Part II Days 108-119: June 7-18, 2010 (beer bucks for charity, taking away the transportation means of the poor, and the future that could be Fresno)

Position: Researcher

Number of Days Officially Unemployed: 143-154

Hours Volunteered: 0

EDD Check: $0 per week

Money Raised for Bhutanese Family: $260

I've begun thinking of the world in terms or beer. More precisely, Etel has made me think in terms of beer prices. When I'm being cheap about something, she'll say, "You won't spend $3 on fruit, but you'll pay $5 for a beer at a bar?" When I recently thumbed my nose at a large $10 jar of local honey that would last me months, if not a year, and probably help relieve my persistently bad sinuses, I thought, But I would spend that in two hours (or less) at a bar. But I still didn't buy it. I'm dumb.

My last post was about fundraising for the Bhutanese refugee family we're tutoring in English, asking for donations to repay their relocation expenses, and we've received several positive responses and one negative one ("I almost fell for your Ponzi scheme"). I'm not a natural fundraiser, nor a natural candidate for volunteer work. (My brother Joey recently said, "When are you going to admit we're not programmed for volunteer work?") So I've been encouraged by receiving messages from people saying they admire what I'm doing. The thing is, I have the leisure to do it, since I'm unemployed. I'm more amazed by people like Etel, whose undying commitment to volunteer work in the midst of a full-time job makes them inspirational super heroes.

And I've been really impressed by the donations we've received, from 10 to 50 dollars at a time, not including the money Etel and I have promised to contribute. I would never want to make anyone feel bad for not donating to the Bhutanese family's cause, since I'm a person who has rarely given anything to anyone in the past (and I was very excited to learn, through this writing project, how much and how diversely my parents contribute to social causes), but if you can afford to metaphorically buy the Bhutanese a beer, then we and they will hold up our mugs and cheers you. (I should mention that the Bhutanese family doesn't drink, and they think drinking is dumb. I should also mention we've lowered our target to pay off the eldest daughter's "loan" first, because she will be the first person from the family able to work.) You can contribute through the mail (e-mail me for mailing address: etp05@hotmail.com) or send money to Etel's PayPal account, using her email: etelga@hotmail.com.

Fresno Trip Interlude:

Being on unemployment is not as glorious and freeing as people might think: I'm not allowed to take an unpaid internship at a respected advertising firm as a copyeditor, even if that will eventually lead to a well-paying and respectable job (update––they don't want my services, even for free); I cannot take the Spanish summer school class I want to take in order to improve my chances of becoming fluent and add a valuable bullet point to my resume; I cannot leave the country at all. The EDD doesn't want you to improve your situation, they want you working full-time, now, washing dishes if you have to.

What I could, and did, do these past two weeks was take a trip to Fresno to visit family (congratulations to my nephews for their graduation and promotion) and conduct research for a book I'm writing. (If someone from the EDD is reading this, I also looked for work while in Fresno. Every day. Really hard.) But since I was in Fresno and not at home, I missed the notice the EDD sent saying I mis-filled out my unemployment form and had until June 17 to correct it. I got home at midnight on the 18th, so I may have lost a $500 EDD check in the process. Ouch!

While in Fresno, I came across a story in the news that they were considering raising the city bus fares while limiting services and cutting routes. One of the great things I love about Fresno is the bus service. You can go anywhere in town, with a little added leg work, for $1. Granted, the bus rides are usually a cultural shock to those who never ride them, because they're full of the very people who need them the most: the handicapped, the ethnically diverse, single moms talking about cheating boyfriends, the freaks, the insane, and vagrants. In short, the poor.

I'm glad Fresno has people like Alexander Vallejo, who understands how short-sighted these proposals are, and who is willing to write a letter about it in the Fresno Bee. It's easy to cut services to those who most need them, because they are the marginalized people of society who don't have a voice, who don't attend city council meetings. (How could they with the bus services as infrequent as they already are? Some are every half hour and others are every hour, and when a bus driver decides not to see you, as one did to me when I was there, you lose a half hour of your life waiting for another bus. If I was depending on that transportation for my job, I would have been fired for being late, again.) Raise the fare if you must––$2 for a cross-town ride would not be unreasonable––but don't hurt the people that need the service the most.

The point I would make, when it comes to the poor and the future of cities, is one Thomas L. Friedman makes in his book Hot, Flat, and Crowded: cities need to quit subsidizing the wrong, short-sighted things––highway expansions, traffic lights, city halls that look like Star Wars spaceships, etc.––and invest that money in the city's future, creating a green economy and "green-collar" jobs for the unemployed and under-served communities, which the Feds would probably be willing to pitch in on––see Alexander's letter to the Bee above. (The mayor of Fresno can contact Green For All in Oakland to find out how this works.)

Cities, such as Greensburg, KS, which was destroyed in a 2007 tornado and decided to rebuild "green," now calling itself "Green Town," are leading the way into an economically viable future where they don't have to make ill-advised cuts in budgets. Not only is the city planning to be carbon neutral by 2017, they have become an eco-tourism destination, have put people to work, are trying to attract green industries, such as a bio-diesel plant, and will eventually be able to outsource their expertise to other cities for even more cash. They are hoping to retain the cities most valuable resource: it's youth, who have been leaving the city because of the lack of jobs.

As Van Jones, Green For All's founder, says in Freidman's book, "In a real green economy, you don't have any throwaway resources––you don't have throwaway species and you don't have throwaway neighborhoods and you don't have throwaway kids either . . . I have not met a white person who would not support [this kind of approach] if they thought it could work. A green agenda brings us all together again, because the hope at the core nourishes everybody."

I wish my hometown would take the lead. The people there sure do need leadership and a brighter, cleaner future, especially if they want the violence and waste and throwaway people and neighborhoods to stop, not to mention better air. OK, I'm off my soapbox now. You can return to your regularly scheduled lives.