Category Archives: Emerging Justice Seekers

Freedom for Some, But Not for All

Leave a reply

Freedom for Some, But Not for All

Mary Cunningham
July 4, 2018

July 4, 1776: the day the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Since then, each July 4th we celebrate our nation’s freedom from an overbearing colonial rule and our fervent patriotism. We dress in red, white, and blue, enjoy cookouts with neighbors in our backyards, and watch from picnic blankets as fireworks erupt across the sky. Yes, the day has become commercialized, but the words of the Declaration of Independence remain as pertinent in our current political climate as they were when they were first written.

The document written by our founding fathers clearly declares our commitment to “unalienable Rights” defined as “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It even goes so far as to say that when a government fails to protect these rights, it is the duty of the people to alter or abolish it, and that a leader whose actions resemble a tyrant cannot be trusted to rule and uphold the freedom of the people. Thus, we see the intricate and fragile relationship that exists between the government and the governed.

Take a snapshot of the United States at this exact moment, and you will realize that we have do not have good governance, and that many in our country still lack the rights which the Declaration of Independence deems “inalienable.” In his “I Have a Dream” speech, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about what was meant by this term: “This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.”

The default on the promise of “inalienable rights” was evident during Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s time and it is still evident today for people of color and all on the economic margins seeking to live freely in the United States. We see this in the recent decision by the Supreme Court to uphold the Trump administration’s travel ban, Congress’s failure to pass a Dream Act to protect DACA recipients, and state and federal attempts to impose work requirements on human needs programs that help our nation’s most vulnerable families and individuals. How do these political decisions enhance the life, liberty, or happiness of the people they impact? They don’t.

On a more personal level, we have begun to fail one another, as violent discrimination and exclusion continue to reign. Our nation has endured countless acts of police brutality and racial profiling. I am astonished on a daily basis by the attacks on communities of color, like the recent shooting of high school student Antwon Rose. If we set a standard that “all men are created equal,” shouldn’t we hold all people to that standard, regardless of race, gender, or religious beliefs?

A few days ago, one of my coworkers sent around a video from the show, Dear White People, to our staff. In the video, the character Reggie reads a poem he wrote for an open mic night—his rendition of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident
that all men are created equal
that they are endowed by their creator
with certain inalienable rights
Among these life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness
unless you’re loud and black
and possess an opinion
then all you get is a bullet
A bullet that held me at bay
A bullet that can puncture my skin
take all my dreams away
A bullet that can silence
the words I speak to my mother
just because I’m
other
A bullet – held me captive
gun in my face
your hate misplaced
White skin, light skin
but for me not the
right skin
Judging me with no crime committed
reckless trigger finger itching to
prove your worth by disproving mine
My life in your hands
My life on the line
Fred Hampton
Tamir Rice. Rekia Boyd
Reggie Green
Spared by a piece of paper
a student ID
that you had to see before
you could identify
me
and set me supposedly
free
Life
liberty
and the pursuit of happiness
for some of us maybe
There’s nothing
self-evident
about it

The Declaration of Independence pronounced the individual rights that cannot be taken away. In 1776, that only included white, male landowners. After much hard work and sacrifice, we know that all people deserve these same unalienable rights. But, we see that as a nation today, we fall despairingly short of this. The words of the Declaration of Independence should not be an ideal or something that we aspire to. They must be the law of the land, the fabric which knits our country together. For if we cannot claim our freedom, what do we have left?

 

Funding the First Step Act: Critical Programs for Criminal Justice Reform

Leave a reply

Funding for the First Step Act: We Need Programs for Criminal Justice Reform

José Arnulfo Cabrera
April 26, 2019

The First Step Act was a bipartisan bill that took the first step forward to getting criminal justice reform, and in December 2018 it became law! All of these returning citizens would not have been incarcerated if the Fair Sentencing Act had been passed before 2010. The act stopped punishment disparities between both possessing and selling crack cocaine and powdered. But the First Step Act does more than that. It reduces the amount of mandatory minimum by creating a new system called a safety valve, which reviews individual nonviolent drug offense cases with no prior criminal background. The bill will also authorize funding for programs that will help returning citizens break the chains of our injustice criminal justice system. In the next four years, Congress has the authority to appropriate $75 million dollars to rehabilitative for individuals who will be released because of the First Step Act.

