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Day 45

A lot of people have been asking, “what would solve the COVID-19 crisis?”

I have been thinking about this a lot and I think that the demands the Poor People’s Campaign is making (“A Moral Response to COVID-19”) of Congress and the Trump administration are pretty comprehensive:

…

WE DEMAND THAT YOU INCLUDE:

1. Immediate, comprehensive and permanent paid sick leave for 100% of employees for this pandemic. Paid sick leave must become standard across all sectors of the labor market.
2. Immediate health care for all, including 100% free COVID-19 testing, treatment and quality care to all, regardless of income, age, disability, citizenship or any other factor, and including the uninsured.
3. A guaranteed and adequate annual income/universal income, including rapid, direct payments to all low-wage and temporary workers for the duration of this crisis, from grocery, fast food and delivery workers, care workers, and pharmacists to others who remain on the front lines and are severely underpaid.
4. A national moratorium on evictions, tax foreclosures, rent hikes, and a national rent freeze. This includes an immediate halt to encampment sweeps and towing vehicles of unhoused communities. Federal resources must be directed to local and state governments towards opening and preparing vacant and habitable buildings, properties and warehouses to house and provide adequate care for all people who are homeless. This includes ensuring education, food assistance and health care for homeless children and provisions for medical testing, treatment and respite for the homeless.
5. Jubilee and debt forgiveness for medical debt, student debt, water, utilities and other forms of household debt.
6. Protections for our democracy and the right to vote with expanded opportunities to vote during this crisis and an expanded census to ensure every person is accounted for.

WE ALSO DEMAND:

1. A national moratorium on water and utility shut-offs, a waiver of all late-payment charges, and reinstitution of any services that have already been cut off due to nonpayment, including access to cellular and internet service. We demand policies that establish affordability-based plans for water and other utility services.
2. Expansion of resources and funding for FEMA and the EPA to ensure access to emergency care and clean air, water and land for all.
3. Ending work requirements on all federal benefits, including SNAP and Medicaid.
4. Resources to keep all rural hospitals and community health centers open, and an infusion of resources to Indian Health Services.
5. Permanent protections for social security, Medicare and Medicaid.
6. Emergency OSHA standards for health care workers, first responders and anyone else in frontline positions.
7. Protections for people in mental health facilities, prisons and juvenile detention centers, especially supplies, personnel, testing and treatment. This includes the release of all at risk populations and non-violent offenders and detainees.
8. Suspension of all CBP and ICE enforcement and ensuring all emergency provisions are made available to immigrants, including undocumented people.
9. Increased support for public schools to provide continuous, equitable and quality remote learning access for the duration of any school closures, including for children with disabilities, and for schools to continue to provide social services for qualifying children and families.
10. Lifting all military and economic sanctions, ending unnecessary military operations overseas and bringing our troops home.
11. Measures to ensure that nobody — no individual or corporation or financial interest — profits off this public health crisis by making vaccines and treatments affordable and/or free for those who cannot afford the costs.

We also call on you to immediately enact the demands of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Read them here: bit.ly/PPCDemands

Before COVID-19, nearly 700 people died everyday because of poverty and inequality in this country. The frontlines of this pandemic will be the poor and dispossessed – those who do not have access to healthcare, housing, water, decent wages, stable work or child care – and those who are continuing to work in this crisis, meeting our health care and other needs.

It should not have taken a pandemic to raise these resources. In June 2019, we presented a Poor People’s Moral Budget to the House Budget Committee, showing that we can meet these needs for this entire country. If you had taken up this Moral Budget, we would have already moved towards infusing more than $1.2 trillion into the economy to invest in health care, good jobs, living wages, housing, water and sanitation services and more.

This is not the time for trickle-down solutions. We know that when you lift from the bottom, everybody rises. There are concrete solutions to this immediate crisis and the longer term illnesses we have been battling for months, years and decades before. We will continue to organize and build power until you meet these demands.

Many millions of us have been hurting for far too long. We will not be silent anymore.

