Letters From Vermont and America

I just ran across this while surfing the 'net. Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont sent out an email to his constituents asking them what was going on in their lives economically. He had read all of the media reports about the unemployment rate, about how many people have lost health insurance, about how incomes have declined. But as many of us know, you can't always count on the media to get the story right. So he decided to go to the people and ask them. He says he expected a few responses; he got over 600.

He compiled some of the letters into a booklet and distributed a copy to every member of Congress. You can download the booklet by clicking the link:
The Collapse of the Middle Class: Letters from Vermont and America

Senator Sanders pulled a line from each letter as a title:
"We have at times had to choose between baby food and heating fuel."
"By February we ran out of wood and I burned my mother's dining room furniture."
"Not spending those ten hours at home with my husband and son makes a big difference."
"I want to drop everything I am doing and go visit him."
"We also only eat two meals a day to conserve."
"My husband and I are very nervous about what will happen to us when we are old."
"The pennies have all but dried up....Today I am sad, broken, and very discouraged."
"I don't go to church many Sundays, because the gasoline is too expensive to drive there."
"At the rate we are going we will be destitute in just a few years."
"I am just tired....I work 12 to 14 hours daily and it just doesn't help."
"Now we find that instead of a feeling of comfort, we have a feeling of dread."
"Some nights we eat cereal and toast for dinner because that's all I have."
"Insurance costs continue to rise causing some to forgo insurance to pay for groceries."
"Dentistry is expensive and people are opting not to come to the dentist."
"How devastating it has been for folks who travel great distances to get to their cancer treatment."
"I feel as though I am between a rock and a hard place no matter how hard I try."
"I have been forced to go back to work."
"We would like to not have to worry about where our next meal will come from."
"My husband and I followed all the rules.... Slowly, though, we have sunk back to the 'poor' days."
"It costs me so much money in gas that my wife and I live on $6 per day to eat."
"How much more of a hit can people take? The future looks extremely bleak to me."
"I am now living out of my car."
"Our life style has drastically changed in the past 12 months."
"My mortgage is behind, we are at risk for foreclosure, and I can't keep up with my car payments."
"We are barely staying afloat."
"I wonder some times if we should try to follow our dreams - decide to have children?"
"People say, ‘Cut back.' "
"Does anybody have a solution? Does anybody in Washington care?"

Reading these letters reminds me how fortunate I truly am. While we are more conscientious about gas consumption, and might eat out a little less than we used to, we do not have to make the decisions people talk about in these letters.
Here's hoping that our economy gets back to basics: jobs that pay a living wage, tight knit and supportive families and communities, and of course decent and affordable homes for all!