Robust Guaranteed Income Programs for All Would Also Be Suicide Prevention

As my executive functioning continues to crumble amidst heightened housing precarity, inadequate pain management, etc., I was not functional enough to publish newsletter posts for 2 weeks, as pain made it difficult to even think clearly, which relates to this month dedicated to Suicide Prevention, as we do not talk enough about how often financial precarity limits access to care, which reduces our ability to earn sufficient income to keep ourselves housed, fed, and otherwise accommodated enough for an acceptable quality of life.

The Benefits of Economic Stability Are Invaluable
This essay was written in response to these questions from Roxane Gay in 2021: What would life look like for you or people in your community with economic stability? How would your life choices and priorities shift? What sacrifices have you made without economic stability and how has that affected your outlook? What would the world look like if everyone had what they needed? Who would we all be in a world where wealth was distributed rather than hoarded?

I wish your question about what life would look like for my loved ones and I with economic stability did not prompt such guttural sobs from me, but it does. I honestly cannot imagine the wonder that economic stability would facilitate for the lives of myself and community members who are BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, immigrant, fat, etc. As if these layers of marginalization are not complicated enough, they usually mean that we tend to acquire a vast trauma history as we survive the daily assaults of oppression. Any reflection on economic stability would be incomplete without referencing how I am the firstborn child of a gambling addict, whose money management challenges meant that he was largely absent as a father. Having lived through many pay days of his, after which he would go missing, only to return empty-handed from losing all of that income to gambling, I can admit that financial strain stresses me out far more than the average person, as I know from over a decade working in the field of mental health. With the bulk of my career providing psychotherapy services, I have often been in session with individuals who disclose their deepest fears regarding economic instability, and never once have their financial worries surpassed my own from that early childhood trauma.

Unfortunately, such economic concerns regularly dictate my life choices and priorities as a result, as I have tolerated white supremacist workplace harassment for the bulk of my career in a desperate attempt to manage the absolute minimum expenses that my existence requires. It is also why I am currently off on a medical leave from my job, as white supremacist targeting has exacerbated migraines and sleep issues to the point where I can no longer function but also cannot bring myself to leave due to the income. The last time I took legal action against an employer for white supremacist workplace harassment, I was single, so after months of not finding work despite extensive applications, I was forced to put my personal belongings into storage and move in with my best friend and her family to survive, despite a lengthy career with clinical, teaching, and writing experience. In stark contrast to what had felt then like the most precarious period of my life then, I now have a more marginalized partner who I am committed to supporting as he returns to school to pursue his calling for psychotherapy training given how hard it was for him to find a practitioner who was affirming in terms of his own oppression.

I am embarrassed to say that I had never really thought as critically about how much I worried until it came up in the context of my relationship. We had only been dating for a few months, but especially when his health declined, I would grow increasingly concerned if he failed to message me back within hours. He first asked when we were out on a date if I had always worried so much, and I remember being stumped by the question, as I had not thought of it before, and I definitely had never been asked by anyone else about this. I genuinely wanted to respond to him in a meaningful way, so I reasoned that I probably worried more following white supremacist workplace harassment given how increasingly aware I had become of how vulnerable I had always been to such harms. Then, I reflected on how I had a great deal of responsibilities from the age of 14 when I immigrated as the oldest grandchild in a single-parent family, so part of navigating that likely included more worry. My partner was extremely understanding and supportive of how trauma had impacted my worry but it did not always help his own frustration at my incessant need to check-in that he was doing okay at times.

For weeks after my partner’s initial question, I would continue to wrestle within myself to understand why I worried so much because I truly had no interest in being controlling despite how it may have felt to him. The revelation would come when I was alone, as I had been making dinner at home, and remembered learning the meaning of the word “cadaver” as a young child. Immediately, I connected my teacher’s description of how these unclaimed bodies would be used by medical students to practice surgical techniques, to my father, who would regularly go missing for weeks at a time. Even as a young child, I had managed to reason that his body would eventually serve as such a cadaver, given my knowledge of how often he would owe money to shady men due to hefty gambling debts. There, in my kitchen, in between wrenching sobs, I realized that my partner was the first man I had loved like family, making him third on a very short list. Given that my grandfather had been dead since 1995 and I had not heard from my father in years, I tried to focus on my scrambled eggs but my tears had nullified any need for salt, as I reconciled how I had learnt that I would always be abandoned by the men that I loved.

Logically, I knew that the circumstances were different among my grandfather’s death from natural causes, my father’s irresponsible antics, and my partner’s valid point that he felt unnecessarily surveilled as a Black man, so he could not hold space for my worry as well. Despite that, my emotions would never cooperate when hours passed without a reply from my partner, as we both knew the statistics were not in favour of his safety as a Black man. We sat across from each other at a restaurant as I explained how my worry for him was connected to losses of other racialized men I had loved, but what evolved remains the only argument that my partner and I never managed to resolve lovingly by the time we parted ways that night. He would still walk me to the subway station as he usually did, and although it never escalated to yelling or name calling, it felt like the longest journey home after he refused to hug me goodbye. I share all of this to convey how worry works, even for someone who has expertise in this area, and experience assisting others to address such challenges, and it applies to finances too. Especially after the trauma of having to give up my place of residence when the impact on my health became too grave to endure more white supremacist workplace harassment, I am back in that position again, except this time, it is with significant debt from supporting my partner.

