A Sicko "family" reunion...

 Over 150 healthcare activists were on hand Sunday(including your correspondent) to consider the impact of Michael Moore's "iconic" film and what's changed in the fight for healthcare justice in the intervening years.(Everyone on the panel, despite continuing health struggles cited the opportunity to get chronic conditions seen to under socialized medicine as a key factor in keeping them going...Donna Smith provided a sobering fact, in that many of the people that there was "Sicko" footage of died before they could be in the finished project.)

I was surprised to hear from Donna Smith, PDA stalwart and Medicare For All Die-hard, say that initially, she blamed herself, the way capitalism teaches us all to, but then she took strength from knowing she wasn't in an individual fight alone.

Everyone on the panel said that the pandemic both delayed important goals(conferences, contact with  legislators and the like) but that it underscored the importance of fighting for a universal healthcare system.

Sweet Jesus, I Hate Krysten Sinema...

 I kind of always knew I'd keep this title chambered, probably since I saw it ona Billo trashing website, but unlike those people my "hate" started more with curdled admiration. She was everything a politically motivated grade-grubber with a carefully-disciplined whiff of the bohemian wanted to be,including the fact that she skipped grades to start going to civic-minded meetings early, much like Anthony Michael Hall's character in "The Breakfast Club" using a fake ID to vote.(I used to think I was like him, too)

We met a few times...at the university, where in women's studies, she told the class what it was like to have skeevy, old(now disgraced) members at the statehouse asking her sleazy questions about being bisexual--if you've never taken WST, there's a lot of "sharing", the better to relate the materials to,say, sexism in daily life.(Now, I hope I'll be forgiven for wondering whether any of that spontaneous emotion got practiced in the bathroom mirror before we got it...she seems to leave nothing to chance, nowadays.)

I graduated, unlike Krysten, to a silence so resounding, I could probably still dig up a dove-gray copy of my rookie's resume somewhere(Did it start out with jealousy? Probably, even though I'm fine with being off the narrow respectability track that makes Sinema chase Republicans like dogs chase cars.) We worked on a project together, to attempt to defeat Arizona's marriage amendment. She talked me up to someone as someone to watch, once.(Do I still wonder what might have happened if her compliments were followed up with action? I used to, before she  planned for defeat and put girlie antics before helping people.

My PRO Act letter...

 Thinking about my parents again, I guess because this effort is more about solidarity, so my connection is less...direct.

When my parents moved back here in the early seventies, in hopes of expanded opportunities for me with my disability, they knew to expect certain things: hot summers, cheap living, and retrograde politics. Still, they had family here, and a little girl to buy a wheelchair for, so my dad took a transfer from his retail job, and they started to work their way up here, despite both of them only having about half of a college education each.

People in the same spot as my parents could not be assured of the same happy ending today. Wages have not even kept pace with skyrocketing rents and home prices, and my father might have ended up with massive student debt instead of a real-estate or insurance license, his path into the middle class.What’s a worker to do? Well, we could wait for the time machine to be invented, and hunker down, or maybe make some pivotal land purchases in Glendale, or in the real world, we could pass the PRO Act and make sure no job is a powerless job.

With the PRO Act, workers could finally use strength in numbers to get better wages and more protections on the job, maybe even have a voice in how their workplace runs.

It’ll make things easier until we get that time machine.

(Well, I liked it.  Even if nobody else does, I entertained myself.)

UPDATE: This made my local daily, in somewhat altered form. I'm proud, I guess...it feels good to show the socialists I've been paying attention. On the other hand, shouldn't I be too young for this?

The Limits of Home...

 

My home is not my pillow fort. It’s pretty hard to have a retreat where you also have a command center for activism and a writing desk. Also, still waiting for that wave of relief that competency in government brings, especially since I suppose it was a bipartisan decision to leave disability policy untouched for decades at a time. Many of the ‘grownups in charge” are also some of the same people who’ve been kicking cans down the road for much of my life, so I’m not exactly sure they could or will switch gears fast enough, so,  the relief is not as encompassing as advertised.

Self-care writing, like most writing about, say, getting  better sleep, is designed for people with space and mobility(Advice about not getting in bed until you are ready to sleep is not useful when you need help to get there, as well as the benefits of physical exercise.)
I watched Kevin Can F—Himself yesterday.  I thought it was funny and well-executed, but somewhat grim.(Hopefully, life between men and women isn’t quite that dark, not that I would know.) Also, I thought that in a lot of shows like that that I’ve watched(yes, I’ve seen an awful lot of them) either Kev or his father-in-law would luck into something that would replace the money he lost. The writer has a point about the man-children on these shows, I suppose, but they shy away from consequences overall, the better to bring the characters back to the same point every week.

I was also reminded of the times that Mom tells me she finds some episodes of “Everybody Loves Raymond” with the character’s devouring parents hard to watch.  “It’s funny, but sometimes it hits a nerve.”

My parents have been divorced longer than they were married, now.

Nope, Still Don't Want A Timeclock in My House...

 so I wrote this to Sandata, the firm handling the local #EVV monitoring here.

Dear Sir or Madam:

We are hereby requesting that we be allowed to opt out of electronic monitoring in our home, both for ethical and technological reasons. Philosophically, we have a huge problem with someone thinking we are “gaming the system” because we need financial supports and it’s hard not to feel invaded when you think that some stranger knows what days you shower and when you get out.What will you have done with this information?Even on my most optimistic days, which I  am trying to have more of, despite writing this in the waning days of a pandemic(ordinary life has been complicated for some time, even though we’re mostly unscathed) I don’t believe that anyone will read our data, tip his hat, and say “Ok, just curious…carry on then.” Because that’s not why people look for things, hoping not to find them, and with all due respect, yours is a tech company, not a personal care company. You’d be forgiven for not knowing what it takes to get a disabled person through her day, except the government has made it your business now. Quite frankly, a lot of our leaders don’t understand either, and trying to clarify that has been one of the central fights of my adult life. Adding another “front” especially during the stress and grief of a pandemic seems like a lot to ask, especially when our high speed internet lets us down a lot, often disabling my landline as well.(Sometimes I wish I’d never heard the word “bundle”, to be honest, but we were just trying to save a little money where we can.) Thinking about when we might get the monitoring device, how difficult it might be to use, and how those difficulties  might affect our lives has added stress to simple things, such as our daily trek to the mailbox, especially since people I know in other states have had paychecks tied up for days due to some error or software problem.

Sincerely,

Bohemian Crip and her

Actual Mother