Every February the President sends his budget request to Congress as they begin their regular appropriations process. The passing of First Step Act was possible because of many Republicans and Trump, who supported it. But when we saw that Trump only requested $14 million in this year’s budget request, we became worried that the Trump Administration wasn’t committed to implementing the full $74 million the First Step Act authorized. At NETWORK, we believe that the budget is a moral document that shows what our government’s priorities are. If the budget does not allocate the full $74 million authorized to carry out the First Step Act, then it is clear that criminal justice reform is not one of these priorities.

Officials in the Trump administration shared that they plan to increase their funding request in the next budget year to $147 million, so it can offset the money that fell short last year. The Department of Justice (DOJ) also stated that more funding will need to be appropriated in order to be able to begin implement the policies in the First Step Act. At a White House celebration of the passing the First Step Act, Trump stated that his administration has the full intention of fully funding the First Step Act. While the funding is very important, there are programs that must begin to in order for the policies to take place. On April 8, the DOJ announced the first programs that the First Step Act seeks to create. The DOJ‘s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) share they choose Hudson Institute to host the Independent Review Committee. This program will assist the DOJ in developing and implementing risk and needs assessment tools and evidence-based recidivism reduction that will help incarcerated individuals become return citizens. This is a good start and does give us hope the First Step Act policies will be implemented.

NETWORK has been on the Hill talking with the staffers of Congress members, along with our partners, to ensure that $75 million will be appropriated to fully fund the First Step Act policies. For all of the correct programs to be implemented, the bill will need to allot enough money for the government to fund them.

“How to Lobby:” Training the Stone Ridge Sophomore Class

Leave a reply

“How to Lobby:” Training the Stone Ridge Sophomore Class

Alannah Boyle
Erin Sutherland
April 18, 2019

Last week, the Grassroots Mobilization team welcomed the last of the Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart sophomore class to our office for a “How to Lobby” Presentation before taking them up to Capitol Hill to visit their federal legislators.  Beginning in October, we (Erin Sutherland and Alannah Boyle, Grassroots Mobilization Associates) have had the opportunity to train and accompany the entire sophomore class at Stone Ridge on dozens of lobby visits.

In each visit, we taught the sophomores about the importance of Family Friendly Workplace policies, including paid family medical and sick leave. Right now, there are two great bills going through both the House and Senate: The Healthy Families Act (H.R. 1784/S. 840) which guarantees workers the right to earn sick days to care for themselves or a family member, and the FAMILY Act (H.R. 1185/S. 463), which provides workers the opportunity to access paid sick leave.  Through Stone Ridge’s Social Action program, a group of approximately ten sophomores visited the NETWORK office every other week for the past seven months. It is only at the end of this program that we see the magnitude of our reach.

Alannah Boyle, Grassroots Mobilization Associate, presenting to Stone Ridge students.

Erin:

“I had not gone on a lobby visit until I started working at NETWORK. For me, when I had heard of lobbying in the past, the word connoted meeting of special interests, of wealthy people in suits, speaking more eloquently on issues than I could.  However, after going to my first lobby visit in coalition (and with coaching from Sr. Quincy Howard, Government Relations Advocate at NETWORK) this past fall, I realized that the only thing needed for a successful lobby visit and sincere conviction in an issue I cared about. Alannah and I tried to pass on these two important skills to our students by staging mock lobby visits with lots of contingencies (what if we need to meet in the hallway, as is common?  Or if the staffer we meet with tries to change the topic of our visit?) to help make the girls prepared and confident for whatever could come their way.  We also talked with the students about how, as women, the right to paid family and medical leave has or will affect us personally at some point in our lives, between becoming a parent, to needing to take care or a relative, or taking time off in the wake of personal trauma.

“Every few weeks, I was humbled to accompany such eloquent and diligent young women to advocate for such important policies. It made me hopeful to see the next generation already engaged in federal advocacy – years before I was!  It also reinforced my belief that lobbying can and should be accessible to all as a way to engage with our legislators on issues that matter to us.”

