poverty

Christmas can be downright brutal if you're financially hard up already. (Image Credit: Thinkstock)

It's Christmas And You're Broke: How To Survive

A weekly trip to Walmart would end in tears — first theirs, then mine. Them pining in the toy aisle. Me saying no. Over and over. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to buy my kids whatever they wanted, it was that I couldn’t.

Read...
The reality is that I did not become poor because I ate a meal in a restaurant one too many times.

Yes, Poor People Eat Out Sometimes, Deal With It

I’m a poor person. I live below the U.S. poverty line. And yeah, I deserve to make my own financial decisions. The reality is that I did not become poor because I ate a meal in a restaurant one too many times, and while it’s true that eating out less can affect one’s budget, refusing to ever eat out again won’t make me not poor.

Read...
I try to talk about it. I try to ask about it. I try to make a space for these realities.

Why It’s 100% OK To Talk To Me About My Time In Foster Care

When we think of foster care or wards of the state or orphans or homelessness, we hear poor. We hear the forgotten. We hear hopeless. We hear other. Let’s face it: we hear classism, trash, bad parents, drugs. The stigma cuts through the room, through the world, through the news reports we don’t read — and through our bodies.

So let’s get this out of the way now: Imagine not coming from a relatively typical family background, not having enough money to go on school trips, and knowing the structure of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and watching your mother at the podium. Imagine going from homeless shelter to foster care, and imagine your main source of support as a teenager wasn’t your mother or father, but your social worker or your foster parent — a stranger, for all intents and purposes. Imagine keeping all of this quiet, because there’s no way high schoolers could ever understand. This was my life. Now you know.

Read...
"Being unable to work for a day because of depression can threaten my financial stability, as I have no nest egg to fall back on." Image: Thinkstock

How Do You Navigate Mental Illness When You're Working-Class?

Taking care of your mental health is expensive. What happens when you don’t have the means to seek the help you need?

Read...
It’s not enough to simply declare you aren’t a racist. Anti-racism is an active force seeking to unlearn, decolonize and restructure. Image: author.

Can The 'Angry Black Guy' Have White Friends?

It’s easy for folks in America to get angry but it’s incredibly difficult to get them to stay angry. To transfer anger to hope. And to participate in transformation. Then to start all over again with the next hashtag.

Read...
Why should kids get suspended in preschool?

Racial Inequality Starts Early – In Preschool

For the first time in March 2014, the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights (OCR) collected data regarding how early learners are disciplined during the 2011-12 school year.
That report showed that while black children represent 18 percent of preschool enrollment, they accounted for 48 percent of students receiving one or more suspensions.

Read...
If you can commit to following the points in this guide, and to share and re-share this guide, you will be contributing to changing a culture that is indebted in the oppression of Black individuals.

Your Guide On How To Support Black People After Incidents Of Police Violence

This piece is for you, my non-Black friends, my non-Black family members, my non-Black activists, my non-Black educators, and my non-Black partner. This piece is for you, because whether you know it or not, you benefit from anti-Blackness.

Read...
During each doctor visit, I was warned about the possibility of addiction that comes with prescription painkillers, but there was radio silence regarding the ways each alternative therapy would affect my life. Image: Thinkstock.

Concerns About 'Drug Seeking' Only Harm Chronic Pain Sufferers

If you have chronic pain, you are all too aware of the stigma surrounding the condition. Whether it comes from a disbelieving health professional, an intrusive pharmacy technician who does nothing to hide their suspicions, an employer who wonders why you can’t get off the couch today when you appeared “fine” the day before — it seems like everywhere you turn, someone is saying you don’t deserve pain relief.

Read...