for people like Anna.
Anna, like many homeless, probably spent a good deal of time shivering with her children on the streets of St Louis. She most likely sought food from the local soup kitchen and if she worked for a wage, showered wherever she could in order to look half-way decent.
If Anna could not find paid work, she went to her local unemployment office and participated with some punitive "classes" with a contracted private agency. They would get a bonus plus the contracted money they received from the state once she found a paid position. This bonus was given to the agency in order for Anna to work a McJob that would not even pay the rent.
They would lambaste Anna with her "laziness" no matter how hard it was to find and keep a job. They would ignore whatever barriers she had to make it near impossible to keep or find that job, including health concerns for herself or her children. Most people would find it impossible to work for a wage as a homeless woman struggling to get her kids to daycare ~ if they paid for daycare but with the cuts many don't provide daycare, just make her feel bad unless she abandon them and work for a wage.
After all working for a wage even if it doesn't feed her kids is "doing something," and taking care of her own kids is "not doing anything." While on the streets Anna is left to figure out how get those kids to school, figure out how to bathe, dress and help them with their homework, and take care of herself in order to always be presentable. If Anna wanted to go to college in order to make a permanent change in her economic outlook, she would be denied as that McJob is the only successful thing she can do according to those legislators who contract with those bonus-takers. This is thanks to The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Act (Welfare Reform) that mandates she not be allowed to tend to her kids, only a McJob is "doing something."
If Anna were "couch surfing" with her two children by staying with relatives or friends, she was still considered homeless, according to HUD regulations ~ but few were working too much to find her a real home. In spite of the myth that there are not enough homes, she would be told she was on a waiting list that could be upwards of 5 years to get a home for herself and her two children. Five years is a long time for two kids growing up on the streets. While she was away to work that paid labor, "friendly" drug dealers and pimps would step in to show her kids the ropes. They would flash money and give them things that would take them away for a short time from the squalor they lived. IF she were to finally get a home, her kids would already be well on their way to the same fate as their mother faced.
In NY City, a group of homeless showed their 6 figure waged city planners that homelessness was a myth. http://www.indypendent.org/... . They surveyed every neighborhood within the city and with the help of Hunter College students and professors of Urban Development, put it on a database with the names of the owners, where they were and the size of the housing left empty. They proved that landlords and banks got $Millions for leaving homes vacant, literally thousands of homes more than the homeless that wander the streets. But they embarrassed these well-paid employees so "nothing to see here, just a bunch of poor people doing what 6 figured city planners, the mayor, and all the large non-profits and stakeholders said was impossible to do..."
These data-gatherers say that NYC is not the only place this giving of $Millions to landlords to keep their homes empty is taking place, every city is doing this!
So in truth millions of Annas are living on the streets so that the banksters and rich land owners can collect tax breaks for leaving their homes empty and then pretend there are not enough affordable homes. Meanwhile they can magnanimously give a few of their millions for tax deductible "donations" to shelters that collect up to 1/2 of whatever income their residents earn. Since Anna is too poor to afford a home or medical care, Anna is not considered "worthy" of assistance should she become sick or injured. And of course we would assume Anna is on drugs since she is poor and we have already denied her and her children any other assistance so she and her children can succeed as a family.
As over 80% of TANF recipients, these woman are usually married before they find themselves in this condition of poverty. But it is assumed Anna had her kids "to get welfare" when in fact there was a time she was doing as most other women do, getting married, have kids, and believe they have a good future. "Having more kids to get welfare," is a myth since she could have 10 kids and never get more assistance than for 2 of them IF she qualified, which takes a Philadelphia lawyer to get. Before Welfare Reform, Anna could have gone to college but elitist like Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation saw to it this would no longer be an option for Anna.
Since she was killed, Anna's kids will most likely be sold on the open market to adoption agencies who routinely take $1.2Billion per state from Title IV out of Social Security money. This is only the seed money to also go in and take approximately 1/3 of the state's TANF, housing, food stamp and Medicaid money out of the state's budget to also use for foster care and adoption. This is the money the state's Children's Services get for the selling of poor kids. They insist taking low income kids from their parents and putting them in foster care where kids are 5-7 X more likely to be abused, is "better" than giving any services to Anna or her family.
This shattering of these children and their mother Anna's life she endured from losing her kids to the System, was done before Anna was killed because they were homeless. The going attitude is that if these kids are taken and put in an upper income homes while reaping over $8000 a month per child. This is far more money than their mother would ever earn in any "McJob" and certainly far less cost than giving any assistance to her. Why collecting all that funding was "better" for her kids even if their false allegations of "maltreatment and neglect" was a "mistake." Who cares what lies are told in court since these state employees and all their contracted agencies being paid lots of money will enjoy full immunity and even bonuses for going into court and bearing false witness under oath that Anna was abusing her kids? God forbid that kids stay with their own families or get any support since the adults are most likely poor as well! The truth is there is far more profit to take these kids than to assist Anna. This is because there isn't any money to be made in assisting families when these kids could be "sold" for thousands on the open market or housed for that $8000 a month per child everyone else could leech to put them in foster care. For crying out loud, we could not help Anna with even 1/4 of that funding!
We refuse to use tax money like that to help Anna and her kids. Instead we can pay everybody else in the world, especially the upper classes to care for her kids and leave their mother to fend for herself on the street. If you think these kids are "better off" without their low income mother, think again. In foster care and adoption homes, these kids are 5-7 X more likely to be starved, beaten, raped, and ignored. When they try to tell the "professionals" what is happening to them, nobody will believe them because they are in so-called "safe" or "forever" (more like for-profit) homes. See, it is better for Anna's kids and her family that she die alone in a jail cell without any support supposedly so her children can have a "better life" while stakeholders refuse to give her a leg up when they could collect $Millions for taking away her kids instead ...
Cat in Seattle
Fri Jul 24, 2015 at 6:57 AM PT: Black Lives matter!
Just wanted to re post this diary I posted about 3 years ago with little response. I have so many family members who I love that are of color I realized that as usual my clueless self missed the most important part of this story and as a white woman who often forgets my own privilege for this, I deeply apologize. As a long time activist for our social safety net, I was mostly concentrating on Anna's poverty ~ but make no mistake another reason Anna was left to die alone in agony in a jail cell ~ as so many of her other sisters have, is because she committed another "faux pas" for being Black as well as poor.
It is no surprise to any of us who see these injustices every day that Anna Brown was refused any medical attention. After all she got too "uppity" at the federally funded emergency room she went to when after waiting for a long time, well then oh Lord, she loudly insisted she was in great pain and desperately needed help. Then they all went into full Monte mode: Danger! Danger! Black woman screaming in pain! Get the police!
It was proven later that Ms Brown was not on anything, but she was assumed to "be on drugs" and so ignored ~ and to tell you the truth not only because this woman was African American but WHY is "being African American and on drugs" any mandate that an emergency room, especially one funded by We The People, ignore dire pain?
Please do not forget Anna Brown also died because of these ugly prejudices almost 4 years ago. RIP Anna Darling and I hope at the very least your death will help us to understand how deeply embedded the hatred that killed you. To tell us that it is beyond time to yell at the top of our lungs so that never again will anyone face what you and so many others have!
Love, Cat in Seattle