Alannah:

“Unlike Erin, I had been on a few lobby visits prior to beginning my work here at NETWORK. The first time I went on a lobby visit was as a college student after attending the Ignatian Family Teach-In when I myself was first trained by a NETWORK staff member on how to lobby, almost five years ago. I vividly remember how excited and equipped I felt after completing my first training and attending my first lobby visit. Realizing now that Erin and I have trained almost 100 high school students, and equipped them with these same skills, has been incredibly rewarding. We all have the ability to lobby and advocate our elected officials on issues that matter to us. As constituents, our Members of Congress work for us. NETWORK’s “How to Lobby” training helps to answer the questions that can make lobbying seem scary.”

Health Equity: Examining How Systemic Racism Has Sickened Our Communities

Leave a reply

Health Equity: Examining How Systemic Racism Has Sickened Our Communities

Siena Ruggeri
April 16, 2019

As the NETWORK community undergoes our Lenten journey through racial justice, we are committed to identifying how racism manifests itself through federal policy. While many are familiar with how racial injustices are perpetuated by our criminal justice system and immigration system, the racism embedded in our healthcare system may not be as evident. Our identity, and especially our racial identity, plays a huge factor in our physical and mental health.

While we must continue to fight for accessible and affordable healthcare for all, that alone will not address the deep racial inequalities in health outcomes. When examining health systems, we must examine how our social location affects our ability to be healthy. Health care cannot be ignorant to identity, because our identity and social location affect both our access to healthcare and our ability to have healthy outcomes.

The healthcare system tends to view people in a vacuum, and often fails to consider how culture, environment, or socioeconomic status affects health. For example, someone reliant on public housing assistance may struggle to get enough exercise when they live in an area that lacks recreational facilities like parks or rec centers. A person with a physical disability might lack the accessible transportation options to get to an appointment with a provider. Type 2 diabetes is difficult to manage living in a food desert with limited access to healthy food options. Many LGBT+ people struggle to find providers accepting of their sexual orientation and may forgo care if there are no safe options in their community. For a non-English speaking patient, a language barrier at the pharmacy can result in inaccurate information on how to safely use a prescription.

The data is clear– marginalized populations have worse health outcomes. While the exact causes of these outcomes is not completely definitive, it’s clear that these disparities are  a result of structural barriers. Black women are four times more likely to die as a result of childbirth than white women. Despite a lower incidence rate of cancer overall, African-American women have a higher cancer death rate when compared to white women. While the opioid crisis is too-often framed as a “white problem,” U.S. opioid death rates for African-Americans have increased over twice as fast as death rates for white individuals.

Like many other inequalities, society often individualizes the problem, blaming specific patients for their failure to “take care of themselves.” We have to break out of this culture of individualism. There are systemic inequalities at play. In fact, there’s a term for it— social determinants of health. The quality and accessibility of health care is only one determinant of health outcomes– other social determinants of health play a massive role. Things like the walkability of our neighborhoods, our access to early childhood education, and how much debt we carry have direct impacts on our overall health. Of course, people of color are disproportionately more likely to have poor social determinants of health. We have a shared responsibility to ensure everyone has the opportunity to be healthy– which means examining our solutions to our broken healthcare system through an equity lens.

We cannot improve health outcomes just by looking narrowly at medical systems. We also cannot continue to approach health in a race-neutral way. The opportunity to be healthy will only be fair and just when we interrogate how systemic inequalities have literally sickened communities of color, and when we redesign those systems to be equitable to all.

