Dear President Obama,
I was thinking back to your State of the Union address and remembered how much you liked referencing the letters you received, so I thought I would give it a shot. Let me get something straight though. I did not vote for you.
“Why are you writing me a letter,” you might ask, “if you did not even vote for me?”
Because it’s six in the morning and I cannot stop crying and I don’t know what else to do.
But to answer your question a little bit more sophisticatedly maybe I did not vote for you because I was one of those disenfranchised youths that had the first opportunity to vote between George W. Bush and the pro-war, “anti-war” democratic candidate John Kerry? I think I threw my vote to the Green Party that year. Maybe I did not vote for you because I knew that you only represented corporate interests. And please, don’t tell me that you don’t. I am tired of the talk about Wall Street working for the sake of Main Street; all I know is that on my Main Street there are homeless people, and on your Wall Street there are some fat, and I mean fat, fat cats. How much money did you get from corporations that usually give money to the Republicans? A lot. But you’re right; you did get a lot of money from regular people. And if not their money then their time, their energies and their hopes. People really did believe in you and many of them still do. But you continue to peddle to the interests of big business, big pharma, and continued US military “might” and people are, honestly, becoming disillusioned in you.
And me? Well, I just didn’t think you’d be so good at what you do – that is, supporting the corporate class. I just didn’t think you would fail us so hard. Yes us, your constituents, even the ones that didn’t vote for you. I include myself amongst so many that were and are invested in you because they are just like me. I am just like them. We are all in debt, all broken hearted, all confused over the rhetoric of hard work and American Dreams, which contradict our daily experiences. It really does seem like our parents had it easier. That are grandparents seemed to travel the world a lot more. And not because they served in the military and stationed in Hawaii or Korea, but because they had the time and the means to go to Italy or San Francisco for fun. I can barely afford to watch a movie because that is ten dollars that I could use to pay for some groceries. Yeah and I get that it is not your fault that movie theaters are trying to make a profit in these “tough times.” I am just letting you know by an example what type of economic choices we make every day.
It might be worth it to tell you why I am crying this morning. I woke up to a text message from my father in law telling me that he and my mother were too swamped in debt to pay the monthly payment on a student loan that we took out years ago. I would have to work with my bank to figure out how to pay it off. It was no longer their responsibility. Okay. So maybe it isn’t their responsibility since it is a student loan my mother took out for me. But if you give me a chance I can explain why I had to take out that loan, as well as others.
I went to a top ranked private university. I got in with scholarships, grants, and loans. I was doing pretty well. Both my mom and grandma were working, well, until my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, and then my mother was “let go” because her employer did not want to renew her contract. Mom and grandma could not help me out anymore but that was okay because there were resources for kids like me and my university seemed interested in having me. Okay, well at least for the first two years, when I got sizeable financial aid packages. Think of it like those teaser rates that mortgage companies speak so highly of. You get a good chunk of money the first year, pay a little bit here, work a part time job there, but you make it work. Next year maybe you work two part time jobs and take out a loan. Why? Because your university increased its cost of tuition six to seven percent, along with hikes in the fees and room and board. And then the state and federal financial aid ran out because as a Junior and Senior in undergraduate school you get less, if any, financial support. Maybe all that happened to you every year for four years and you graduated from a fine upstanding university with two bachelors and over fifty thousand dollars in debt. That’s what happened to me.
“Wow, two degrees. You must be smart. I bet you could have applied for outside grants,” you might admonish me.
Sure, I could have tried. But outside grants and scholarships are not based primarily on financial need. I was told point blank that my 3.6 GPA was not high enough to even try applying for grants by my financial aid counselor because those organizations or groups did not even start considering you until you had at least a 3.75.
Fannie Mae did not have a minimum GPA requirement. But she does have a 10-12% interest rates on personal student loans.
So sure Mr. Private Benefactor if you want to give your money to people who are deserved academically I salute you. But I cannot apply for your grant because I only have a 3.6 and I can’t get it any higher because I work two jobs and take five classes. Oh and by the way, the federal government refuses to allow me to work more than twenty hours a week because it would be unfair. Unfortunately, they do not seem to get that having to take out personal loans is unfair. This is a debt I may live with for the rest of my life.
I am in graduate school at another top ranked university, this time state. I’m not making that same mistake of going to a private university. But this University is in Arizona whose state legislature has a keen interest in cutting funding to all public education. I could trouble you with numbers and figures of what departments have been cut, whose paychecks have been slashed, how much the tuition has increased, and how long it takes students to actually graduate from this “four year” university. But you are a busy man and I am tired of looking at those numbers. If you would be so kind as to believe me when I say that it’s a lot then we could move forward.