Although I have no qualms admitting that I consider him to be more intelligent than me, our capitalist reality is that my ability to earn income far exceeds his, which is why I have sacrificed my own quality of life to maximize freelance work to ensure his needs are met. When the alternative would mean that we cannot afford the cost of massage therapy or CBD for him, I have no choice but to continue working past exhaustion, pain, hunger, mental distress, etc. Despite my partner’s best attempts to work as much as he can to support himself, there were years when this anti-Black dumpster fire limited his ability to earn any income. In this way, our reality is not remotely what the world would look like if we had a guaranteed income program available, but instead of wealth being distributed equitably, it remains hoarded by a few rich folx. Over the course of our relationship, I have managed to rack up more debt than all my repaid student loans, despite working full time, and doing freelance work in any capacity, including tutoring, writing, facilitation, minute-taking, data collection, fact checking, transcription, etc.

Financial worry does not operate equally either though, so while I worry more about our economic predicament, especially as I navigate this medical leave following harassment from another white supremacist executive director, I am better at not internalizing our reality as a personal failure of mine. Unfortunately, my beloved tends to feel more shame over finances, while I have thankfully already unpacked a great deal of that following earlier trauma, but it is why he does not remotely know the extent of it as my debt far exceeds how much credit he can even qualify for, due to economic disparities that our immigrant parents never warned us about.

In sharing such minute details of our lives, my hope is to elucidate how we might never have ended up here had he been able to rely on guaranteed income, especially when his health declined in 2018. The benefits of economic stability are invaluable, and guaranteed income is one of the few ways in which that can help to ensure equitable outcomes for marginalized folx who often lack the safety nets of generational wealth largely from stolen Indigenous land and enslaved Black labour. When Black pain is regularly dismissed by the medical-industrial complex, guaranteed income would have been a saving grace for my partner when his health declined. Unfortunately, this is the reality for many Black and brown communities, which is why a guaranteed income program would help in just the ways that the research has demonstrated. Despite propaganda that such supports would dissuade healthy individuals from seeking paid work, numerous studies have validated how a guaranteed income can decrease stress, improve health, and motivate individuals to find better opportunities to take care of their families.

I often hear that stories change minds, so I hope that I have illuminated in this essay how my more marginalized partner had no such safety nets as a guaranteed income program when it was desperately needed. Instead, since that reality of not being able to pay for his basic needs brought him such shame, I did not hesitate to foot the bill, even as my own savings were depleted, and I increasingly racked up debt. But when the love of my life struggles in ways that I may never remotely comprehend, and his doctor did not deem him eligible for disability benefits despite his undeniable inability to work due to his health, I just kept earning as much as humanly possible. And since he had already survived the trauma of ending up homeless once before after moving in with a partner, he shared early on that he may never feel comfortable to do that again, so I pay for living expenses at two separate places of residence for a man I barely see with how much we work. Yet, these are the choices that I would make all over again daily so that he never has to make worse decisions for himself. In the absence of financial safety nets, economic instability can take lives, and sacrifice our quality of life to ensure our loved ones live.

Angela Davis wrote, “But it is not enough simply to imagine a different future. We can walk around with ideal worlds in our heads while everything is crumbling around us. Feminist critical habits involve collective intervention as well. The feminist critical impulse, if we take it seriously, involves a dual commitment: a commitment to use knowledge in a transformative way, and to use knowledge to remake the world so that it is better for its inhabitants...This commitment entails an obstinate refusal to attribute a permanency to that which exists in the present, simply because it exists. This commitment simultaneously drives us to examine the conceptual and organizing tools we use, not to take them for granted.” With that in mind, I hope that we can do more than imagine guaranteed income programs but also invest in the critical feminist habits necessary for collective intervention. Especially in a world where billionaires race away from Earth, marginalized folx deserve the safety net of a guaranteed income on this planet that often deems us disposable. It is why I will continue to work towards our equitable outcomes.

Especially if you have read my last newsletter post from a couple of weeks ago, I regret to inform you that I have now missed 2 housing payments of $1775.89 each (which is the closest I have come to becoming unhoused since 1st becoming unhoused in 2007 following a car crash that resulted in a broken wrist, sprained ankle, and soft tissue injuries that make pain my daily reality).  While I have managed to secure a new client and an upcoming paid opportunity since my last newsletter post, it has now been 3 months since I could afford to see the chiropractor, and nearly 2 months since I last accessed the medication that helped to manage PMOS/PCOS, and since such heightened housing precarity, inadequate pain management, etc. do not bode well for my functioning given reduced quality of life, I am particularly grateful to all from near and far who have contributed funds as mutual aid to help me survive GBV, white supremacist workplace trauma, etc. 

If able to contribute to my survival following my ex's financial abuse of at least $183,364, which further disabled me, alongside white supremacist workplace trauma, e-transfers within "Canada" may be sent to krystaljagoo@gmail.com and funds may be sent via PayPal below, so please support me if able, as I am desperately close to being unhoused!🙏🏾

BTW, on the off chance that you are looking for a gifted equity practitioner and educator for virtual services like writing, facilitation, and consulting, you are welcome to peruse my CV below, and explore paid services here.

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