Spit and Spine

Imagine with me…

100 people in a room.
Forced to look at each other.

Fifty men. Fifty women.

58 are white.
19 are Hispanic or Latino.
12 are Black.
6 are Asian.
5 are multiracial or something else they’re tired of having to explain.

91 finished high school.
38 made it through college.

29 are Democrats.
27 are Republicans.
The other 43? Independent, apathetic, or just trying to make rent.

5 of them are sexual predators.
4.5 are men.
Half a woman.
None are undocumented immigrants.
It is more likely that our wealthy man is among those who have sexually assaulted someone.
But we wouldn’t know.
Because he has the tools and power to cover it up.

There might be a trans person in the room, statistically, there’s only 0.5.
Odds are, there’s not.
And yet they’ve somehow become the threat.

Now let’s talk money.

If $100 were split up based on who holds what:

The richest person—just one of them—has $32.
The next nine get $4.10 each.
The middle class, 40 people, get about 70 cents apiece.
And the bottom 50 split the last $2.60.
That’s six cents each.

Six cents.

And still, we scream at the poor.
We beat down undocumented immigrants who pay into a system they’ll never benefit from.
We toss around the word “illegal” as if we all haven’t messed up a time or two.
As if no one touches their phone while driving.
As if jaywalking doesn’t exist.

We wage war on trans people
When they aren’t even in the fucking room.

We blame the poor for being poor
While their bootstraps are busted and the cobblers are out of network.

All while one man sits there,
richer than the bottom fifty combined
.
And we have the audacity to
Place the weight of our economy
On the backs of those who coupon their breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And hoping they can go one more week without an oil change.

If you want us to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps,
while dodging bullets,
getting robbed blind,
and being denied a doctor’s visit…

Stop cutting our fucking bootstraps.