by Erin Gill—Pennsylvania
If you do this kind of work long enough, it’ll make you really angry. Anyone that knows me, knows I’m a fairly laid-back, easy going kind of gal, and I am, for the most part. Except when I hear stories like the following:
Last night I reconnected with a woman who had signed up as a Working America member when we were organizing her community back in 2005. As soon as I said I was from Working America, she started to tell me how she had been affected by outsourcing and the economic pressures that so many of us are struggling to deal with everyday.
This woman had worked her whole life for a local company and saw her job outsourced overseas, as so many people have. She was too young to retire and had to keep working in order to provide her mother with the medical care she needed. So, she found work as a customer service representative, making far less than she had at her previous job. In fact, she told me, that her salary barely covered the cost of providing her mother the care she needed. She confessed that her best hope at this point was to buy a good digital camera, in order to start selling her family’s possessions on eBay, as many of her friends had begun doing. I let her know that scarily enough, her story is now the rule, more than it is the exception and that I’d been hearing similar stories from her neighbors all night, because I could tell from the careful way she told her story that she felt ashamed.
So this is what our American dream has become: selling a lifetime of accomplishments on eBay; working at a job just to pray that we’ll be able to pay for medical care for us and our families and living every day in fear of anything that might upset our delicate economic situations. This is insanity. We’re a better people than this. It’s time for us to be patriotic about something other than war. It’s time for us to stand up and call this story and every one like it what it is—a national disgrace. It’s time for us to fight with everything we have to make sure that in America, we do better than this.
Tags: Health Care, Jobs, membership, outsourcing
by Jennifer Schlicht—Michigan
I knocked on a door in a city just outside Lansing, Michigan’s capitol. As soon as I told the man who answered that we were working for more affordable health care, he invited me immediately into the house. He signed up as a member as soon as I gave him the pen, and introduced me to his wife, sitting on the couch.
She said her health expenses were $3,000 a month, and it was a struggle to afford them with her husband’s manufacturing job. They were also interested in joining the AFL-CIO in Lansing for the Working Family Lobby Day. As I left, they gave me a grateful thanks for trying to make their—and everybody’s—situation better.
Tags: Health Care, membership, taking action
by Vanity Smith—Michigan
While our job is to sign people up by knocking on doors, I had a random encounter while between doors.
Jared and I were walking up the street when three guys in a car stopped us. The driver asked what we were out there doing, and I told him we were fighting for affordable health care. He said, “affordable health care?” and pulled over to the side of the road to offer his support. As he was signing up, I asked for the voluntary dues contribution of $5, and he said he would have to go to the bank but that he would bring it back. We left, and 20 minutes later he found Jared and gave him the dues.
This guy’s commitment made me feel that there is nothing more important than the fight for affordable health care.
Tags: Health Care, membership
by Patricia Penton—Pennsylvania
I stepped inside the home of a mother of two young boys, while the mother was reading over the issues on our sign-up sheets she called over one of the boys and asked him, ”Remember when we were talking about how if you were president you would change five things? What were those five things?” The boy replied, “Health care, the schools, planting trees for the environment, taking care of the elderly, and bringing our troops home.” Three of those issues are on our member sheets!
The mother said, “Take a look at this,” and pointed at my clipboard. Her son read the issues and exclaimed, ”Wow! I picked the right ones!” I told him that he sure did and he enthusiastically signed a band-aid sticker for better health care.
This reminded me of how important it is that we fight for these issues every day, they are clearly in such a feeble state that even children are aware we need serious change.
Tags: children, Health Care, membership
by D’Anthony Gildon—Missouri
I went to get support from a resident and he told me he served the country for 30 years in the Navy. He said, “Since you’re out here supporting our country I can support Working America.”
Tags: membership, veterans
by Nabil Cristillo—Pennsylvania
On a beautiful, spring-like day in a retirement community in Hazleton, PA, I had a great conversation with an 80 year old woman. After I educated her on the state of our health care system and how Working America and the AFL-CIO is addressing these problems, this woman opened up and shared a very powerful story with me. She told me that the price of her health care is so ridiculous that she can’t even afford to buy food or pay most of her bills. She went on to say that she is being forced to move out of her beloved apartment and move in with family which is difficult because she is so independent. “Hold those politicians accountable,” she said, as she gave me a big hug and thanked me for the hard work we are doing!
by Jackie Lima—Pennsylvania
Three years ago this man went through a divorce and was awarded custody of his teenage daughter. A consistent worker all of his life, he kept losing his jobs as he struggled with health issues. Each time he lost his job, he would lose his health care. He was eventually sent for a stress test at a hospital and was found to have a bad heart with a string of other problems.
He applied and was accepted for medical assistance BUT because his daughter was receiving cash assistance from social security, he was disqualified and taken off. He could receive assistance for medications but was told he must be on Social Security for two years to qualify for the health care program. Even with a pacemaker, he had no doctor care for those two years. Luckily, his daughter was covered by SCHIP (the State Children’s Health Insurance Program) during this time. Now he is old enough to receive Medicare and all seems to be resolved at this time.
Tags: Health Care, Medicare, SCHIP
by Jeremy Reiferson—Pennsylvania
As soon as I introduced myself to this older gentlemen, he took notice of my last name. As I explained why we needed his help to bring affordable health care to America, he began asking me questions about my religious affiliation and wanted to know if I was Jewish. I was nervous to get into a conversation about religion with him, but I told him that I was, in fact, Jewish.
He began explaining that they were holding a traditional Jewish ceremony, a Minyan (a ceremony where 10 adult men are needed to conduct the service) in his house at that moment, but that there were only 9 men present and they needed one more Jewish man to conduct the ceremony. He asked me to participate and I agreed. He told me the service would take about 15 minutes. I agreed to come in and after the service, I signed up all 10 folks. Apparently, man #10 was just running late. It was nice to see so many people from the neighborhood coming together and then uniting behind our cause.
Two of the men asked me to apologize to another canvasser that they had rushed away because they were on their way to the service earlier in the night.
Tags: Health Care, membership
by Jared Ames—Michigan
I talked to a guy in Albion, MI today who was a tool and die worker. He worked for a temp service and wouldn’t know which days he would or wouldn’t work. He talked about discrimination—how he was facing age discrimination. He was in his early fifties and said companies won’t take a chance on him because of his age. He said he plans on working for ten more years. I’ve heard many stories like his in the last couple of years. It’s a shame that our employers look at older age as a liability because these people grew up in a time when jobs were permanent, whereas younger workers might be looking towards advancing through different employers.
Tags: Jobs
by Tommy Todd—Missouri
I met a woman while knocking on doors in Kansas City tonight. Walking up to her door, I saw a “for sale” sign in their yard. When she came to the door, I noticed scissors in her hand, but didn’t think much of it. I started talking about jobs leaving the country when she stopped me, and told me that her husband had recently been laid off, which was why they were selling their home. I had actually knocked on the door as she was cutting up all of her credit cards.
She gladly signed up, and thanked me for the hard work we are doing.
Tags: layoffs, membership, outsourcing