Needless to say, I am really looking forward to our Illinois Poor People’s Campaign Statewide Action Call tonight! For more info on our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, you can check out this page on our website, and if you agree with our demands you can sign our petition here.

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Day 44

I just watched this video, and am realizing that I may be in denial about the culmination of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.

Where’s Shana? Day one of Bernie’s initial run for president – May 26, 2015 in Burlington, VT

When Bernie announced that he was suspending his campaign, I spent the day talking to fellow supporters I have worked with over the years… and personally felt very little, emotionally speaking. I thought to myself, “this was inevitable.” But watching this video right now, it is finally hitting me that the campaign is over. That something I have worked so hard for and spent so much of my time and energy on is over.

Obviously, “the movement” (or many movements) will continue in some way(s), shape or form… but Bernie really was a special kind of lightning rod that I am afraid I won’t see again. And with all that is happening in the world, it is hard to imagine how we are going to move forward cohesively.

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Day 43

Got extremely caught up in my emotions yesterday. I was feeling anxious to start, and then feelings of abandonment were triggered… and it all went down hill from there. Luckily I was able to talk to a friend who calmed me down.

It’s strange how sometimes all you need is a fresh perspective to significantly regulate your emotions. I went from complete catastrophe to no big whoop — just like that.

Another thing that gives me perspective is the amount of lives being lost and torn apart right now. Seems almost narcissistic to lament about my own circumstances when so many are doing far worse.

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Day 40

Thinking today about what motivates people to organize.

For me, it was out of a feeling of necessity. But in times like these, there is SO MUCH GLARING NECESSITY, yet (seemingly) very little action.

I understand why that is: people are scared, people are confused, they feel hopeless, etc. They are attending to their basic needs. Or, they figure, what’s the point? Maybe they have even tried to organize before and lost. Maybe they are just burnt out.

I find it interesting how Americans (specifically, U.S. citizens) are so complacent, even when their immediate needs are stripped from them. Is there a point when people, en masse, will actually revolt?

It is clear to me that we need the Poor People’s Campaign, and that the only way to win true change is by organizing the poor, the most impacted, and the dispossessed. But what can we do right now to engage folks who are (in many cases) fighting for their lives?

Delegates from 40 states (including me!) representing the Poor People’s Campaign at our congressional hearing on poverty in Washington D.C. –June 2019
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Day 39

Struggling today with obsessive thoughts running through my head, and trying my best not to react. Why are we sometimes compelled to do things that result in the same (often negative) outcomes? Sometimes the urge is so strong to “take action” that it feels like I have little to no control. And it almost never works in my favor.

Illustration by u/dzedzezdzd (Reddit)

Is it some sort of misguided self-preservation method? Is it self-sabotage? Is it simply reacting to overwhelming feelings (such as anxiety) before there is time to think things through?

Just trying to stay cool. I realize this is all sufficiently vague so no one will actually understand what I am talking about — LOL.

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Day 38

Been working on Illinois Poor People’s Campaign statewide call planning today… had a good call committee meeting this afternoon!

Our next statewide call, which I am producing/facilitating!

Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival was launched in December of 2017, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign. We are a multi-racial, multi-generational campaign founded on 5 pillars (for more info check out the “Our Demands” page on the national PPC site):

  1. End systemic poverty
  2. End ecological devastation
  3. End the war economy
  4. End systemic racism
  5. Change the false moral narrative

Our campaign began with 40 Days of Action, which entailed civil disobedience at state capitols to bring attention to issues around poverty and our 5 pillars (as of today, we are organizing in 43 states and the District of Columbia). Then we organized our first Moral Action Congress (mass meeting) in D.C. last summer, and now we are building towards the upcoming June 20, 2020 Mass Poor People’s (Digital) Assembly and Moral March.

