Making a difference, every single day

This post was inspired by Corina, over at Down to Earth Mama who had the HP Magic Giveaway going, which is absolutely fantastic! Corina was generous enough to give her readers a way to enter and then even have a bonus entry. She says: "Write on a message board or your blog a post about how you have or plan to make the world a bit better. Have you volunteered? Are you planning to? The goal is to inspire those reading it to action." I know it's too late for me to enter but I think the idea of volunteering and doing good things for others is wonderful and I'm happy to have written this. Thanks Corina!

I like to think that I make a difference every day. I know that sounds less than modest, but please hear me out. I am talking about the choices I have made in my adult life in terms of how to pay the bills while staying somewhat sane. While in college in Chile, my first job was with EarthAction (the lady at the bottom is my mom!) in 1993. I translated and did the layout for their Action Alerts. Since the whole Latin-American office was just three of us, I also copied, folded and stuffed them into envelopes. It was good work. Here in San Francisco my first job was with the Rainforest Action Network (are you starting to see a theme here?); then with San Francisco School Volunteers for four years and now I work at a non-profit law firm specializing in employment law, coordinating direct free legal services to the public. The way I see it, it doesn't matter if you're answering phones, making copies, translating, training volunteers or coordinating schedules, it is all just as important in achieving a selfless goal: helping others.


Before you start thinking that I am implying that your job in a bank, at a magazine, or the post office is not as lofty or worthy, let me assure you that is not at all what I am saying. What I am saying is that I choose to work for non-profit organizations even though it pays very little money and that suits me just fine. True, I am always poor and scrambling to make ends meet, but I love what I do, I really do. I used to be a crisis phone counselor for San Francisco Women Against Rape but that was very difficult to keep up, when you signed up for a shift you had to be up at night to take phone calls, which was hard to do because we lived in a studio apartment at the time and we both worked regular hours. So I choose to work at places where we are all working for a cause bigger than ourselves. The attorneys I work with all make much less than what a first year associate makes at a big firm, and it's because of their personal beliefs, nothing more, nothing less. They all come from amazing law schools (Harvard, Boalt, Hastings, Stanford, etc.) and could work anywhere else they wanted to, and yet they stay here fighting the good fight for workers everywhere.


All non-profits rely on volunteers to do a slew of tasks that are just overwhelming when you have limited staff. Many people wrinkle their noses when you tell them all you have for them to do is filing, copying, or stuffing envelopes, as if it were beneath them. They don't realize how much they could really help by doing those tasks. Of course there are other things you can do to help, like teaching an adult how to read (usually through your local public library), translate outreach materials into another language if you are bilingual, or spending time with a youth or elderly person. The important thing to remember is that ALL OF IT HELPS, nothing is less important than anything else. Really. So, if you have time and are looking to help, choose a local not-for-profit organization and give them your time and skills. It will do a world of good!

Gripe, gripe, gripe

So gas prices have steadily gone up for the past month or so. I think this progression is better appreciated through pictures:



This was at the beginning of March. Granted, this is one of the most expensive gas stations around because it sits right at the bottom of an off-ramp so it gets most of its business from desperate people who are running out of gas and have no choice but to go there. And from really rich people who don't even look at the sign, right? It's across the street from Hotel Utah at Fourth and Bryant.


Just a few days later, they were at $4.11. I unfortunately missed my chance to take a picture of the $4.19 gas, which was considered so high that this very gas station was featured in the local news.


That was probably a couple of weeks ago, sometime in mid-April. These days it's all the way up to $4.29. And most other stations I've seen are at $3.99.






So, "why don't you take public transit?", you say. "Or ride your bike?" "Or walk to work? San Francisco is not that big a city."

To which I say: bite me. Muni takes so long and is so unreliable that it takes the same amount of time to go from where I live to where I work as it takes to cross the freaking Bay Bridge. That is just not right people! I have tried to ride my bike and I am just too scared of drivers here, you wouldn't believe how aggressive they are and how running red lights is pretty much the norm for everyone. In a perfect world I would walk. I am quite overweight and dearly need the exercise. Unfortunately it doesn't work with our current domestic circumstances. Trust me. This situation is so frustrating I wish I were a drinker. I'm sure a nice round of tequila shots would help me see the humor in all of this (but only if it is Herradura.)

Alas, I'll just have to make do with the lorazepam...

Insult to injury: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/05/02/financial/f054757D63.DTL&tsp=1

The Middle Class Trap

Here in San Francisco making twenty dollars an hour, or even thirty, will not get you very far. Everything is overpriced. Everything. Parking meters, depending on the area, will give you 5 or 6 minutes for one quarter. Food, both at the supermarket and at restaurants, unless you are willing to eat some really bad crap, will likely be anywhere from $8 to $15 per person without drinks. Movie tickets are $10.50. Gas prices are some of the highest in the nation, averaging $3.90 a gallon as of today. Rentals -don't get me started! In my building a one bedroom apartment goes for $1,895 a month, and that is actually not that bad compared to the rest of the city.

Now, before you begin asking yourself, "then why does she live there?" let me say that you are asking the wrong question. I live here because in spite of all the financial difficulties we face, we want to live in a place where you can be who you want to be and not be afraid of it. It's that simple. When I moved here and saw queer people, inter racial couples, just all kinds of different people all over the city holding hands, kissing, laughing, living their lives, it was the most profoundly beautiful thing to me. So it is not a matter of "if you don't like it, or can't afford it, get out". WHY SHOULD IT BE THAT WAY? Why are people who earn less money less worthy of living happy, productive lives in a city of their choosing? Especially when those people are either a) working for non- profit organizations providing a range of much needed services (like homeless outreach, AIDS/HIV support, health care, legal advice and representation, and much more), or b) the people who need those services the most since they clean, cook, and serve all of the rest of us, whether rich or poor, and without whom the city would collapse into a heap of garbage (and here I am thinking of servers, dishwashers, cashiers, cooks, delivery people, etc.) WHY?

Our friends started to leave the city years ago because they wanted to *gasp* own a house or they had a kid or they were just priced out. That tends to happend when you are a bike messenger making 10 bucks an hour. And I remember thinking that I wouldn't let that happen to us. I also remember wondering why the heck would anyone want to have kids in such a non-kid friendly city. What a dope I was. What was thought process? That only people without kids should live here? Right. Instead, what I want to know is why shouldn't we be allowed to be parents? Now that I have a kid I have seen how this has become a whole industry, a very expensive one that charges you as much as possible for services that everyone should have access to like child care. It costs anywhere from $1, 000 to $2, 000 a month and whether you have the money or not you have to be on a waiting list for a year or two. I am not making this up, in San Francisco, it is easier to get into law school than nursery school.

What makes all of this even harder to cope with is that we do not qualify for any sort of help from anyone. We "make too much." To which I say, are you fucking kidding? But it is true, there are no city services that can help us out, so we are too rich for help but too poor to make ends meet on our own. Welcome to the middle-class trap.