Is Anybody Listening?

It starts with a link. This showed up on my Twitter feed earlier today. http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/

I spent every spare minute on breaks, at lunch, and as soon as I got home reading through the messages, looking at the pictures, crying. I feel so fortunate, so heartbroken, so uncertain. I am certainly part of that 99%, but I am not suffering.

I graduated in 2004 with a degree in Creative Writing that I have finally managed to wedge into my job at the veterinary clinic where I currently work. My grandfather, who had taught English at a university, had planned (very well), and was able to leave money for me. My parents (who raised me in a single-income household with a stay at home mother) planned well and were able to pay for my college education. Not just my tuition, but my books, my lodging, my living expenses. All of that, they gave me. I have no student loan debt.

My father is currently thinking about retiring. I wonder, sometimes, if he's as scared as I am. He works at Boeing and has for a long time. We made it through Boeing and Seattle in the 80s and I didn't know until I was much older how close some of those years came. As a child, I was in a private school (the tuition for which is now more than my college tuition was). When my parents could no longer keep me in private school, they moved so that I could be in one of the best school districts in the state. They will have been in the same house for 24 years as of this November. It's paid for, and because they've been there so long, it's still worth more than they paid for it.

I hope that if they ever need it, I am able to give as much to my parents as they gave to me. I have an inheritance. It was going to be my down payment for a home, but now it's my retirement plan. If anything should happen, though, it will be my parents' retirement plan. I hope that things will change, that my father will be able to retire. He certainly deserves it.

I have a job. There are a lot of times when I hate it. I'm doing the work of 3 people for the pay of 1. But I love what I do and I love my coworkers. It pays the bills. I have food. I have an apartment. I can afford cable and a cell phone and video games and all sorts of other luxuries. I have never been without health insurance, going from my father's plan, to my own at work, to private pay, and back to my own plan. And I'm actually putting money away in savings for the first time in my life.

Meanwhile, my friends are unemployed, underemployed, in fear of losing their jobs because their employers are running out of money. They're running out of savings and don't know how they're going to pay their bills. They're underwater on their mortgages or getting foreclosed on. They're considering filing for bankruptcy.

I am the first person to admit that I am financially irresponsible. I have learned from my mistakes. I have gotten better. I feel like an adult at last. How do I watch my friends, my coworkers, any other human being go through this kind of suffering? They didn't make ridiculous choices. They weren't out living the high life. They're just trying to get by.

More importantly, how do the people who get rich of the backs of all these people look at other human beings who are suffering and think that their yacht, their vacation home, their trip to Aruba is more important than food for those who prop them up? Be a fucking human. It's not that hard to care.

The Wrong Side of Logic

Whoops...

Just got into a brief discussion with a few of my coworkers. It ended with all of them looking at me like I'm an idiot. It ended with me walking away because what's the point?

They were talking about reporting crimes, particularly violent ones. The consensus was that if you were reporting a crime, you shouldn't need to provide your name and information. Also, if you did need to do that, it certainly shouldn't be available to the person you were reporting. What if they retaliated? There should be some sort of protection? It's absurd!

I stood and listened for a while and eventually couldn't help myself any longer. "Well, it's in our Constitution." They stared. "The Bill of Rights." More staring. "The right to face one's accuser?" More staring.

I didn't know what to do, so I just turned around and walked away. I mean, I understand their concerns. After all, if one does commit a violent crime, then there is certainly a chance that they would use that information to retaliate against someone who turned them in. I completely understand the desire to protect your family.

What if it was the other way around, though? What if you could report anonymously? What if someone accused you of a violent crime? Battery, for example. And what if they were making it up? If they had to produce no information, then how would anyone ever find them for testimony? How would you ever refute their claims? Or, if we take the lenient assumption under those circumstances, how would the state ever prove a case against someone? After all, the police didn't witness the crime. They're merely arriving based on the tip of an anonymous stranger.

What reason would there be to stop people from falsely accusing at random? Just the goodness of humanity? Forgive me if I put a little less faith in that. That said, obviously these people didn't believe so firmly in the benevolence of strangers either, otherwise they never would have been concerned in the first place.

That's why we have rules, because sometimes people aren't good to others. That's why we have a Bill of Rights...

Sometimes you just have to walk away.