We, as the Illinois Poor People’s Campaign think it is of the utmost importance for us to continue to convene and strategize during the shelter-in-place order, seeing as there have been 493,000 new unemployment claims since the coronavirus pandemic hit Illinois (just in the past 4 weeks) and over 16 million nationwide–and so many without access to testing, healthcare or clean water to protect themselves against the virus. And we know these numbers are woefully underreported. So many are struggling, and we must continue the crucial task of organizing the poor, working class and dispossessed. As long as the statewide shutdown is in effect, the Illinois Poor People’s Campaign is committed to conducting biweekly calls to bring us all together to that end. We realize that not everyone has the privilege of computer and internet access, so we are hoping this call will inspire folks across the state to find creative ways to help “cross the digital divide,” and organize their communities.

Here is our next statewide call info (below) for those interested:

Please join us for the next Illinois Poor People’s Campaign’s Statewide Action Call on Wednesday, April 29th at 8pm Central! Learn the latest about this historic campaign, hear report backs from impacted folks across the state and find out what you can do right now to plug in.

Our featured political education presenter (on the topic of systemic racism) will be: Jaquie Algee

JAQUIE ALGEE is Vice President/Director of Community Relations for the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Illinois/Indiana/Missouri/Kansas (SEIU HCIIMK). In this capacity, she directs activities that support and foster positive relations and collaboration with faith leaders and congregations, community organizations/residents, elected officials and key stakeholders in support of SEIU HCIIMK, worker rights, as well as a variety of shared community interests and issues. Ms. Algee works to ensure that SEIU HCIIMK establishes and maintains relationships within the broader community as a committed partner in the fight for justice.

She also serves as a Quad Chair for the Illinois Poor People’s Campaign.
Registration for this call is required, and you will be sent call-in information as soon as it becomes available.

Registration link: bit.ly/ilppc-April29-call

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/157877508852745

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Day 36

I spent time this weekend with my former-fiancé-now-again-boyfriend Phil. We have been in touch practically every day since the shelter-in-place began, and he has visited me almost every weekend. It is clear that despite our breakup, we have a strong bond, and that we have been there for each other during these difficult times. But a little over a week ago, we had a really deep talk about our relationship late one night and about our lasting feelings for one another… this was the first time in ages that I felt I could express myself without walking on eggshells or worrying that he would withdraw. It was like — wow.

Since then it has been much like old times… I’ve been getting sweet texts and voice messages just to “check in,” been talking more overall, and what I have appreciated most is my ability to speak frankly in a way that I haven’t felt able to for a long time. It has been like “he” is back! But when he expressed that he loved me and wanted to get back together this weekend, I insisted that we see a couples counselor to assess whether the rift caused by our breakup can be mended (and that we really want it to be), as well as just to process what happened together.

Happier days with Phil, Thanksgiving 2019

Part of me is relieved that we have reconnected in this way, and is optimistic that Phil seems willing to work through some difficult things in order to, hopefully, come out the other side together. The other part recognizes the major differences in our approaches to relationships, and how our various “parts” react with one another negatively.

When we were still together (before), we went to a therapist for a couple months to learn how to communicate better (since we were getting married and all), and one thing that sticks out was when our therapist talked about something called “attachment theory.” I remember looking it up at the time and it ringing a bell, but today I started digging into it more deeply. I started reading a book called Insecure in Love by Leslie Becker-Phelps PhD, and took a survey to assess what attachment “type” I am. I think there really could be something to this!

In a nutshell, the theory is that as babies we learn to “attach” to our primary caregivers/parents in a particular way, and that this way (that we learn in infancy) sticks with us and carries over into adulthood. Depending on how you are nurtured (or not) during these formative years, along with the impacts of later “attachment figures” — this affects how you will relate to romantic partners as an adult.

It turns out that I have an “anxious” type attachment style, although I identify with parts of both secure and even fearful styles. And I recognize Phil as being avoidant for sure (possibly fearful or anxious avoidant). And given our almost opposing attachment styles, I recognize that it will take a concerted effort for us to begin to relate to each other in a “stable” way. Fingers crossed!

Take the survey here if it piques your interest… and Google “attachment theory” to read more about how it impacts your own relationships.