The Common Good and the General Welfare:
The following piece was composed by a relatively young (46) person close to me. It eloquently describes the results of the insane pursuit of the special interests of those few who have wealth and power, those who consider themselves to be exclusive, and privileged and too bad for the rest of us.
I am the 99%
I am an adjunct English instructor at a community college in Salinas, CA. My students are the children of immigrant farmworkers. They are the lower end of the 99 percent. They try to be students while maintaining full time jobs, caring for children and sick relatives, and managing multiple sources of chaos. Salinas is a cancer cluster. Every semester at least one of my students has a parent or grandparent diagnosed with cancer. It is common sense that this is due to the pesticides used on crops, but the agriculture business lobbies hard against stricter regulations and insists that there is no proven link between instances of cancer and pesticides. Salinas is crime-ridden. Every semester I lose a student to either violent crime or the penal system. Every semester I have female students who are/have been victims of domestic abuse. Alcohol and drug abuse are prevalent. My students have a hard time finding quiet, safe places to study.
They are also woefully underprepared for college work and seriously lacking in fundamental English writing proficiency. They come to college because they have been told it the THE way to transcend their current circumstances of crime, poverty, and dead end, low-paying, soul killing work. Their goals are not lofty—a decent life and the wherewithal to take care of their responsibilities—but they have an uphill battle to achieve them.
My battle to help them is uphill as well. I teach and am paid for 9 "contact hours" a week, but I work more like 50. I start the semester with about 100 students. I do not get paid for the literally countless hours I spend evaluating and giving feedback on written work, planning curriculum, meeting with students one-on-one to help them with their writing, sending and answering emails. I do all of this unpaid work because I HAVE TO. If I didn’t, many more would fail. I am a teacher, and it is much more than a job; it is a serious responsibility. I gross $519 a week unless there is a holiday in there for which I do not get paid. I do not get paid during winter or summer breaks, although I do spend this time doing “professional enrichment”—looking for materials and ways to improve my curriculum and methods. Also I get no paid vacation or sick time off. No retirement. No medical.
I have $100,000.00 in unpaid student loans. At this point, almost a third of that is interest that has capitalized because since earning my MA, I have been unable to find steady, full-time employment and begin paying back my debt.
I have been to the emergency room twice in the last 2 years for bladder infections. I owe $3600.00 in medical bills that I can’t possibly pay. I have 3 kids between 10 and 16 years old. My husband has a full-time retail job with benefits but only makes $13.00 an hr. It costs $200 per month to insure our 16 year-old who suffers from chronic migraines and needs to see a specialist. It would cost another $300 to insure me. That would amount to almost half his paycheck. We can’t afford it. I haven’t seen a doctor or dentist in 4 years.
Three years ago the picture was much different. My husband I and I both had full-time jobs as editors and made a combined income of about $97,000.00 a year. He got laid off in August of 2008 and was unemployed for two and a half years before he found the much lower paying job in retail he has now. After distance training my Indian replacement, I was laid off in January 2009. I found work a year later, but as explained above, it is only part time.
We don’t aspire to be wealthy. Right now I don’t even aspire to be middle class in the sense of owning my own home, taking vacations, going out to dinner and/or a movie once in a while, buying the occasional new car, paying for college for my three kids, retiring in relative comfort, being able to take care of my ageing parents.
Right now all I think about is ways to earn enough income to cover gas, groceries, and rent. And it would be nice to be able to go to the doctor and dentist. I have raw a spot on my lip that won’t heal, I need new glasses, and I am pretty sure I have a cavity.
I am the 99%
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So, The only path that will lead us out of this chaos is the vote.
Who to vote for? That is the question.
Once it is understood that "Good can come only from Good" and that only Good can come from Good, it is really simple to evaluate a candidate. Does what he/she is standing for support sustainable programs that foster the Common Good and General Welfare not only for human beings but for the planet or not?
There is no room for equivocation. There are no partial goods. If a program is damaging the life liberty and happiness of a segment of humanity or the planet, it can’t be Good. If what is good for you is bad for me than it can’t be good. What destroys the planet is not good for anybody, even those who are profiting from it.
What can we do? We can support as much of the Common Good and the General Welfare that we can find in the candidates with our vote.