Infographic courtesy of Families USA: https://familiesusa.org/product/racial-and-ethnic-health-inequities-among-communities-color-compared-non-hispanic-whites

Working Towards a Livable Income: The Raise the Wage Act

Leave a reply

Working Towards a Livable Income: The Raise the Wage Act

Siena Ruggeri
Quincy Howard, OP
January 22, 2019

Working Americans are getting left behind. While corporations have reaped the benefits of economic recovery, taken advantage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, been pocketing record profits, and making trillions of stock buybacks, the American worker is in a state of crisis.  Wages have stagnated since the 1970s with any gains mainly going to the highest-paid workers.  The federal minimum wage ($7.25 an hour) has not budged in a decade.  These realities threaten the financial stability of millions and mean that the purchasing power of most workers today is the same as it was in 1978.[1]

The concept of a minimum wage establishes a floor of compensation below which workers cannot hope to support themselves: our floor has been set at $7.25/hour since 2009.  That federal minimum wage has not increased with inflation, either, so it loses value over time.  Over those 10 years, it has become increasingly difficult for someone working a full-time minimum wage job to cover their basic needs. Earning the minimum wage does not ensure a livable income but having a fair minimum wage goes a long way towards helping low-income workers get by.

Minimum wage workers are parents, caregivers, and community members. They include home health workers that support the independence of people with disabilities, preschool teachers who serve low-income students, and the cabin cleaners and baggage handlers that ensure our air travel runs smoothly. It is reprehensible that millions of people work full time, yet are a paycheck away from acute poverty and homelessness. Raising the minimum wage is a common sense step that would bring dignity back to the millions of employees that have been left behind.

Since Congress has failed to increase the minimum wage, states have been leading the way.  Twenty-nine states have raised their minimum wage; the 2018 midterm election brought about successful statewide minimum wage raises in both Missouri and Arkansas, with incremental increases to $12 and $11, respectively.[2] Minimum wage increases in numerous and diverse states around the nation tell us that not only is it the right thing to do, but it makes good economic sense.

[3]

The introduction of the Raise the Wage Act of 2019 is a top legislative priority for the 116th Congress and for NETWORK Lobby’s livable income policy initiatives.  This legislation gradually increases the federal minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour by 2024. It also addresses the inflation issue by automatically raising the minimum wage based on subsequent increases in the typical worker’s wages. The bill also addresses inequities built-in to our current minimum wage by applying the same wage requirements for tipped workers and workers with disabilities.  The Raise the Wage Act offers an impactful and targeted policy which would immediately help people and families living in poverty: 27% of beneficiaries are working parents with children and half have family incomes of less than $40,000 per year.  While an incremental raise is not going to immediately fix the deep inequities low-wage workers have been dealing with for decades, it offers a much-need relief that will have an immediate impact on their quality of life.

Even as we push for passage of the Raise the Wage Act of 2019, NETWORK continues to lay the foundation of pay justice for workers.  Advocating a livable income for workers means promoting a broad array of policy changes in addition to increasing the minimum wage.  A livable income would enable workers to accrue savings and assets, retirement security and protection against unemployment.  What we consider “livable” allows workers to earn a disposable income, making possible leisure, educational and skills enhancement.  A livable income incorporates opportunities for continued wage growth and promotion at a job.

For the lowest wage earners in the country, the Raise the Wage Act would double their pay; potentially enabling them for the first time to afford safe and stable housing, sufficient amounts of food, adequate transportation, and reliable child care.  Now is the time to put pressure on our representatives to do the morally responsible thing: raise the wage and provide a desperately needed economic safety net to the millions who have been left behind.

 

[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/voters-approve-minimum-wage-increases-in-midterm-elections-in-missouri-arkansas/

[3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/voters-approve-minimum-wage-increases-in-midterm-elections-in-missouri-arkansas/

Lenten Reflections from a Frustrated Millennial Catholic

Leave a reply

Lenten Reflections from a Frustrated Millennial Catholic

Lindsay Hueston
April 4, 2019

I’ve been angry at the Catholic Church for a while.

I couldn’t tell you the last time I went to Mass and left completely and utterly fulfilled — especially in light of the church’s many, many structural failures which have surfaced over the past few decades. I work at a Catholic organization, and still technically consider myself Catholic. I desire a church that works for justice, but am not seeing it. How can these things coexist?

As a result, I’ve stepped back from the church for several months, needing some space and time away. In removing myself from the institution, I have found myself to be walking through a sort of spiritual desert. The institutional Catholic Church as we know it is based on strict hierarchy; my anger stems from the fact that we, as church, cannot seem to step out of that structure in order to move forward. Why are we too often a church that continues perpetuating injustice, instead of overturning oppression?

