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Nickle and Dimed
April 05, 2005 ( life )
OK, admittedly, I haven't read the book. And now, I'm really not sure if I could push myself through it. It sounds like the post-Welfare-"reform" equivalent of Rachel and Her Children, which was certainly painful enough of a read. I distinctly remember throwing that book across the room more than once in sheer disgust.
Anyhow, NoSugarsAdded had an extra free ticket to the theater adaptation of N+D currently going on at The State Theatre -- it's an amazing production, with wonderful acting, and a powerful, important message about the subsidation of middle- and upper- class Americans by the 30-some-odd million working poor (that's below the food budget * 3 poverty line) also in America, even if you don't always really see them.
It also struck some chords, and tender nerves, with my PC experience; like the author, volunteers always have this safety net. If we get seriously sick, we get taken care of, even flown home -- a volunteer won't be homeless[1] or starving, no matter what happens to the local economy. Many of us had credit cards and bank accounts back home, if we just had to splurge on something, and there was a settling-in allowance to buy basic start-up goods like kitchenware, etc.
But when your safety nets are reduced to this, and when you're constantly exposed to co-workers and friends who don't have them, you feel both a chasm of understanding, true understanding, of what it is to be without a backup plan and also an equally wide chasm with people who don't realize that so many of the people that they come in contact with in the service industries have no safety nets, no savings, no backup plan, and nowhere to turn if anything goes even sightly wrong.
Obviously, I was struck hard by this play. Everyone in Austin should go see it; everyone else, get the book.
[1] OK, so, there were some exceptions, but no one was ever left outside -- there's always another volunteer to crash with, despite PC/Jamaica's rather tarnished record with housing)
Posted by griffjon at April 5, 2005 11:31 PM
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