Tag Archives: Poverty

Articles and Essays, DIDY-do it ya damn self, Ruffled Draft, Works in Progress

EDUCATED IN AMERICA

EDUCATED IN AMERICA
   If you don’t get a good job right out of college, she said, you’re fucked. Then the more time passes, the less and less desirable you are or capable you are considered to be. Then, you really are out of the loop, because you’re not up on your college learnings of what’s latest work in the field or industry work of what’s going on, from the inside. Cause most of that shit is kept exclusive, for the in-crowd only. And how can you keep up and research and write articles or whatever without any credit, established affiliation? You’re not allowed places if you’re just a person, an independent researcher; you have to have some company or organization credentials. You can’t even get membership into associations usually if you are not at a company or organization. And how the fuck can you research all this stuff and try to keep up and research and write articles or work on stuff in your field when you’re too busy working at or looking for a job at some shitty place for $8/hr of furious-paced, very physical service work, or figuring out how the fuck you’re gonna get places with no bus fare, and how the fuck all this food stamp/Unemployment/stave off medical bills magnitude of beauracracy works, etc etc. An Anthro/Archeology prof/researcher once told me, as many other academics and professionals and books on academics/employment applications inform, well, we don’t just look at grades/transcript for admission, we look at what kind of job you’ve had. So, after you’ve put all this hard work in to try to survive, and are finally saying, my only option to make any kind of decent steady income and make something of myself whatsoever is to go “back to school,” that is, to grad school, to just try to afford it, work till it drops,  join a church so they’ll help you prioritize internet, and attempt feably to sell your dysphoric  female body online in order to afford to–all those jobs you took, grasped at, fought for because they were what was finally or actually for once available or that you could get to and from, in order to fucking survive–are a negative factor on your application?!?!
   What kind of fantasy land is she living in? Researcher-professors (or fill-in-the-blank) aren’t actually that far removed from reality; they can’t even consider tenure a feasible future anymore, especially if academicking while female.
   Of course, (unless there were a fantastic job, maybe) going to grad school is what you really always wanted and had originally planned to do right out of college, but of course couldn’t afford the insane $200 test and all the insane applications fees, esp. since any reductions or waivers are not available unless you are in ONLY your 4rth year of undergrad as a “traditional” “senior” and going full-time–which of course you couldn’t afford to do, and mostly anyone who is not super fucking rich with some connection like a parent who’s a professor and practically their entire tuition is waived cannot do. And since so many people are of course so fucking broke and struggling, more and more people have been unable to afford to even try to get into grad school, but since there are nothing but unsustainable or just complete shit temp jobs if there are any, it’s the only option other than to return to or continue on in undergrad like I did, presumably since the 2008/2009 crash–there are in fact a few programs that have application fee waivers, but they have waited over half a decade and make sure to keep that information as well-hidden as possible on their websites or application instructions, certainly don’t put it on paper or any other place accessibly or updated. Of course, still you can’t afford to even do all the schools/programs, etc. research necessary and study for the GRE since all that takes so much time, esp. the longer you’ve been out of school, or even if you did it while still in school, you have to do most of it all over again anyway cause it’s been so long; its been so long the profs you were hoping to go to a program under have now moved from the accolade-ed state-but-reputed-enough school back to their rich-ass upper crust 2 lesbian spots ever in the Ivies. People who are younger than you, who hadn’t even started puberty when you were arrested your first year of college, your second year on your own, cause of course you had to work to save money first,  eating plain white rice with the amazing privilege of somewhat edible mystery mustard from previous roommates’ abandoned condiments, have now gotten the jobs and professorships where you are hoping to apply to grad school or where you try to apply to a job, but get to the “Internship” line and start crying in the middle of the library. Then you remember, of course, so-&-so had a car in college and parents who helped pay tuition or pay off loans, so could afford to take the unpaid internship (as if there’s actually any other kind) after college if they have been at this company since then. Whereas the Americorps shit-pay position you were grooming yourself for like a brain-damaged Jester who longs to be a stable boy just to stay somewhere at Pharaoh’s court, though you still have the pride-urge to do such recently re-promoted civil service (Thanks, Obama), an actual government program to improve conditions for the poor and disenfranchised in many areas, that your mentor did…you will never be allowed to do because of the record, permanent criminalization.
That’s around when you realize they are doing this on purpose, and they win. Because all you can do is put ice in a bag on shin, on your shoulder, on your hip the police smashed and pulled out of socket, and try to psych yourself into walking to the illegally-anti-union factory fake in-house “temp agency” to get in line for 90 minutes for a hopeful job for the day.  And don’t forget to do your physical therapy, but by the time Obamacare gets passed, it will be too late anyway, you can’t carry a tray across a restaurant all night, the president and presence of ubiquitous image of “HOPE” will certainly be gone, like the benefit of the physical therapy less than halfway into the shift at the 20-minute lunch break. But, to look on the bright side, to get where you are, your single-parent has a “good” job at a university where she does not get a lunch break, but don’t tell the Union. White-collar jobs are hard to come by, they say. Say you, it’s just as physical as the job at Taco Bell, but at least I get some “food.” Mix extra water in the plastic rice, Yum!; mas! agua! it’s just business; don’t worry, there’s no Union to tell. The Republicrats succeeded in seceding, choked you with their white-collar star-circle flag; it was just the American Dream.
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Articles and Essays, Ruffled Draft, Works in Progress

Oh the Joys of (Obesity and) Poverty

A Brief Encounter with Obesity, Poverty, and Entitlement

In the U.S. there is so much poison crap in the food, especially if you are poor, you can’t help poisoning yourself into near obesity.

