Remembering A Strong Woman

Evelyn Dortch — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:32:10 +0000

Jean Colman spent her career working to help lower-income women achieve fair treatment and dignity. The former Welfare Rights Organizing Coalition director died May 8 at the age of 59 after helping thousands of women improve their lives and inspiring countless others

via Local News | Jean Colman, made a career helping low-income women | Seattle Times Newspaper.

I just received this news today about a strong sister in the struggle who was taken all too soon. When I first heard the news, I was so upset thinking that on May 8ththis strong wonderful woman – Jean Colman – died and I was working. This woman who had held my hand all the way from Seattle and helped me through the forming of DAWG as an organization. Who had supported me along with many other strong sisters in the struggle through the tough times. I was working , as if nothing as important as her passing was occurring. I didn’t have a clue what was happening all the way in Washington State. She died while I was busy working on details of a Poverty Scholars Leadership School.

Then, I began thinking about how she would have loved to be part of this Leadership School. How my continuing my work and planning this school for all the welfare mommas and poppas and all the other people in America living in poverty and struggling to fight the system that keeps us down was a tribute to her. I was honoring her spirit without even knowing she had left this world. So after the tears and the sadness, tomorrow I will continue working and continuing this fight to honor her and all the other strong sisters who have gone before and will come after.

Jean Colman, you will be missed and you will be remembered for all the good you did in your life to help all those whose lives you touched……..even those who didn’t realize you had a hand in improving things for them and their families.

I have aged out of system now what?

Teen DAWG — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:08:11 +0000

I aged out of the system and no longer can get health-care…So I can’t afford to go to the eye doctor which is a really big problem because I have a really bad astigmatism, which basically means I am going blind, and I can’t see 6inches in-front of me without glasses or contacts. Well the dog got a hold of my glasses two days after my CHIPs ran out in January 2007. Luckily I had my contacts and then I ran out of contacts so I wore the same pair for 3months, you are only suppose to wear them for 1month but when you have no money and no health-care you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. Eventually my eyes started to really hurt bad from wearing the same contact lenses. So I searched for some old glasses hoping to find some that would work the only ones I could find were 3years old bent up and held together with a bread tie its all I had so I had to wear them I couldn’t see good at all with them and they looked crazy but it was better then none after I filed my income taxes I called the eye doctor and got an appointment I have glasses and contacts now with the help of my mom who paid for my appointment and I paid for the glasses and contacts but the glasses and contacts alone are $200 which is cheap compaired to what it could be but it is only a six month supply of contacts. I do need the contacts I can see better with them, the glasses are just a back up but because I had to buy glasses and contacts I had to make a choice weather I needed to see or go to the doctor to see about a pain I have been having wear my gallbladder is and I chose sight because I can always go to the ER if it gets really bad and pay it off slowly over next 20 years but if I can’t see then well I wouldn’t be very much help to anyone and it would also be dangerous for me I would be falling downstairs I didn’t see and such. I shouldn’t have had to make that choice no-one should have to make that choice. We need free universal health-care!!

Poor People have to make choices like this everyday…for example A lot of parents have to go without medical care because they simply cant afford it. I know a single mother that only has been to the doctor when she breaks something or she is really sick and isnt getting better. And when she goes to the doctor she has to make a choice what not to pay if she needs medication.

This is why I fight to end poverty no-one should have to make choices like these and I don’t want my little niece or nephew (that will be here this summer) to have to make these choices when they grow up. This is why I fight to end poverty it is for the future I don’t want them to have to make the same hard choices as so many people before them have had to make.

Da DAWG Says..... » Voice

Remembering A Strong Woman

I have aged out of system now what?