It is that time of year again, time for the Lane County Fair. The Ferris wheels and carousels are being set up, the campers are rolling in. The animals are arriving at the fairgrounds. Excitement is building.
The Lane County Fair has been a fixture in Eugene Oregon for a long time. It’s a lot of fun, eating fried foods, going on rides, listening to the headliners on the main stage. But real talk, this event is expensive. Recently a friend of mine asked for help affording a trip to the fair. My friend is a quadrapledric, their disability keeps them from working and has landed them in a nursing home.
I am not a wealthy person by any stretch of the imagination. As a matter of fact I am poor and homeless. I was raised that what I have I have for sharing. So when my friend asked for help affording the fair I immediately sent money. Of course I want my friend to enjoy the fair.
In the time after I had sent a few bucks I got a message from my friend, they told me how the nursing home takes nearly all of their disability check each month. In fact the cost of living in a managed care facility takes all but $61 dollars each month, leaving my friend short of $14 dollars each month to afford her storage unit.
This is an example of the effects of our high cost of medical care in the USA. My disabled friend cannot afford to keep her storage because the disability check they receive doesn’t cover her basic needs, so any luxury or unexpected bills are economically crushing.
For many of us we can’t imagine the feeling of not having enough money, when we want a drink, or a sandwich we just buy it. When we want to see a doctor or go to the fair we have the extra money to afford these expenses. This is not the reality for the vast majority of people in the USA. For most of us we are not making ends meet, and falling further behind our creditors every month. We exist on the margins.
This wealth inequality is built by design. The people who build the institutions of finance design the system to render more to the people on top, and people like my friend are quite physically left to die. This reality is why I am an activist. This system which creates poverty and abandons the disabled needs to be restructured. There is no reason that anyone in the USA should have to decide between medicine and food. There is no reason that ANY person should be shut out of their county’s fair. Our open and inclusive society has become a two tiered system of the haves and the have nots, and we are largely willing to accept this.
I know we are all conditioned to react some sort of way towards disabled people. I know that we are taught how to ignore or marginalize those who are in need. I know we are brought up to dehumanize the “others” in our society. I also know that we have it within ourselves to overcome this lack of empathy and show genuine compassion and caring for all life on this planet. All we lack is the will.
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