Gene Smirnov
“I m just hoping to create those good memories, so she won t remember all this, so it won t be at the forefront for her,” Latrish Oseko told me. She was planning a fifth-birthday party for her daughter, Ka’laya, and some of her friends. They were going to Sky Zone, a trampoline-park franchise, near their home in Wilmington, Delaware. It was a birthday celebration, but also a moment to rejoice that they’d made it through a terrible year and that they had a home again.
Oseko knew she was in trouble as soon as the pandemic hit. “I was a contract worker, so I thought I would probably be one of the first people to be laid off,” she said of her job as an administrative assistant. Sure enough, her employer cut her hours in half at the beginning of April 2020. A month later, they dropped her entirely. Her boyfriend, Keith, was able to hold onto his job at a local university, though he was furloughed for a period. “But I was glad he was able to stay employed,”
Amid a once-in-a-generation crisis, Republican-led states are pulling out all stops to abandon their responsibility to unemployed workers and their families. These states have decided to roll back emergency pandemic unemployment payments, which are fully funded by the federal government. Their misguided actions will hurt workers, families, and the nation's recovery, and will exacerbate existing racial, gender, and class inequities.After news.
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As a 65-year-old former Catholic school teacher, Lisa Lancaster logged onto Reddit for the first time in January in search of help filing for unemployment benefits and was surprised to find a community of individuals across the country assisting each other through a very hard time.
For many who have lost their job during the pandemic, the internet offers solidarity in the form of Facebook groups and subreddits dedicated to helping others stay afloat during hard times, answering unemployment questions, and offering useful phone numbers to bypass long hold times for states’ unemployment lines.
One of the biggest challenges for the millions of Americans who became unemployed during the COVID pandemic is deciding whether to pay out of pocket for their health insurance or suffer the consequences of going without the care they desperately need.