It Won't Be Easy

Today I was terminated from my job as a Health Assistant at a low income health clinic and refused my full paycheck upon dismissal, offered yesterday only an incomplete paycheck for my paid leave. This union-busting, retaliatory dismissal comes on the heels of us demanding an end to the Call Center move for the clinics! I was the only union steward of color at the Old Town Clinic and the only Health Assistant union steward. I had no escalatory disciplinary history and was abruptly terminated for private discussions with union members I counseled against our employer.

I was refused a steward at my initial hearing and had to fight bitterly to be allowed a rep at all.

Who I am: A mother, a Salvadoran refugee, a long-term resident of Portland, a queer woman married to a trans woman, a union steward (the only steward of color at the clinic), an elected member of my union local’s executive board, an organizer, the last standing connection between our local and the Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants since my wife (and author of our local’s anti-deportation resolution to be considered at our union’s international convention in August) was terminated in March for antiracism and is awaiting to hear back if the union will take her case towards arbitration or not. She has struggled to find openings even for low wage entry level work. Now are both unemployed while raising an infant baby during the worst economic downturn we’ve ever seen.

We both worked to provide services to the homeless but our organization is committing to waves of mass layoffs at the exact moment homelessness and adult+childhood poverty are at an all time historic high. Now we face the prospect of homelessness ourselves.

If you want your healthcare managed by AI and call centers, look away. If you hate union-busting and want to know who is speaking to you about your private health information, share and sign.

Please share, even if you are not in Portland. If you care about immigrants, if you care about mothers, if you care about workers rights, if you care about boots on the ground stopping AI and ending racism in the workplace, please sign and bring attention to this and let people know what we need.

Portland and our homeless, houseless, and impoverished communities deserve real healthcare, not robotic, dissociated garbage. My family will be homeless and other workers will be next.

If you want to donate to our struggle, we are at:

$writeswrongs on Cash App and Venmo

Let this employer know their retaliatory actions against a union steward of color is not acceptable to the public!

Olivia represented an employee and person of color who was retaliated against in a recorded meeting the employee had requested. The meeting was supposed to address racist comments about Asians including mocking accents made by a coworker of that employee. Instead HR retaliated against him for making the reports and attempted to violate his union rights by transforming that meeting he had called into an investigation of him for discriminating against his coworker by calling them racist but without any prior notice of an investigatory meeting. It was by chance he had a steward present. From Olivia’s statement she added to the petition:

Maybe I will not get my job back, but that is not for us to see.

But, a prolonged struggle beyond is needed to stop the call center and save the lives of vulnerable low income patients and stop union busting.

Please don’t let my story languish and disappear.

Please let them see that hundreds, thousands even, of people heard what happened to Olivia, what happened to the patients of downtown Portland, a place demonized online for addiction and homelessness.

Let the world see the people begged for help and they tore their interpreters and providers and social servants away from them to save some non profit a few dollars for a quarter, while the city poured millions into remodeling the Blazers stadium.

I have now not worked for a week. My rent will catch up with me. I have a baby. I have a family. I was a union steward, once. I wonder how long until I turn into the homeless people I was trying to serve, so they can turn me away, too.

Help us stay housed if you can, or better yet share, like, and SIGN this petition to put pressure on Central City Concern to stop union-busting. They don’t care five hundred people shared this on tumblr. They care five hundred people signed to demand they stop union busting because local news could see it. Because patients might see. Because funders might see it.

And I never like to beg but I know I will never be spared the indignity of poverty, and so I must always say thank you to the people who can keep the roof over our heads and our bellies full when nothing else is possible:

$writeswrongs on CashApp/Venmo

[email protected] on PayPal

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Today I was terminated from my job as a Health Assistant at a low income health clinic and refused my full paycheck upon dismissal, offered yesterday only an incomplete paycheck for my paid leave. This union-busting, retaliatory dismissal comes on the heels of us demanding an end to the Call Center move for the clinics! I was the only union steward of color at the Old Town Clinic and the only Health Assistant union steward. I had no escalatory disciplinary history and was abruptly terminated for private discussions with union members I counseled against our employer.

I was refused a steward at my initial hearing and had to fight bitterly to be allowed a rep at all.

Who I am: A mother, a Salvadoran refugee, a long-term resident of Portland, a queer woman married to a trans woman, a union steward (the only steward of color at the clinic), an elected member of my union local’s executive board, an organizer, the last standing connection between our local and the Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants since my wife (and author of our local’s anti-deportation resolution to be considered at our union’s international convention in August) was terminated in March for antiracism and is awaiting to hear back if the union will take her case towards arbitration or not. She has struggled to find openings even for low wage entry level work. Now are both unemployed while raising an infant baby during the worst economic downturn we’ve ever seen.

We both worked to provide services to the homeless but our organization is committing to waves of mass layoffs at the exact moment homelessness and adult+childhood poverty are at an all time historic high. Now we face the prospect of homelessness ourselves.

If you want your healthcare managed by AI and call centers, look away. If you hate union-busting and want to know who is speaking to you about your private health information, share and sign.