I see a parallel between my reluctant Catholicism and the way that many in our country disagree with President Trump, but still call themselves American. As angry as I am, I can’t quite sever my ties to Catholicism. I’ve discovered that there is something valuable, even holy, in righteous anger. It spurs change, and enables people to work for justice. It is taxing, though, being angry at a patriarchal system that is terribly slow to change. In the same way, outrage and disagreement with President Trump and his policies are spurring new political engagement in our country.

The church I desire is one of justice and inclusion. The church I wish for is one that promotes anti-racism, supports the LGBTQ community, and removes all oppressions, even as human error often gets in the way. But this does not seem to be how the present Catholic Church works, and it angers me. When thinking about the distance between the church as it is and the church I desire, and my place in the church, the Jesus who flipped over tables in outrage comes to mind. It’s a comforting image: at some point, he was frustrated with his church, too.

I find it ironic that I am having these realizations at the same time as Lent, an intentional time of spiritual reflection and renewal. As the foundation of Lent, Jesus took time alone, went out to the desert, and reflected in a space of relative isolation. That idea resonates with me, and feels familiar — spending time away in order to come back restored.  In this Lenten season of reflection and prayer, I am drawn towards reexamining my faith — present on the fringes of the church as it may be.

What I’ve learned about the desert recently is that it isn’t a barren wasteland, as many portray it to be. Our staff visited the desert in New Mexico in February, and found it full of life. In a space of seeming desolation, things are flourishing. In the desert there is beauty, still: life adapting to circumstances it has been given.

That image is applicable to how I’ve been experiencing my faith lately: seemingly dead and empty, but quietly, blooms a cactus. There is life amidst the apparent emptiness; it’s just different than what we think it may look like.

I’ve realized that my anger is well-founded, and this has allowed me to channel my spirituality into practices that make me feel most whole: journaling, the Examen, building community with those experiencing homelessness. My faith has often felt like the desert: seemingly empty and scorched. But Jesus went to the desert, too. And the desert continues on, with life teeming in small, but important ways.

Attending the White Privilege Conference

Leave a reply

Attending the White Privilege Conference

Alannah Boyle
March 28, 2019

This past week, my colleague Laura Peralta-Schulte and I had the opportunity to travel to Cedar Rapids, Iowa and represent NETWORK at the 20th annual White Privilege Conference. This conference was founded to examine the ideas of privilege and oppression and create space to work towards building strategies for a more equitable world.

For those of you participating in our Lenten reflection guide, you know that this Lent we are Recommitting to Racial Justice. The past two weeks, the reflections in the guide have been produced from our educational workshop on the racial wealth and income gap. We examine 12 federal policies and reflect on the ways in which each policy worked in order to create and perpetuate the racial wealth gap that exists today. Laura and I facilitated this workshop to over 50 other attendees. The reception was overwhelmingly positive. It is always exciting to spread the good work that NETWORK is doing to new audiences.

This was the second year that NETWORK staff have attended this conference. The presentations we attended ranged on topics from compassion as anti-oppression work, to the intersections of patriarchy and white supremacy, to embodied racial justice. Laura and I attended different presentations each session with the goal of gathering as much information in those four days as possible to bring back to the rest of our NETWORK community.

As I work to put my reactions into words for this blog, my thoughts and feelings after attending this conference, I am realizing the ways in which I am very much still processing the experience and all of the wisdom and expertise that was shared with me as a white person. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to attend this conference, and the ways in which NETWORK intentionally makes space for the ongoing work of racial justice amongst staff members.

The Gifts of Intentional Community

Leave a reply

The Gifts of Intentional Community

Erin Sutherland
March 12, 2019

In conjunction with my year as a NETWORK Associate, I have been living in intentional community at the Anne Montgomery House organized by the Religious of the Sacred Heart (RSCJ).  Our community consists of two RSCJ sisters, one RSCJ Associate working at a local university, one woman working at a public policy and research organization, and me.  The five of us bring many different gifts to our community.  The RSCJs have guided us in prayer and reflection each morning and night, we all take turns making communal meals and sharing stories over the dinner table, and we bring our expertise from our work in social justice in the many workshops and community events we’ve held.  I knew living in community with Catholic sisters would be a unique opportunity, but I didn’t realize until months after moving in just what a gift I was being offered.  The values intentional community cultivates- respect for others, putting others before oneself, and service- are extremely valuable, especially for someone like me in a transitional stage of my life.

