The first time I got fired was almost 30 years ago in Lexington, KY. The night before, while finishing a catering job on a horse farm in rural Kentucky, I’d poured -upended- a beer over the head of my manager. I’d screamed “I quit!” and stormed off while he shouted after me, “No, you’re fired!” Then I crunched my hand with the sliding door of the catering van and we had to deal with that for a while. Administrative paperwork took care of my ER fees, as it was filed as a work injury, and neither I nor the restaurant received a bill.
The next day in the tiny office behind the walk-in cooler, the owner of the restaurant offered me three choices. I could quit. I could have the manager’s job. Or he could fire me, making me eligible for unemployment payments from the state of Kentucky. I’d had no idea that this was even an option. I ended up finding another job quickly, and never filed for state assistance. But getting fired made me instantly eligible for help.
The second time I got seriously sick in my life, I was on my own as a college student in Lexington. I didn’t have a doctor, or my own health insurance, and my parents didn’t have any resources at the time. But because I was a student, and the University of Kentucky was -and still is- a massive research institution with its own medical school, I could go to Student Health. Those doctors referred me to the University hospital, and I received treatment at no cost to me at any point in the process. My student fees covered it all. I *had* of course paid for the care, but collectively and much less than I have ever again as an adult, even when a full time student.
Halfway through my sophomore year, I had a choice to make. In a fit of pique, I’d told my parents that if they wanted to give me rules to follow in exchange for paying my tuition, then fine. I’d do it myself and live how I liked. I worked three jobs, don’t remember sleeping much, and only managed it for a few terms. But the fact that tuition was only $3500 a semester, and then $1800 once I became a KY resident, meant that I could manage it. Restaurant jobs that paid (only slightly) over minimum wage and also kept me fed made it all possible. It wasn’t easy but it was a hustle I’d seen before.
My family didn’t have much money while I was growing up. My father was a professional musician and my mother a full time student and worker of various social justice jobs. We were definitely in a lower socio-economic group but well educated, what my mother called the Artisan Class. She was always busy, and the life of a working musician never stops so dad wasn’t around much either. I started working when I was 15, and never really stopped.
I mention these moments from my young life to highlight how impossible any of that would be today. Were I now living as a young adult in Kentucky, I would not have automatic unemployment if fired. I would not have access to full medical care just because I was a student. I would never be able to afford the $32,000 out-of-state price tag and wouldn’t make the $12,000 in-state any more easily no matter how many jobs I had or little sleep I got.
The people I know who do as my parents did, that is work jobs that fulfill them rather than work jobs that make as much money as possible, aren’t making it. Those who actually *are* trying to make money but aren’t from our historic owner class are also struggling mightily. The parent-student has 2 or 3 other jobs, not one part-time one. The artist or independent worker rarely has health insurance, a requirement now as it hadn’t been then.
Even in Memphis, TN, the public bus system in the 1980s was robust enough that my father rode it to many gigs, and I rode it to and from high school. But the bus I took to school everyday no longer runs, and public transit systems all over America have had budgets slashed, systems spun as massive money losers instead of a service of the common good.
Everything has changed in this country, and the middle class is shrinking at a deeply frightening rate. We demonize the poor, cast them as other or lazy, and establish impossible parameters for aid. We idolize industry and profit and seem to have lost the core of American business ideals that valued employee investment, people over profit, and high quality production. For now, we are still rallying as communities coming together when weather turns lethal, but how long will that last as storms become more violent and frequent everywhere? We are right now turning away climate refugees fleeing flood and fire at our Southern border.
Sometimes the cruelty of our systems stuns me to silence. I find myself mute in the face of the choices we have made as a society, as a culture, as a country. I am not sure where my rage should go, which insurmountable mountain I should attack, which dams to blow and what to wash away.
And for all that this is true -the widening wealth gaps and the dissolution of safety nets and our massive medical bankruptcies- it is still easier for me because I am white. For all of White America’s earnest attempt to change, and embrace Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion principles, and face our past, life has actually gotten harder and more dangerous for BIPOC folks all over. A friend of mine who is a gay black man in his late 70s told me recently that for a long time, it was more dangerous to be gay but that now it’s more dangerous to be black.
Some of this danger is going to be the backlash from fear and shame that comes as White folks wake up to the depth of our complicity. Some of this danger is the irrational actions of those flooded with the fear that their lives are out of control. These things seep into other realms as well. They don’t affect simply the personal but color the civic and political as well. We have slowly stripped away our social safety nets in some sort of slow punishing cantrip that will keep bad things away from all those we find worthy.
For example, climate change is a nonpartisan issue. When actually polled, when canvassed in person, there is virtually no difference along party lines regarding concern for the environment and the desire to do something about climate change. But climate change mitigation very much IS an issue of money, power, and control. Climate change mitigation will challenge every aspect of resource allocation, of our safety nets and of what we call our common good.
Obviously we don’t have the political language for what we need to do, not any that is being spoken here. We have slid far down the slippery slope of cruelty and isolationism because we believe it will keep us safe. People will argue with this, that this kind of civic tough love is good for personal agency and negates the need of the state, that is the collective will, to support the least among us, thus freeing up resources for other endeavors.
But I know well that those simple realities that kept me safe, fed, and frankly alive no longer exist, not only in Kentucky but all over the country. We are choosing who to leave behind, where the lines of apartheid will be drawn, who will die when the triage begins.
But it does not have to be like this. It truly doesn’t. I’m only 50, and I remember another America. I have to fight the power of nostalgia while re-calling us to our deeper purposes of community life, liberty and justice for all, and a future in which we all thrive. Together we must all fight the separation tactics of partisanship, nationalism, and false security. True safety, community, innovation -all are possible if we weave new nets of care and seek a deeper common good.