Thursday, July 26, 2012

Met DAN

 I know I have not posted in a while. I don't really know what to say anymore, well let me change that, I do know what to say, it just that I have so much to say. I don 't know where to start. The other day I was reading on a group that I go to. This story was posted. It just broke my heart. The wife has given me permission to post her story. This story could be my son one day. It happen more then we know. I hope one day we can change the laws and make it much easier to live.

Met DAN:

It is so much the American dream to have a nice home on a big plot of land, your own truck that you owe nothing on, a nice car for your wife that is also paid off, a successful business that is sought after by many people and businesses with four people working under you depending on a weekly paycheck from products that they manufacture.

Then one day it is all gone! A retroactive law comes into place sentencing you again for a crime that you were punished for 20 years ago paying your debt to society back then. Now, you are forced to live under very strict restrictions and conditions, your constitutional rights trampled on and non-existent.

An opportunity arises to expand your business and you accept it. You invest thousands of dollars into the expansion. Then a technicality on an unclear and misinterpreted law forces you to spend thousands of dollars on a lawyer that the judge coerces you into obtaining. The lawyer does a great job by getting the four E felony counts knocked down to a misdemeanor as long as you plea to a way lesser charge and agree to 1 year probation. He assures you that everything will be fine.

Once you report for the first time to probation they swipe almost all your freedom from you. You are forced to wear a GPS devise on your ankle, you are no longer allowed to conduct your legal business in over 60% of the city, you are forced to pay a monthly fee and you give up your right to be the bread winner and financial supporter for your family.

As the days go on you have to sell your wife’s car just to pay bills then, before you know it, you have to sell your truck and buy a jalopy for as little as possible so you can take the rest to pay bills. When that money is gone, you no longer have anyone working for you so, you find yourself selling your equipment to be able to cover the checks you wrote to pay the utilities. Once most of the valuable equipment is sold off you get a foreclosure letter in the mail, the bank is foreclosing on your home in 90 days.

Lucky for you it is tax time! You get a little money back to be able to send your wife and children back home to your home state. You continue to struggle to put fuel in your jalopy while continuing your financial obligation for your family’s 2 bedroom apartment. Slowly you watch your utilities get cut off, first the cable and phone, then the electric, and finally the water. You are now living in a dark house at the end of June. You scrape up enough money to get a storage bin at the local storage facility. You make trip after trip after trip in your jalopy moving everything by yourself. Finally, you pick up the last of your clothes and other needed belongings and put them in your truck. You back out of your driveway onto the streets and you are now homeless.

You are thankful that your family is safe, at least for now. You cannot get a job even though you are well qualified for many positions because of the restrictions and conditions that you have to live under. You begin to do whatever odd jobs you can just to be able to pay the rent at your family’s apartment. Leaving yourself just enough money to put a little fuel into your jalopy that now needs tires and brakes, there’s a real bad knocking among smoking out the tail pipe. Your friends offer you to stay with them but by law you must refuse because they have children.

You find yourself hoping that prepaid cell phone would ring and a friend would offer you to take you out to eat. You find out quickly that bread, raw hot dogs and a gallon of warm water is not the best diet.

You have six weeks left of probation. Then you can take whatever money you have left over after all the bills for the family are paid and hopefully drive your jalopy in its poor condition 2000 miles back home to be with your family again. But those six weeks seem to last and last because you cannot find any work, so you cannot make any money, the front seat of your truck is beginning to wreak of your body odor, all your clothes are now dirty and smelly, you haven’t shaved in weeks and the only bathing you get is the river after dark so no one can see you. Soap and shampoo are out of the question, you just can’t afford it.

A friend tells you about two men’s shelters, you become excited with anticipation only to find out that they are both in the restricted area. You sit around in empty parking lots in the middle of summer that you know are in your safe zones. The police begin to patrol the parking lots frequently and you become paranoid because you could not pay your insurance and it has been canceled. You begin to think, “Where can I go now?”

You can’t go to the mall because they have a playground inside. You can’t sit outside Target it is too close to Toys R Us. You can’t sit in the shade in front of Wal-Mart it is across from the YMCA. You cannot go to your old church because they have day care on the premises. You drive around on what little fuel you have and an aching stomach that is begging for food hoping to find a place to sit for a few hours and get some sleep but the temperature is 98 degrees. You are almost out of fuel so you stop on the side of the road in a small clearing, the breeze is feeling pretty good you put your head back and close your eyes.

Suddenly you are awoken by a man telling you to get off his property before he calls the cops. You have no money, no food, no fuel and no dignity anymore because people with the state and county offices need jobs to support their families and you and your family are considered a casualty of the system.





Now do you believe this man needs to keep paying for what ever he did 20 years ago? How do we as a Society want this man to integrate back into socitey when we make it so hard for him just to stay alive?
What about his family? Why do they have to pay for what he did? They love him and want him to a part of the family, If they "the family" believes in him, why can't we?
So many question. WHY is this happening to this wonderful family? It just breaks my heart.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

While this story is a little dramatic, the substance of it is true so many times over. This is the extreme story, but trust me, socially, there are so many variations of this that these days, I wanna give up being a man. I hasten to say that women aren't necessarily the problem, but more could sure stand up and "grow some balls" (as I often hear as a favorite attack).