Melquiades Gagarin 🌹 🇵🇭 🇵🇷Konto zweryfikowane

3. Turns out he cleans the floors of the building for his neighbors because they aren't maintained by staff as they should be.

4. He told me he took what little money he can afford to buy cleaning supplies to help keep the building clean with his makeshift mop. He was retired and said it helped him keep busy, but that he was also sick and couldn't always afford to cover his diabetes medication.

5. He had insurance but still ended up paying around $340 out of pocket. For someone like this gentleman "how am I going to pay for it" is a personal one and literally a matter of life and death.

6. Yet he blamed himself for getting sick and lamented that he worked hard and never made it to the middle class.

7. He was proud of his sons that went to college and refuses their help because he doesn't want to be a burden. It broke my heart, especially because he reminded me of members of my own family that were equally proud and sacrificed for their kids and grandkids.

8. But it also made me angry. I know that public housing has been neglected. That billions in funding have yet to make it into the system, that there's a slow crawl to privatization via R.A.D., meanwhile luxury condos are sprouting up by the minute .

9. It's an election year so of course NOW electeds care about public housing, masquerading as progressive-all-along while taking campaign cash from the very developers displacing our communities; unable to address basic needs that a phone call and some pressure would have fixed.

10. #MedicareForAll would make such a drastic difference in this man's life who could be spending his golden years not having to worry about whether or not he can afford his insulin. Yet here Dems are unable to deliver but taking $ from the industry.

11. Were it not for this man, the building would be as neglected as some of the others in the complex. If a man like him can find the will to care for his neighbors we can find the political will to do the same and fight for the policies to improve his life and others.

12. Not because it's good politics, not because we're trying to earn a vote, but because it's what the job is supposed to be. I'm not running to rub elbows with the wealthy/powerful, or to advance a political career.

13. I'm running because I'm tired of the inaction and smoke & mirror posturing of the political class. I'm running because our leaders have failed to do the bare minimum that would alleviate conditions for people like the man I met today. And if they won't fight for him, I will.