Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do!

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Date: Tue, Sep 16, 2003, 3:45pm
To: (List for CLF members)
Subject: Re: [Clf-l] Finances

The problem is having "friends" and acquaintances whom you've trusted to discuss your personal life.

Students and single moms are working people, too. They like to discuss their issues, too.

It's always an offensive surprise to realize that someone whom you'd, up until that moment of confrontation re: "Welfare Fraud," assumed to be a supporive and rational human being.

The reactionary forces of popular media in this country are turning us ALL against each other! Like that homeless lady, humiliating me at church for asking for a few left overs! We should be sisters in solidarity! Or the alcoholic Chicano, waiting with me at the bus today, complaining about "those damn Mexican illegals," undocumented immigrants who work at hard, low-paying and often dangerous jobs, while HE is too drunk to do ANYthing!

Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reily, et al are ROLE MODELS for us trailer trash, teaching us all how to hate, insult, hurt each other. If we're all at EACH OTHER's throats, we won't band together and go after the REAL welfare cheats in this country: the corporations!

I've been insulted in line at the grocery for buying a 1/2 priced, partly green STEAK on my friggin Food Stamps! Ain't nobody's business if I do!

It's HARD to live on the edge like this and never speak of it for fear of judgment and condemnation! It's a stressful life!

But I'll tell you what: I'm SO grateful Food Stamps are now magnetic strip cards, instead of those obvious, brightly-colored coupons of the old days! Now, I can slide my card through the electronic reader and, if I hold it right, nobody knows if it's a bank card, credit card, or WHAT!

The PROBLEM with the new cards, though is that Chase Manhattan Bank of New York City now knows: where and when I shopped and exactly what I bought, and can sell that information to other companies!

I know this because they send me a "statement" every month!

When you try to get ahead and go to school [this was written about a single mother, in college], they act like you're "too good" too flip burgers at Mc Donald's.

There's an old expression: Poor folks are like crabs in a bucket: as soon as one almost climbs out, the others pull it back in.

But it's not just poor folks doing the pulling; it's the late night comedians, the landlords, the social workers, the grocery cashiers, the police....anybody who learns your business is likely to condemn you for trying!
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