One of your recent accomplishments was to get the health care bill passed. The right is telling me to fear you and the left is telling me to praise you. I’m sorry but I’m too busy worrying about what is going to happen when my department (hell, even the university) no longer has the money to pay for my health care as is guaranteed to me by contract. In the coming years my department will have to decide on whether or not to pay me or pay for my health insurance. And I, well I’ll probably have to take out more loans. But what if somehow I make it but I had to give up my health insurance? According to this new bill I would have to pay a fine for not having health care. What is it, a fine of $750? That’s how much my rent is. Would this then imply that paying a fine for not having been able to keep my health insurance is equivalent in cost and importance as keeping a roof over my head? Surely that is not what you and the other legislators had in mind. Or was it?
I have some questions about your other “achievements” as well. For instance, why does my partner, who served his four years in Iraq and Afghanistan and just recently finished his eight year contract with the US Marines Corp, not have dental? Why does he have to prove that his teeth grinding has something to do with his PTSD just so that he can get a referral to go to a dentist? You are committed to the war in Afghanistan, that “good war” that it is, and yet you seem not overly concerned with the welfare of those who come back. Your fiscal measures to stop overspending did not include the military budget but that did not translate to veterans receiving more benefits, getting bigger GI Bills. The VA did not even have enough money to give all the veterans who wanted to go to school their fair shares. They literally had to cut checks for the veterans to pick up at their local VAs. But I guess that does not concern you because your priorities, Mr. President, are being tough on terrorism. Could I be so bold as to tell you that your policies, national and abroad are terrorizing your constituents and the people internationally?
Even if you were keeping me safe from terrorism, which I don’t think you are, you are not keeping me safe from the credit card collectors, the predatory lenders. That me, again I remind you, is a we.
We are not being bailed out, the banks are. We are not getting improved health care benefits; the insurance companies are getting millions of new customers. We are not fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; nor are we invested in your war on terror because we have nothing to do with the people over there. And neither should you. The people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Haiti, they deserve more than your National Guard and predator drones. And I do mean yours; you are the Commander in Chief after all. You did decide to increase the troops to Afghanistan and you did tell us that you would end the war in Iraq. Further, our representatives do not have to choose between different health care packages, we do. They already have guaranteed health insurance. Something akin to Medicare if I remember correctly. The CEOs of Chase, Citibank, General Motors did not have to pick between their bonuses or their companies. They got to keep both. But the workers, no, they saw their coworkers laid off, their unions busted, their health plans attacked. We get to watch as the fat cats consolidate and congratulate – that is get richer and richer as we get poorer and poorer.
And what about me? Well I get to watch as the students I teach begin to learn the meaning of debt. I get to watch as their backs start to hunch, their smiles fade away as their parents are laid off, their departments are done away with, their subtle hopes and dreams bloom into fantasies because opportunities are no longer theirs. I can’t tell them that it is worth it to work hard because we are competing in a race to the bottom. I cannot tell my friends when they ask me what this health care bill means anything more than we are going to get less that costs a lot more because you wanted to be bipartisan. You wanted to keep corporate interests at heart while we just wanted to not fear being sick. I cannot tell my partner to just go back to school because he only gets one GI Bill and it would be a waste to go back to school if you don’t know what to study. What would you suggest? Business? Or maybe law?
I suggested marketing because under capitalism there is never a shortage of selling something. Sure there is a shortage of buying, although your mainstream economists don’t seem to get that. But there is a never a shortage of selling, like when you sold us your tune about repealing Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell or ending the Defense of Marriage Act. Or that other diddy about how you’d end the war in Iraq and bring our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters home. Too bad that even if they did come home, they’d come home to a system that tells them that they must be sick in order to deserve attention.
It is without a doubt that you came in during a huge crisis and it is not your fault. But you sure are not helping. And the fact that you did get in was because people believed that you were different, that yes we can change the world in which we live. And people took that to heart. They took it to their school boards, to their town halls, to their workplaces, to the streets. They took it to D.C when 200,000 people marched for federal equality rights for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgenders. They took it to D.C. again when another 200,000 marched for immigrants rights. These people are not selling you a song, they are telling you: we want change.
The change they want is the change I believe in. But they change you want, does not seem to be change at all. Maybe that’s why I didn’t vote for you.
Sincerely,
Angela S.
The COMMUNITY AND RESISTANCE tour seeks to communicate about current struggles for justice and liberation, from nooses hung in the northern Louisiana town of Jena to women organizing inside prisons, from resistance to school privatization to disability organizing and cultural resistance. The tour also seeks to connect communities of liberation, and to build relationships between grassroots activists and independent media.