On the other hand, I’ve met people in the U.S. Midwest who really did epitomize the problem of entitled ignorant Americans expanding their couch potato-hood ass-first. This couple sat around playing video games/Candy Crush, one spouse’s mother doing her nails all day long, and the father exclaimed retorts like, “How could I take the bus? I have a BABY!!” …Whereas my own mother—and hundreds of thousands of people, especially single mothers—took and take the bus with several young children/babies, carrying one, another in the stroller, and keeping an eye on the toddler.

I know another person who, like my own mother did, works and homeschools her children. My friend has simultaneously been going to school, and now that one of her children is 11 years old, she can finally buy a house, maybe, sort-of—only because she is lucky enough that her new partner has a parent in realty who is helping them with a rent-to-own mortgage that includes the down payment. Unlike my own mother and this other young mother I know, the couch potatoes considered Taco Bell food, food fit for a baby of one year, no less.

The equation goes something like this: If 1) You have to exercise, say, double to get rid of all the crap in processed and pesticide-sprayed/GMO foods, and 2) These foods do not give you enough nutrients and enough of the right nutrients to expend a daily amount of energy needed for exercise, let alone the extra exercise required to flush out the so-called food’s excess and over-processed sugar, which turns to fat, mutagenic toxins, and synthetics that unbalance metabolism and destroy the gastric biome and enzyme development, all while 3) These foods are the most inexpensive and the primary foods available to poor people–then the American diet and poverty and poverty-diet causes obesity.

Our culture in most places perpetuates the idea that mobility should require spewing fossil fuel in a hunk of thousands of dollars of metal, individually, even the able-bodied, and that we are entitled to this cyborg transportation, and that believing so is the norm. If you prescribe to this belief, then you have no idea that getting around should be exercise unto itself.

Disavowal, however, is difficult or may operate with fervor in the mind, but to compete in the culture–well, a person cannot compete in the culture at such a disadvantage of distance, speed, and energy having to physically hustle to arrive and return amidst those entitledly consuming massive amounts of ecological energy in isolated transportation cyborg chambers or Shell exoskeletons…especially when that person is trying to rise up from a hungry poverty.

On top of this personal physical struggle and physical struggle to participate and compete is the knowledge that getting around is exercise (the “epistemic advantage”). The struggle to challenge the hegemonically pervasive oppressively predominant belief and privilege otherwise makes for a higher level of struggle, though maybe only accessible with a cheat-code: attempting, much less achieving any explanation toward achieving understanding by those who have enough moments of rest and strength of mind (to realize it) requires some moments of rest and strength of mind on the part of the struggler. And then, additionally, to believe in themselves–quite a feat when you’re lugging laundry on a cart down the sidewalk in the winter or on your back and on the bus on your only time off that’s not eaten up by a walking and/or biking (if you’re able-bodied) and/or mass transit (if you’re lucky and don’t live in the Midwest) commute to a job that doesn’t actually afford you to do your laundry as often as the cyborg wasting 3 or 4 seats in a pollution vomiting car to work and the store and Zumba and the bar once a month or every day and night. Maybe there is the underlying notion of the reversal of reality.

Challenge this belief within yourself. Consider also reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  The much greater dilemma of forced time constraints and food accessibility and insecurity and limitation means fast food and “cheese food” by necessity or as prize. And not enough nutrition, often plain not enough food, to perform the exercise of getting around.

Keep in mind the task is exacerbated when you need to get around to jobs farther away because of zoning, red-lining, or not being able to afford to live near a commerce district, or to make better money or work two jobs, the second either when you’re tired from full-time already or in order to try to get full-time hours, but both usually doing repetitive motions at a winding speed (fast food, all other food service, cashiering, factory production lines, janitorial work).

The 20-year-old guy with Viking genetic ancestry might be able to lug laundry to the other dorm with the laundry room on a diet of Taco Bell and cafeteria genetically modified bleached flour and not even need the niacin enrichment. But the 45-year-old brown woman or black woman with osteoporosis, the 5-foot anemic, the pre-diabetic second-generation subsidized-housing renter and her daughter and secret undocumented niece cannot bike down the busy boulevard shoulder, across the bridge and the tracks every day to 6 to 16 working hours on a low-protein diet without developing fibromyalgia, or for 20 miles of highway to the next town where there’s work that might pay enough to get off food stamps or to grandma’s house for cooked farm food instead.

COMING SOON: more on zoning and red-lining, rural maps and NoLo geo-cash-ing (plus hobos in Boho), and response to your brain on sugar.

© Sabri Sky 2014, 2015

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