After undergrad, I moved to Panama to teach English at a university. There, I lived with a multigenerational host family who truly welcomed me as one of their own.  Growing up in a military family, I never lived close to my extended family, but in Panama, I was around my host parents’ children, grandchildren, sisters, brothers, and cousins on almost a daily basis.  My host family’s commitment to relationships was something I was really missing when I moved back to the States a year later, and that was what I was seeking most when I asked to be a part of Anne Montgomery House.

Grassroots Mobilization Associate Erin Sutherland with some of the Anne Montgomery House community.

My past few months here have truly been an answer to my prayers and have helped me grow as a woman in my faith.  It has been a joy to pray together in the quiet of each morning before I go to work.  It has meant the world to know that I have a supportive community who has my back as I go through the graduate school application process.  It has been healing to gather around the dinner table, all of us bursting with stories to tell from our days at work or distraught over the latest headline and find rapt conversation partners.  Instead of participating in the constant news cycle hysteria, my community members have helped remind me to slow down and turn my energy towards more fulfilling emotions.  But living in community is also about the choices one makes every day to live in love.  It has been challenging at times to support each other through times apart, sickness, and the busyness of our daily lives.  It is only through accepting and committing to each other on both carefree days and difficult ones that we are truly breaking open our hearts to allow the Divine to become the center of our actions.  I am so grateful to have been invited to live in community, and for the direction it has provided in living out my faith.

Exorbitant Drug Pricing: A Moral Issue

Leave a reply

Exorbitant Drug Pricing: A Moral Issue

Siena Ruggeri
March 5, 2019

If the popular immunosuppressant Humira was a standalone company, it would be twice as big as the Hilton hotel chain and its sales would rival Southwest Airlines and Visa. How is this one drug so profitable? After rebates, the average price of the drug is $3,000 a month. The company that sells it, AbbVie, has made 115 billion in profit off the drug since 2010, and more than half of those profits come from the U.S.

Insulin, a drug whose patent was created almost a century ago, is skyrocketing in price. Diabetics around the country are forced to choose between rationing life-saving medication, falling behind on rent and car payments, or going without food. The original developers of these drugs wanted their scientific innovation to serve the public good—so what gives?

In the status quo, there’s no incentive to sell drugs at a reasonable rate. Pharmaceutical companies can claim that in order to recoup the costs of research and development, they must have exclusive access to the market for their specific drug. While they have market exclusivity, the drug company is then able to gouge the price of their drug. There is no competitor to incentivize lower costs. There’s also no government scrutiny as to why the price is what it is. We don’t know why certain pharmaceutical drugs are priced the way they are. Therefore, we have no control if those prices start rising exponentially, and patients have no way of affording the only drug available to cure their condition.

What is one supposed to do if they have breast cancer, Hepatitis C, or multiple sclerosis and can’t afford their drugs? We use public dollars to fund research to prevent this exact problem. Public research money contributed to the 210 new drugs approved from 2010-2016, to the tune of $100 billion dollars. Unfortunately, drug makers have taken advantage of the public’s investment in research to strengthen their bottom line.

 

These practices are an insidious betrayal of public trust and morally wrong. In the richest country in the world, people lose their lives because they can’t afford their medicine. It’s also peculiar that in a so-called free market, we allow monopolists to fully control markets without consequence. The pharmaceutical industry has gamed every rule set in place for them. It is past time for them to face the consequences for the system they have engineered.

Many members of Congress shy away from drug pricing reforms, citing its complicated nature. Others believe the current injustices are based off a few bad actors, not a whole industry that puts profit over human lives. We can’t just point to the most shocking examples of price gouging that make headlines—we have to examine the system that encouraged drug companies to price hike in the first place.

For far too long, the pharmaceutical industry has profited off a public too intimidated to scrutinize their business practices. By directing our attention to examples like “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, the industry is absolved of any accountability for how they price drugs. This isn’t a case of a few bad actors. This is a system that thrives on taking advantage of the vulnerability and desperation of patients in need of life-saving drugs.

