New HBO documentary on the working poor is a must see (if you can)! Please read! Thank you.
Last edited Tue Apr 8, 2014, 07:59 PM - Edit history (2)
I don't typically initiate discussions, as I know there are always many topics open for discussion, so I hesitated before posting but decided that the documentary is very worthy of our attention here at DU. Please, if you have access to HBO, please watch the new documentary titled "Paycheck to Paycheck: The Life and Times of Katrina Gilbert." I will check to see if it will be available through amazon or other means. It would be wonderful to share comments. The documentary is heartbreaking, especially because her story, in this country of extreme wealth and privilege in the hands of a ruling few, is not unique -- her story is in fact emblematic of how this country now treats its working classes -- the very treatment the GOP considers too lavish, too generous for these "lazy" single working mothers and their children. I wrote quite a missive here; I apologize in advance.
Katrina's story is not a unique one -- it is representative of millions of working Americans, and it is quietly devastating -- infuriating and shattering. A few details: Katrina is a hard working young mother, thirty years old, going through a divorce, with three young children, who is devoting her life to raising her children and surviving. And in our country of immense wealth and privilege, people like Paul Ryan want to do everything they can to eviscerate the few benefits that Katrina receives. I never cry. This brought tears to my eyes. It crystallizes the moral bankruptcy of the right, and the GOP's utterly heartless drive to destroy the souls of our fellow Americans. Katrina and her children are the real working poor, the real families that need help, not the fantasies of "Cadillac Welfare Queens" put forward again and again by Fox with its poor-hating pundits.
Katrina works a full-time job as an aide at a home for the elderly (she is not a nurse as she does not yet have a degree). She hopes to earn an Associates Degree to work as a Rad Tech (radiology, operating the CAT scan equipment or MRI) so that she can earn a better salary. But, as she says, working a full-time job, caring for three kindergarten/preschool aged children, and going to college is a very tough undertaking. Her job pays her $9.49 an hour, and it does not provide benefits such as affordable health insurance. Katrina receives some assistance to help pay for the daycare costs for the three children (as they enter school her daycare costs will decrease but then so will the aide). Her son appears to need some assistance as he exhibits some behavioral problems and OCD-like symptoms -- again this takes time and money.
Katrina needs food stamps to supply the necessities so that she and the children can eat very modest meals. She struggles to have enough money for basic food and gas so she can get to work. She has illnesses (including a thyroid condition and recurring migraines) that mostly go untreated as the medications are prohibitively expensive (I am not sure what her status would be as far as Medicaid is concerned). Her former husband pays child support but he has not been a stable provider for the children; he struggles with addiction (drugs) and has spent long periods of time unemployed. For some time he lived with his parents. Katrina lives in a trailer, in a trailer park, with her children, who often seem restless, feel confined in the small space, and act agitated and stressed out. They struggle to get dressed in the mornings, appearing exhausted and depressed when they are awakened at 5:30am, when Katrina takes them to daycare and school. Katrina herself -- an attractive young woman -- looks older, more fatigued, than a young woman of barely thirty should appear.
Like so many of our working-class citizens, she has a good, generous, and loving heart: she gently cares for the lonely elderly patients at her job. The work is very demanding, involving the lifting of elderly persons out of bed, into wheelchairs, etc -- constant changing of soiled sheets and adult diapers, spoon feeding, comforting crying patients who are often confused as to where they are or why they are in a nursing home. Some have very advanced senility and need a high level of constant care. One woman, approximately in her eighties, kept crying that she wanted her (long dead) mother. Other patients stare into space. Katrina's kind patience with these people (people often dumped and abandoned by their own families) was beautiful.
This is long, and I apologize. Please watch the documentary if you can. I would love to read my fellow DUers thoughts on any of this -- the GOP, the party of the corporation and big business not the American worker, wants to humiliate and degrade working class women (and men of course) like Katrina. These are the people their policies abuse and are slowly destroying.
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