CR Queennandi Xsheba, PNN KEXU 2021
With the deadly COVID-19 spreading quicker than an ignited gasoline race claiming many lives, there is one element that remains consistent and uninterrupted which is the other pandemic and that is systematic failure. Businesses are closing by the masses, folks are living in tents because the almighty paper dollar is worth more than lives and mental well being- with the results ending in walking past blank faces whose spirits have completely given up on life and turned to self-medication trying to escape this “earthly hell” and the stench of fecal matter that resides on almost every street corner. It has taken this nation’s rulers damn near a year to decide if they wanted to render any emergency assistance to the people to avoid famine of this magnitude and the “stimulus band-aid” is doing very little to cover basic needs such as food and housing.
This so-called “Sssystem” consists of loopholes and hamster wheels that would make a person sell their soul to the devil for the whole loaf of bread instead of settling for just crumbs. The “just us” cesspool is still a joke and speaking “100” on a personal note I was criminalized because a family member robbed me blind and then tried to attack me after bringing two officers to my house that disregarded every crime she committed and opted to yell at me and a minor over the family member’s “tenant’s rights” and when I brought up “constructive eviction” I really got yelled at!
The other kick to the face is the fact that Bank of America refused to reimburse me for what so-called “family” had stolen from me (even Wells Fargo didn’t diss me like that!) I have also been residing at a place with half a ceiling in the living room for almost a year with a decades- old moldy carpet and with our lives in serious danger we are yet to receive adequate assistance because my trauma won’t allow for me to relocate to areas where other family members of mine were murdered. Paying some “real bro-bros” to watch our backs with my limited income is an option because now there’s a newborn home with us but the “catch 22” is the baby needs up-front money to be seen by a pediatrician thanks to the “hellthcare” shuffle. I share all of this to say that “a system not meant to survive” is not some “cutesie” catch-phrase to sugarcoat the hell myself and my family have endured in 2020, right along with an exodus of other folks- all while surrounded by COVID. I’m a real “Poverty Skola” I don’t just write about it and judge the less fortunate, I live it and see it everyday- Empty storefronts, tents and tarps and a “zombie apocalypse” of lost souls both young and old and I struggle daily with a body that quits but a spirit that shouts “Quit?!?! Bulls#&%!” and I am not the only one going through the motion of trying to save a nickel a month towards the solution of safety and interdependence.
Instead of wasting resources and time equivalent to another presidential term focusing on impeaching one of the worst dressed, openly hateful, confused and “covidly careless” presidents in “his-story”, immediate attention should be paid to the “hell on earth” steadily creeping up us with repeated examples like evicting folks out into the streets to be at a more higher risk of exposure to a “dis ease” that can potentially be fatal. It is a crying shame that lives are lost due to the inability to pay nose-bleed high rent for a roof made of drywall and plumbing that does not work properly. In my sarcastic opinion I guess the way the “Sssystem” sees us common folks is that we should be “satisfied” with a half of a ceiling and other uninhabitable conditions because it is “better” than sleeping in a tent or a tarp. The way us “common folks” see it is that this type of attitude and treatment from the “powers that be” is inhumane either way and it is sending this nation to its doom quicker than BART traveling from San Francisco to Oakland. So how is this system “survivable” you ask???