What Four More Years of Bush Means
Bernard Tarver has a post on his blog that reveals one of the many ways that the policies of the Bush administration, and the consequences of those policies, affect the lives of real people. You see, the non-profit Bernie works for, which does good and much needed work finding housing for people living with HIV/AIDS, will face the loss of it’s contract in less than a year.
In AIDS housing, we are dealing with people who may have endured long-term homelessness. They may have limited experience living in a structured environment. In addition to being infected with the virus, they may also have a multiplicity of other problems–substance abuse, mental illness, minimal life or job skills, previous incarceration, etc. To assist them in making the adjustment to a permanent housing situation–and the pursuit of any of their other goals–our agency and others offer a variety of services including case management, medical assistance, job training and the like.
The funding for my program, and much of our agency’s services, comes from the federal department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and their Housing Opportunities for Persons With AIDS (HOPWA) initiative. We are currently in the third year of a three year contract to provide ADR services. We are one of two such programs in New York City.
Last week, my supervisor, co-worker and I, who together staff the conflict resolution program, were informed that when the contract ends on June 30, 2004 it will not be renewed. At the federal level, funding for such services is being discontinued.
Why?
As was explained to us in an agency-wide staff meeting today, the Bush administration has new priorities. They supposedly want to put the “H” back in HUD, preferring to concentrate solely on funding for housing, and not the services that enable people to redirect their lives. They have told AIDS housing organizations to seek funding for supportive services from the other government agencies more appropriate to that work, like Health and Human Services (HHS). The Catch-22 is, those agencies don’t have any money to give, and in the midst of the largest deficit in the nation’s history and a war on terrorism, such money isn’t likely to be found any time soon.
So while we send $87 billion to Iraq for a war that didn’t need to happen (did we ever find those weapons of mass destruction?), and GOP funders like Halliburton and Bechtel win government contracts to receive the bulk of that money, domestic programs that help real people in need go begging.
As usual, those who are least able and least likely to advocate for themselves are the ones who will pay the price. I don’t know about anyone else, but hearing stuff like this makes me angry when I think of the amount of money that has been poured into a war on Iraq, when I think of how we’ve gone from a budget surplus (which might have come in handy to help programs like Bernard’s continue helping Americans who desperately need it), and when I think of how we’ve somehow been governed right into another huge budget deficit. For me, it’s just another sign of whose interests Bush and his administration are serving first and foremost.
It leaves me in such utter disgust at the way our society and culture devalues the lives of those who don’t serve its ultimate purposes (production and profit, mostly for the top 1%), that I’m tempted to throw up my hands and turn away from it all. But turning away from it means turning away from people like the one’s who are helped by programs like the one Bernard works for, people who are unlikely to find help anywhere else. Something in me won’t let me do that. I’m hoping I’m not the only one who feels this way.
Someone once told me, when I became old enough to vote, “if you can’t find someone to vote for, find someone to vote against.” I have, and that someone is George W. Bush. No matter how disillusioned you are with our political system and the choices it leaves us in terms of selecting leadership, I urge you to get out and vote in the next election - and vote for a candidate who has a chance of beating George W. Bush.
I know some folks’ conscience may tell them that the choice between Democrat and Republican is simply a choice of the lessser evil over the greater. I know that some people believe that the real answer is a viable third party, and that there’s so little difference between Bush and whomever the Democrats will offer up that it doesn’t make much difference. But I’d like to submit that it does make a difference. If we want to reach a point where the mess in Iraq can at least become more managable, and a point where we can seriously request and get international help; if we want to reach a point where our budget returns to a state in which we have the resources to help people in this country who desperately need it, we quite simply have to get George W. Bush out of the White House.
If we don’t, who knows how high the price may go? I know right now that four more years of governance like Bush’s is too high a price to pay.