Susie Madrak has a terrific post up at the Huffpo (yes, I know, but where better to get to the sensible liberals and smug parlour pinks?
Do I have your attention? Good.
I would like to point out the utter injustice of a Democratic political system that is very, very happy to take the money and volunteers the blogosphere sends its way, and in return, we get… um….
Invitations to appear at places most of us can’t even afford to travel, with no way to pay for a hotel — unless you’re an A-list blogger.
Oh, and awards. Yay!
A small handful of top bloggers gets some help: Fellowships, stipends, consulting gigs. The rest of us? Bubkis.
There is not even a little doubt in my mind that, if The Rittenhouse Review’s Jim Capozzola had remained a Republican, he’d be alive right now. He would have been in a well-paid think tank job, living the high life. (He did, after all, have a masters degree in foreign policy.) Most importantly, he would have had health insurance for the past six years.
And what did his talent and dedication get him on the liberal side of the political noise machine? Some free books. A life that, as intellectually stimulating as it was, reduced him to living on the charity of strangers.
People saying really kind and thoughtful things about how important he was to the cause – after he’s dead. Isn’t that ironic?
Yes. It should make any leftist livid .
As sick as I’ve been the one thing I don’t have to worry about now is that it will cause us a total financial meltdown – our income is lessened, surely, but it’s not disastrous. Because of European socialised health insurance I’m exceedingly lucky – and don’t I know it.
20 years ago in the US multiple emergency admissions for an acute kidney infection and complications cost me a total of $40,000 and that just was my 20% share, despite having had Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance. I dread to think how much it would cost now – and that’s if I could get affordable cover to begin with. Yeah, right.
The bill collectors even then were rapacious. they don’t give a damn if you’re sick. The only way out was Chapter 8; but now even that relief from the crippling weight of medical debt has been taken away from sick people with mounting medical bills.
Many now die rather than incur the cost of treatment because familiy budgets are so precarious and insurance unavailable or unaffordable. Many lives are severely shortened too by the burden of stress that medical debt causes.
I was lucky – if my parents hadn’t come and fetched me back to the much-maligned NHS, I’d’ve been dead in my early twenties. As it was I could never return to the US because I’d never get insurance again. Too risky. But I was lucky enough to be born British. For Americans with no insurance – well, not to be mealymouthed about it, they’re fucked. Health is where inequality really bites.
Because of socialised medicine and welfare system of national insurance and sickness benefit, when I’ve been too ill to work outside the home (and I have whenever possible; everyone should work) I’ve still been able to be politically active and engaged and maintain some degree of independence, . I’ve even managed to stay online, albeit intermittently (Food or phone bill? Food.) and that has kept me in touch with the world.
Not so for American bloggers :
Jim’s death has made me realize that, despite the yes, millions of dollars and untold hours of volunteer support the left blogosphere has thrown the way of the Democratic party, they will never, ever, ever give us anything more than a pat on the back. “Isn’t that cute? They think they’re special.”
I don’t know what it is about liberal groups whose leaders assume you should live on air while you give your life to the cause. Has it even occurred to them how much harder it is to get a “regular” job when you’re publicly and politically active? I guess not. After all, they’re already employed.
Exactly. They are the hereditary political elite: they are entitled to make a living from their minds. Us, the physical defectives – generally not white and not male – with the dangerous anti-elite ideas, not so much. Nothing we have to say could possibly be important. But why should their voices, and the voices acceptable to them, be the only ones to be heard?
One of the reasons disabled people and those with chronic illnesses get involved online is because online you can be judged, not by your physical illness, but by what you actually say. We tend not to advertise our infirmities: who wants to be known as “Oh, so and so, the Huntingtons blogger” for example? Illness is also an intensely personal thing you don’t always want to share – and admitting to struggling with debts too, however necessarily incurred, is shaming in a society where you are your credit rating. But it doesn’t mean we’re not here:
You may not even know that Jim’s case wasn’t unusual. I can name at least a dozen well-known bloggers off the top of my head who are in dire straits financially. I know several with health conditions that could become critical at any moment, and like me, they’re living without health insurance, the Sword of Damocles dangling over their heads.
Even though there have been times when I’ve been desperately poor – sickness benefits were never generous, they’re totally inadequate now, but at least we have them, unlike in the US – nevertheless I’ve known that my absolutely necessary medical care, the long hospital stays, the past and future surgery, the radiotherapy I had, the huge amounts of drugs I still need; they’re all paid for.
The sword of Damocles has been removed from above my head and the relief from that particular worry that that gives is unimaginable.
I often rail about the insular competitiveness that’s been developing with US liberal blogs, but then I have luxury to be able to do it; our livelihood is not entirely dependent on blogging and thus on links and traffic. For America’s bloggers it’s different, and lthere are those whose continuing health (like Jim’s did) depends on blog income, So no wonder, that despite the surface collegiality, that the kool kidz are so jealous of their status as top ad-earners. A glass cieling has developed, either by design or by evolution, it’s hard tell which.
Buit as regular commenter bjaques pointed out recently the internet has a tendency to route around obstacles. Susie Madrak has a plan:
And so I am talking to lawyers about putting together a non-profit to help progressive bloggers. Not, as some groups offer, to help them organize for the Democratic party — to help them personally, with things like electric bills and health insurance. I plan to recruit every blogger I can for the effort. One local blog proprietor is working right now to put together a concert benefit with a big name.
We should at least have our paperwork filed by the end of the summer. And if you, the blog reader, wants to be part of it, great. Hold a bake sale, even — every little bit helps.
I know a lot of us aren’t all that thrilled with the Democrats right now. So, until we get this foundation set up, you can directly support the people who do keep standing up to the Republican regime — bloggers, the ones who aren’t making a living off this insane labor of love. Go hit those donation buttons!
And for those of you who want to help this foundation — if you have a business, and want to donate either money or computers, great. If you’re a musician, and want to volunteer for a benefit, cool. (Anyone who has something to offer can email me at suburbanguerrilla AT comcast.net.)
This is something that every progressive blogger should support. We cannot continue to expect the people we’re figjhting against – the Washington insiders, the sensible Leiberman ‘liberals’, the thinktanks funded with corporate money – to fund progressive blogging. Neither can we expect support from a blogging elite that’s fast becoming, if not another wing of mainstream media, at least a group that follows the news agenda set by the mediia and essentially plays by its rules.
The kind of effort Susie is proposing is where self-organisation begins – weren’t the first embryo modern political parties mutual aid societies? What Susie is proposing is collective action of the most basic kind and something anyone who considers themself a leftist should get behind, provided that it’s open, accountable and democratically run and I have no reason to beleive it won’t be.
Well done, that woman, and RIP Jim Capozzola.
