My mom worked harder than anyone I know. She wanted a good life for us. It was a hard life — I remember the Christmas she had to pawn our gifts to pay the light bill — but she made it special for us.
Now I have two kids of my own, and I want them to have every opportunity that other children have.
The landscape is tough out there. Like many Americans, I can’t afford childcare, and finding work that accommodates my need to care for my young children is hard. With inflation, the little income I have doesn’t go nearly as far as it used to.
I’m grateful to have assistance with food, housing, and healthcare through our social safety net programs.
Food programs like SNAP (also known as “food stamps”) and WIC (that’s the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) have literally saved our lives when we’ve been hungry. I wouldn’t be able to feed my children without them. And thanks to Medicaid, we have health care.
But I’m sick with worry about the cuts to SNAP and Medicaid that are barreling my way. The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” slashed these programs last year so lawmakers could slash taxes for corporations and the wealthy, and some of the worst cuts will take place after this year’s midterms.
The uncertainty is causing so much stress. The first change I noticed is they cut off my eyeglasses subsidy. What’s next? Meanwhile, the cost of living keeps going up and up, outpacing wage gains for me and countless others. Our SNAP benefits cover much less than they did a year ago, and that’s before potential cuts take effect.
I feel like I’m waiting for a bomb to drop on me and my kids, and I’m not the only one.
“The average minimum-wage worker must work nearly 116 hours per week, nearly three full-time jobs, to afford a two-bedroom rental home,” the National Low Income Housing Coalition reports. That’s the truth — my own sister works three jobs and still has to live with roommates.
Lawmakers are telling us we can’t have health care now unless we work, even in areas with low wages. Yet those making the laws enjoy free government-socialized health care and high wages.
They say SNAP benefits can’t be used for a cake or soda for my child’s birthday. Yet no one would stop the wealthy from using their $1 trillion in tax cuts under the “Big Beautiful Bill” to buy their kid a yacht.
Poor and low-income people deserve to be happy too. We deserve healthcare, food, housing, and even a child’s small birthday party. It feels like we’re being punished for working regular jobs — and like lawmakers want to keep us down so we don’t fight back against this inequality.
But we are fighting back.
I’ve started attending our local town hall meetings and hearing the stories of injustice and poverty. I started volunteering with a non-profit organization in my community. I help get goods to people in need, even as I am also in need, because that’s what we do. Poor and low-income people help each other out, because we understand what it’s like to see our kids go without while we work our fingers to the bone.
But we can’t do it alone. We need to demand from lawmakers that instead of cutting our healthcare, food, and housing benefits, we need to expand them to meet the great need in this country. We need a liveable wage so we can afford market rent and rising food prices.
And we need to hold lawmakers who make working people suffer to enrich the already wealthy accountable.
