NEWSBYELIZABETH STILLSON

A therapist once told me that depressed people aren't actually pessimists, they are realists. They see the world with painful honesty. They see the flaws, the faults, the hopelessness of the system that eats people up. Our country, our entire world actually, is seeing that reality right now. Those of us on the very bottom knew the reality of the situation long ago, like canaries in the coal mine. The world is in a depression, and reality is hard to take.

We have had the hopeful ideas of how the world is supposed to work stripped from our imaginations. The American dream we all know is now shown as a myth. We don't get ahead through honest hard work. We can't make life better for our kids when education is so far out of reach. You can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps when the only boot you know is the one holding your neck to the ground.

And now AIG is giving out million dollar bonuses.

(Intro of this new guest series is here. - Leigh)

"If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin."   - Charles Darwin

In 2001, when Bush took office, I was almost middle class at $35,000 a year. Every year since I have fallen deeper and deeper into the abyss of poverty, dragging my now teen aged child with me. My annual income is now less than half the official poverty line of $14000 per year for a family of two. I have no medical benefits, though my child does qualify (sometimes) for SCHIP. I work at a local college tutoring students. I am not unskilled, but I am un(der)educated. I cannot afford the quarter's worth of classes that I need to finish my AA, let alone to go on to my BA, even with Pell grants.

And I am not alone. There are millions (17 million and climbing) of poor people just like me who have been quietly squeezed to death over the last 8 years. We are not lazy or stupid or shiftless. We are unlucky and have fewer resources when trouble comes. And because we are poor, trouble comes more often. Our jobs are less secure. Our health is more fragile (either from stress or poverty or being the people that envirnmental sludge is pawned off on). Our children are less safe and their futures are certainly nowhere near as hopeful as they should be. Some of us have been telling anyone who would listen that it's bad all around. But no one gave a damn till the banks started to fail.