If you think 15% of people are unemployed, you're thinking that the glass is half empty. 85% of people are employed. With odds like that, you must be a real loser to not be on your way to living the American Dream. Hey! Listen to these guys in Silicon Valley -- I mean Economic Inequality is a terrible problem in the United States, and if unchecked it will lead to a glorious socialist revolution. Or at least the Neuvo Techies need a Rosa Parks moment:
"Software Startup employees need a worker’s bill of rights! Comrade Zaharias is shocked and saddened that good computer programmers, salt of the earth people every one, have gotten only modest or no stock options when the glorious day of the IPO hast come to their place of business. Greedy people, CEOs and Venture Capitalists who have contributed NOTHING AT ALL except for building the companies and coming up with all the money --- those leeches have sucked dry the stock price gains. Zaharias worked for a bunch of these companies, and not one of them has made him rich enough to bathe in caviar! They merely paid him as agreed in his contracts! Where, I ask you, is there justice to be found?"
Okay, so I lied about the quote. Zaharias didn't say that exactly. But he humbly compares himself to Rosa Parks, and explains that simply to live in Palo Alto, a workingman needs about $1 million in liquid assets just to keep the rats from gnawing at his children’s bare and dirty feet.
What he might be about to realize is that maybe he's just become one of those rats. And he's demanding his own Bill of Rights to make sure that isn't the case!
So, what the does this have to do with Tonya? Well, not much, except she's sitting deeply under this compost. And the biggest difference is that she knows that she's on the receiving end of the Big Lie.
In the United States, we have a habit of lying to ourselves about our independence. Our story is about individual freedoms and personal rights protected by law. Any man can make it on his own in America, and he expects help from nobody. If he owns a business, he built it! If he wants to go somewhere, he drives. On a freeway. Our country is covered with McMansion sprawl because every man can amass his own kingdom. All by himself. And if he doesn't manage to pull it off -- he has only himself to blame. And if he fails to pull it off, he should be deeply ashamed.
This is the Big Lie, perpetrated by the 0.01% who don't want to pay for anything.
I know about this -- I was once a single mother in the midst of a health crisis. I know a little about how metastable that life can be. Under the best of circumstances, it is wrought with Catch-22 scenarios because the expectations for "breadwinner" are rarely consistent with the expectations for "caregiver." More often, though, single mothers have to tiptoe through life one misstep away from disaster. Unfortunately, people can smell that desperation, and the mean ones commonly act on it. Single moms are a scapegoat and easy target because they can't fight back -- they lack the safety and resources to do so. Answering the question, "What's the worst that could happen?" is simply unthinkable. And sometimes the worst is fatal.
Under the best of circumstances, a single parent goes through life tolerating a stream of problems that are unsolvable -- problems of all sizes. Why? Because the village isn't there for them. Here we do things on our own. Seriously. If I had a nickel for every time I heard a married parent say, "Nobody helped us raise our kids," I swear I'd be rich as Warren Buffet.
Hillary Clinton wrote a book called It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us where she said that it takes a village to raise a child. As a single mother, I learned that it takes a village for everything. It takes a village to merely survive.
Tonya is in the diametric opposite of "the best of circumstances." If you can, please help. Her life depends on it. Her children do, too.
This is Tonya's story -- with donation link.
As many of you know, I have been very sick over the last several months. Last summer, I was diagnosed with a large fibroid tumor and was told I would need a total hysterectomy. While hospitalized for the hysterectomy,it was discovered that I also had autoimmune hemolytic anemia, due to what was likely lupus, and that I had a serious lung infection which caused permanent damage to my right lung. So I was placed on steroids and given a blood transfusion to treat the anemia, and given some powerful antibiotics to treat the pneumonia. After returning home from the hospital and having a lot of tests done, the doctors' suspicions of lupus were confirmed--and I was told that we need to move, because the mold in my apartment may have been responsible for the lung infection I had, and that it may be aggravating my lupus symptoms to boot.
My children have also had a lot of respiratory illnesses since we have lived here, so no doubt, the mold in this place is hurting them too. And of course, the landlord won't fix it.
However, you can't move if you don't have money--so I went, as soon as I believed I was able, and found a job. Just a few weeks after I started working again, I passed out at work, and was sent to the hospital--where it was discovered that the hemolytic anemia had returned--and I would need yet another blood transfusion. The doctor told me I am going to have to be on steroids and some other medications for the rest of my life in order to keep the lupus under control.
So now, I'm trying to raise money to help me and my children get moved out of this apartment and into a mobile home I found, and to help us get some bills caught up that I am behind on, like our electric bill. In addition to being clean and safe or us to live in, the mobile home will be a little less expensive to live in--so with the income we already have coming in every month, we won't have to worry about getting behind on bills as much.
Thanks everyone for any help you can give us.