"Californians need to get real, " as the words shot out of jerry Brown's mouth, my body started to shake with fear from that real. The "real" of a near empty stomach, the "real" of bitter cold cement and vinyl back seats of cars to sleep on when you have no home. i had felt that real for so many years of childhood poverty, the kind of real our children will be feeling if Brown's proposed budget cuts to Medi-Cal, welfare and child care are implemented.
The acts of budget genocide currently being proposed to the Cal-works and Medi-cal programs in California include reductions of 13% to the meager cash grants we barely receive now for working in-system,(there is no free money, us mamaz work for every penny we recieve) limiting the amount of medicine we and our children get per month and the worst genocide of all, cutting off our children entirely from cash grants within 48 months . These already stripped "aid" programs based on the myth of the budget cuts or as i call them, budget Crumbs, are crafted on the lie that there is plenty of money to fund illegal wars that kill, poison and traumatize children and adults across the globe, but never enough for poor families to survive, much-less thrive.
I wondered what was real that morning for Jerry Brown as he departed his condominium without fear he would come home to a rent increase, eviction papers or a foreclosure notice, perhaps consuming a breakfast purchased without worrying that the rising cost of food would overdraw his bank account. And in the reality crafted by Jerry Brown, Schwarzenegger and so many other politricians before and after them. Us poor folks live in a scarcity model defined by people who have never had to go scarce.
As humans hearing about budget genocide we tend to go to an "I got mines" mentality, denying, accusing and blaming people for the need they have, pitting one need against another, ranking oppressions and/or feeling selfish about our "own" peoples needs. This process is all fueled and supported by mainstream media supported by corporations and corrupt politicians who would rather keep the business of hate and false scarcity going as long as it keeps us from focusing on the real "real"
The budget lies actually began hundreds of years ago with the theft of land and resources from indigenous peoples through paper trails, legislative theft, and adjudicated deceit, until we suddenly had nothing to even negotiate or trade with. In the 21st century reality working people honestly pay their taxes to support an amorphous system while being duped into this collective myth of budget scarcity. Paying into 3 trillion dollar defense budgets and corporate pay-offs, whether they agree with them or not and then being confused by a consistent declaration of deficit overrun.
Real budget justice models do exist in the US budgets created by community -wide participation such as the one created by multiple organizations in San Francisco known as The Peoples Budget- In Oakland led by Ella Baker Center and the city-wide budget organized by economic justice advocates in Chicago who collaborated with alderman who were also fed up with false government and established a truly people-led budget process that managed to evenly distribute tax resources to education, city services and social services for poor and working people and was actually used in city policy.
So as Gov Brown defines "real" as budget genocide which will have deadly consequences on our children and families let's follow the leads of our brothers and sisters in Wisconsin and Egypt and rise up to demand a different kind of "real" that feeds our children, employs our workers and fixes our roads, really!
To Listen to the voices of mothers and daddys in poverty speaking on the impact of these cuts click here to listen to PNN-Radio We-Search
To Watch the mamas and daddys on PNN-TV WeSearch click here