Due to my money situation, I'm a reluctant slacktivist. As in, the most I can do is click buttons on petition sites and post memes to Facebook.
I'm on all the mailing lists. I understand the issues. I get them, believe me.
Here's the problem with being on all the mailing lists (Kos, DCCC, BarackObama.com, NAACP, insertpoliticalactioncommitteehere.org, etc. etc. etc.).
First, they scare me. Gloom and doom, all the way. Guilt trip? Activated, kind of like the Wonder Twin Powers.
Second, I'm flat broke until November 1st. And when I say "flat," I mean flat like a pancake is flat. No, flatter - pancakes still have a little fluff to them.
Come past the fleur-de-Kos, and I'll try to explain why your humble correspondent is feeling the steamroller this month.
I want to make it clear that this is not an appeal for financial help. I know that everyone's strapped. Mostly, I just need to vent about how... ineffective I feel, when it comes to the really necessary donations that all these very deserving political emails are asking for. I know they're necessary. I want to contribute. I just... don't have the money.
This problem has been building since the beginning of the summer, when my early-summer class that I was supposed to teach evaporated due to low enrollment (which was very likely caused by the current budget crisis in California and the cessation of summer student aid for students at the lower-level state higher-ed schools). No class, no job, no paycheck. We eked out a living on the remainder pay from my spring classes, and my partner's below-poverty-line income from his job at a local amusement park, but my remainder pay ended in August.
In September, I got a paycheck for my one summer class that did have sufficient enrollment - but it wasn't enough to pay the things we'd been dancing around and putting off. I had to ask my credit union for a payment vacation on my loans in August because I couldn't pay them. They were kind. They gave it to me. I asked my insurance agent how long I could stretch it before paying the insurance bill. Fortunately, the date fell right after my September paycheck would arrive.
In September, after paying for the loans and catching up on the insurance and the last fourteen days of rent on our apartment (we moved into a friend's empty house and we're paying his mortgage - half the cost of our previous rent - because he's kind) I put out an appeal for help. Some friends sent me small amounts in Paypal, that helped buy groceries and gas so we could try to stay afloat. I fully intend to pay them back. But in the meantime, gas just jumped by 50 cents a gallon here in southern California, and I drive for four hours every day back and forth to my workplace. There's no public transportation worth speaking of here. I'm putting off the insurance bill again until the beginning of the month again, because I have no choice. Oh, and the dealership says I need a three hundred dollar repair to my car and that I shouldn't wait on it (or drive the car much until it's made - apparently I have a 'very small coolant leak'). Because, you know, I have three hundred just sitting around, right? Or a spare car, right?
Not right now, I don't. I'm flat broke again. And like I said: I mean FLAT. Flat like a cartoon character who's just had an intimate experience with a steamroller. Flat like paper. Flat like my last dollar bill.
And as a result, and in addition to the financial stress here at home, I feel like I'm powerless to help in this election. Before you suggest volunteering or phonebanking - I wish I could. But I work full time, with a four-hour commute every day (two different schools). I don't have the time available to go door-to-door canvassing, or even make phone calls (partially deaf; the phone is not my friend). I have 450 homework assignments to grade each week. Because of the move (precipitous and frankly a lot more stressful than moves usually are), I'm still working on prepping the last month and a half of classes at both schools, and three of them are new preps, which makes the time factor go way up. And weekends don't exist for me any more, and won't until I'm done prepping, which at this rate looks like sometime after the semester's over.
Yesterday I started grading at noon (after dropping my kids back off at my ex's house), graded homeworks until 2, took a half-hour break to have lunch with my partner before he left for work, and was right back at the work after that, prepping a week for a school where I have a brand-new prep I've never done before. I took a very short break at 6 for dinner, and finished the prep at 9. It took me five hours to do one week of prep for two college classes. Then I still had more to do; there were midterms to write, so I did those (both of them). Then I had to make copies of the powerpoint slides to PDF and upload them. Then it was 11:30 p.m. and I'd had zero recreation or relaxation all day, I was dog-tired, and I almost wanted to cry.
And then came the necessary checking-of-the-emails. Emails from students asking about their paper topics, or about whether I really mean it when I say "include this part of the class exercise in your homework" (yes, I do, or it wouldn't say that on the powerpoint, now would it??), which necessarily need responses in a timely fashion. Emails from businesses with their buy-me come-ons for things I wish I could have, but for which I have no money to pursue. Emails from job search sites for jobs I would love to have, but which I wonder if I can qualify for, since I have zero time to work on publications (those holy grails of academic employment). Oh yes, and the thirty or so political emails that I get every day asking me for just a three-dollar donation (30x3=90), which lately have just been sent straight to the bit bucket.
Friends, believe me, if I had three dollars to donate, I'd do it. But the very first time I'll have any free money will be November 1st, and by then I'm sure it will be too late. I get paid once a month. My partner's weekly paychecks evaporate as soon as they hit the bank, for gas and groceries and bills. This morning we sat at breakfast and worried at each other about how we were going to make it through the next two and a half weeks. We decided to put off our grocery trip for several more days, to see if we can squeak by with what's left in the fridge. (And all those nice, cheap "staple" foods like rice and ramen? I'm allergic to them all, so I can't eat them. The cheap "staple" foods in our house are Kirkland polish sausages and eggs. Lots and lots of eggs.) I don't know when I'm going to have free time again, either. Right now I feel like I'm stealing from my 90-hours-per-week work schedule just to vent here.
And the guilt of "I can do NOTHING to help with the campaign" sits on my shoulder and tells me what a crappy political animal I must be, if I'm not cutting back on my sleep to spend two hours a day phonebanking. The most I can do right now is post political memes to Facebook (thus offending people) and respond to petition sites. In essence, I'm a slacktivist - and once I'm solvent enough again to be more than that, I'm scared it'll be too late.
Timing is everything. Who knew that the loss of one month's worth of income in June would lead to being unable to do ANYTHING for the campaign until six days before the election?
I wish that if I had to be a slacktivist, I could at least be one by choice. This is yet another impact of the economic policies that the Bush administration managed to force on us for eight years. Sometimes it's not apathy. Sometimes it's inability. Having no money for gas is inability. Having no money for the phone bill is inability. Having no money for food... is beyond inability. And we're way too close to it.
And if Romney gets into the White House, I doubt we'll ever have the ability to effectively politically organize again.