Fresno is a city where financial struggle is as common as the pavement we walk on. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 20.6% of Fresno County residents live in poverty, more than 1.5 times the rate for California and the United States. I was one of them.
I know the world looks bleak. I share your grief and rage – not only that Donald Trump will once again take office, but that so many of our fellow citizens chose him and the values he stands for. But this is not our country’s darkest hour.
Our needs weren’t a box with treats for the taking. They were our necessities for survival.
Meet Calafia’s 2425 Fellows! Calafia is yli’s statewide youth policy journal that amplifies the narratives of young people on topics and issue areas important to them and their communities.
It’s essential to be a good neighbor to people who are struggling economically. People living in a motorhome are often ignored and vilified. It’s so important to see them as humans, and to see them as your neighbor. They are somebody’s child and they have a family, just like all of us.
Glendora is no longer the self-imagined Shangri-la, protected from the discomfort and unattractiveness of wealth disparity, that many of its settled-in residents have always conceived of it as.
When I tell you I have hope, it’s more of a wish that this all ends very soon and we can go back to our homes in Gaza City if it still exists. I can’t speak about hope now. I can only be wishful about my family returning back home eventually and being safe right now.
It is in these moments where we consider reassessing our own necessities to ensure that the rent is paid on time. These are realities that serve the unrelenting cycle of hardship for undocumented people who are subjected to surviving low wages and endure barriers in accessing government support.
