Main Street

Video: Budding activist

Patricia Penton encounters a young activist-to-be while our signing up members.

Tags: membership, taking action, video

Video: Canvassers get fired up

Our Allentown, Pennsylvania office gets fired up for a night of knocking on doors.

Tags: membership, video

Working overtime to find a job

by Jonathon Vogt—Ohio

Wednesday was one of the first warm days our office has had after a long winter of canvassing. I walked down a street in west Dayton thirsty and unprepared for the heat.

Then I met this woman. I told her that we were fighting to keep good jobs in Ohio and we needed members to hold our politicians accountable. She told me that she would sign up but that she was very tired; she had been awake for the last eighteen hours. I asked her what kind of job she had that kept her awake for eighteen hours, assuming she worked the long hours that most people do at a hospital.

She told me that she didn’t have a job and had been continually looking for work for the last two days, revising her resume, submitting applications, attending a job fair and several interviews. Dayton ranks second in the country for most jobs lost due to outsourcing, just after Detroit. Linda’s struggles are endemic of the problems created by crooked free trade agreements that help neither American workers or workers overseas.

She said God has a plan for her and it is not for her to give up now, after a lifetime of hard work. I told her that you reap what you sow and since she was working hard, I firmly believe she will find a job. I told her that Working America will fight to make sure that people like her get the economic fair shake they deserve. She offered me a bottle of water and thanked me for stopping by. She said I could come back anytime and that she looked forward to getting involved with Working America.

Walking away no longer thirsty, I thought to myself that there is nothing that tastes better than the water you drink after knowing you made a difference in someone’s life.

Tags: Jobs, outsourcing

Out of work with carpal tunnel

by Kara Kukovich—Pennsylvania

I was canvassing in Pottsville, PA and met a woman with a heavily-bandaged hand. I talked to her about job losses. She told me how bad the job situation was, that she had just lost her manufacturing job because the factory shut down. Ironically, her hand was bandaged because she had developed carpal tunnel at this factory job!

Tags: Jobs, outsourcing

Misdiagnosed

by Lauren Vlot—Pennsylvania

I spoke at length with a woman who could barely speak. She often has to crawl up her steps because she can’t breathe. She had gotten sick, and the polyps on her lungs were misdiagnosed. Therefore, they burst and her lungs filled with fluid. She had been in a coma, but miraculously recovered. Now she’s without health care and the state has not yet declared her disabled.

Tags: Health Care

It costs to leave the hospital

by A. Mark Robinson—Pennsylvania

I spoke with a middle-aged man in Exeter, PA about health care. He immediately started talking about how he had to borrow money ($400) from his boss so he could purchase a vital breathing machine for his mother. The hospital would not release her until the machine was in place. He told me he could not read and thus, called for his sister to read the clipboard and signed up as a member.

Tags: family, Health Care

Struggling in retirement

by Travis Blake—Pennsylvania

While signing up members in South Whithall, PA, I came to the house of a lady who is retired and disabled. She needs a wheelchair and walker just to get around the house. She also has an autistic child she takes care of. She is struggling to pay her own health care bills, as well as struggling to do all she can for her autistic child.

Tags: Health Care, Retirement, seniors

This woman is a saint

by Travis Blake—Pennsylvania

When I was signing up a woman as a member, she expressed great concern for the soaring health care costs. When she invited me in her home, she introduced me to her brother who was hooked up to an I.V., gravely ill, and the only treatment that was affordable was bare minimum. She had to inject him and hook up his I.V. because he can’t afford to get his treatments at the hospital. She also takes care of her mother who has Alzheimer’s Disease. I told them that I would not forget them.

Tags: Health Care

Cancer without health care

by Jackie Lima—Pennsylvania

Once we were in her living room, looking at the clipboard, she looked teary eyed and told me that her husband died three months prior. And then her son died three weeks after that. He had cancer and couldn’t get hospitalization, even with the melanoma on his arm! Then a cancer hospital in Virginia took him in and gave him chemotherapy, but it was too late. He was good for a while, but then he died. He was only 37 years old. “This has been very hard,” she said. I listened while she talked about her other children and how lonely she was. I gave her a hug and told her to take care of herself.

Tags: Health Care

“Give me that!”

by Jackie Lima—Pennsylvania

“Give me that! I’ll sign it. I don’t know how people do it who don’t have health care. My husband recently had a heart attack. He needed defibrillation, they put in three stents and he was in the hospital for 14 days. His bill was $260,000. Can you believe that? What do people do who don’t have health care? I’ll sign!”

Tags: Health Care