The details of drug pricing reform are complex, but don’t let the pharmaceutical industry bamboozle us into thinking reform is unattainable. To give just one example, every other country in the world allows price negotiations. In the United States, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs negotiates drug prices for their patients. When put together, the proposals coming out of Congress are reasonable reforms. They allow Medicare to use its bargaining power to negotiate prices for its patients, penalize drug corporations that spike the price of a drug without justification, and prohibit abusive tactics used to delay a drug going generic.

There is bipartisan support for doing something about the cost of prescription drugs. This is not an issue we can put off. Every day we refuse to engage and take action, another person risks their life to go without medicine they need to survive. A new poll reveals that 3 out of 10 adults report not taking their medicines as prescribed at some point in the past year because of the cost. Diabetics are risking their lives and rationing their insulin—in fact, 1 out of 4 diabetics admit to doing so.

During our 2018 Nuns on the Bus Tour, we encountered the deadly consequences of this issue. In Savannah, we heard the story of Niema Ross, a young working mother of three who had died that weekend because she couldn’t afford the inhaler she needed to breathe. Niema’s final post on Facebook was a photo of her empty inhaler captioned with a message asking if anyone had access to more. The community tried to raise money for her medication, but it came too late. Niema was never able to get her inhaler, and now her three children will grow up without a mother.

The drug industry’s success in putting profit over people over profit is perhaps one of the most blatant moral issues of our time, and Congress has the power to do something about it. Let’s remind our representatives that now is the time to be morally courageous and end the absurdity that is our prescription drug industry.

 

***

Graphic courtesy of Voices for Affordable Health. 

Dreamer’s Survival Fight

1 Reply

Dreamer’s Survival Fight

Heyra Avila
December 08, 2017

We all essentially live life day to day, not knowing what tomorrow will bring. We wake up, exist, and survive. Those are all blessings that get taken for granted too often and too easily. Surviving looks different for each individual. For me, surviving means fighting. My parents and I fought for survival and to break through poverty when we decided to cross the border without the proper documentation. We risked everything we had in search of a better life.

Fast forward to today: survival means justifying my humanity and worth as an “alien”, trying to fit into a foreign land I have called home my whole life. I’m surviving to fight and fighting to survive and not to just simply exist but also to thrive. The uncertainties of my tomorrows are plagued by anxiety, but also by very real possibilities of tragedies. I have to be very mindful of the fact that my family can be separated through incarceration and deportation for simply trying to live a normal life.

It wasn’t always this bad though. The fears were always there, but now they are very much alive thanks to the political climate promoted by the new President’s administration. Our existence has boiled down to numbers and statistics, and even worse, we have become bargaining chips in this political gridlock involving immigration. I’m disappointed that our government has taken the stance it has, but I am not surprised.

What’s frustrating is that some people are leaving it up to faith alone. “Don’t worry, Heyra, something will be worked out.” I can’t just “not worry” when my life is on the line. I remember people told me not to worry about Trump winning. They also told me not to worry about the termination of DACA. SO naturally, I am going to worry. I understand that some people do not like to get involved in politics, but at this rate we cannot afford for people not to care.

I am a woman of faith, raised in a Mexican Catholic household. I do find solace in prayer and mass. However, we also need to pray for God to give us strength, clarity, and empathy, so we can better understand our neighbor and to try to work for something more tangible that jeopardizes fewer lives and instead offers opportunities. Well-intentioned wishes and prayers do wonders, but legislative action is a must.

DACA is dead, but my dreams are not. In as little as three months when DACA expires, some lives are going to be forever transformed and the economy is going to be impacted no matter what your stance is. I want to survive and thrive in the country I’ve known and grown to appreciate. But I cannot do it alone. We have done a lot of work with and for our immigrant brothers and sisters, yet we have a long way to go for justice.

Heyra Avila is an Honors student at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio where she is a Philosophy, Politics, and the Public major. She takes action on a regular basis to advocate as an immigration lobbyist. Heyra currently lives in northern Kentucky.