Please share, even if you are not in Portland. If you care about immigrants, if you care about mothers, if you care about workers rights, if you care about boots on the ground stopping AI and ending racism in the workplace, please sign and bring attention to this and let people know what we need.

Portland and our homeless, houseless, and impoverished communities deserve real healthcare, not robotic, dissociated garbage. My family will be homeless and other workers will be next.

If you want to donate to our struggle, we are at:

$writeswrongs on Cash App and Venmo

Let this employer know their retaliatory actions against a union steward of color is not acceptable to the public!

Olivia represented an employee and person of color who was retaliated against in a recorded meeting the employee had requested. The meeting was supposed to address racist comments about Asians including mocking accents made by a coworker of that employee. Instead HR retaliated against him for making the reports and attempted to violate his union rights by transforming that meeting he had called into an investigation of him for discriminating against his coworker by calling them racist but without any prior notice of an investigatory meeting. It was by chance he had a steward present. From Olivia’s statement she added to the petition:

"For years Black parents believed that getting our children into better schools and neighborhoods was the surest path to opportunity. But now many of us are wondering: what does it cost to be the only Black child in the room?

Look, our kids being in predominantly white spaces can open doors. There’s no question about that. But we must understand that there is an underside to those opportunities. The question many parents should be asking isn’t just what our children gain from these spaces, but also what they might lose if we aren’t intentional about keeping them grounded in their own culture.

Let’s face facts. When we talk about raising Black kids in predominantly white spaces, we usually focus on academics and future opportunities. What we also need to discuss is what constantly being “the only one” does to a child’s sense of identity.

Research shows us that Black children as young as 10 are viewed as older and less innocent than white children. (10! They are only babies.) That means many of our kids learn early that they have to think about how they’re perceived in ways their classmates who need sunblock 3000 to go outside in the summer never do. They become experts at managing how the present themselves to others before they are even old enough to understand why.

But there is another, greater danger. And it’s something much quieter that you might not know is happening before it’s too late."

Article HERE

It has come under our attention that an evil transmisogynist has incited her large platform to SOCIALLY MURDER A TRANS WOMAN for the crime of existing as an opinionated woman on the internet. She has trillions of followers, THIS IS BASICALLY CALLING FOR THIS WOMAN TO BE DIGITALLY LYNCHED!

Just because a trans woman expresses herself in ways that seem offensive doesn’t mean you have the right to call her out! Call outs are murder!

Everyone block @missstrogen because she believes in calling out transfems for minor transgressions that don’t even hurt anybody. She’s harassing a Jewish Latina trans woman who has been the victim of kiwifarms harassment for allegedly fighting a Nazi in person and whose Salvadoran migrant wife is under duress due to the ethnic cleansing of migrants occurring in this country THIS IS NOT OKAY!!!

Today I was terminated from my job as a Health Assistant at a low income health clinic and refused my full paycheck upon dismissal, offered yesterday only an incomplete paycheck for my paid leave. This union-busting, retaliatory dismissal comes on the heels of us demanding an end to the Call Center move for the clinics! I was the only union steward of color at the Old Town Clinic and the only Health Assistant union steward. I had no escalatory disciplinary history and was abruptly terminated for private discussions with union members I counseled against our employer.

I was refused a steward at my initial hearing and had to fight bitterly to be allowed a rep at all.

Who I am: A mother, a Salvadoran refugee, a long-term resident of Portland, a queer woman married to a trans woman, a union steward (the only steward of color at the clinic), an elected member of my union local’s executive board, an organizer, the last standing connection between our local and the Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants since my wife (and author of our local’s anti-deportation resolution to be considered at our union’s international convention in August) was terminated in March for antiracism and is awaiting to hear back if the union will take her case towards arbitration or not. She has struggled to find openings even for low wage entry level work. Now are both unemployed while raising an infant baby during the worst economic downturn we’ve ever seen.

We both worked to provide services to the homeless but our organization is committing to waves of mass layoffs at the exact moment homelessness and adult+childhood poverty are at an all time historic high. Now we face the prospect of homelessness ourselves.

If you want your healthcare managed by AI and call centers, look away. If you hate union-busting and want to know who is speaking to you about your private health information, share and sign.

Please share, even if you are not in Portland. If you care about immigrants, if you care about mothers, if you care about workers rights, if you care about boots on the ground stopping AI and ending racism in the workplace, please sign and bring attention to this and let people know what we need.

Portland and our homeless, houseless, and impoverished communities deserve real healthcare, not robotic, dissociated garbage. My family will be homeless and other workers will be next.

If you want to donate to our struggle, we are at:

$writeswrongs on Cash App and Venmo

Let this employer know their retaliatory actions against a union steward of color is not acceptable to the public!

Olivia represented an employee and person of color who was retaliated against in a recorded meeting the employee had requested. The meeting was supposed to address racist comments about Asians including mocking accents made by a coworker of that employee. Instead HR retaliated against him for making the reports and attempted to violate his union rights by transforming that meeting he had called into an investigation of him for discriminating against his coworker by calling them racist but without any prior notice of an investigatory meeting. It was by chance he had a steward present. From Olivia’s statement she added to the petition: