On Medicaid, Migrant Workers, and "They Took Our Jobs"

Today, y'all's president's Secretary of Agriculture, a woman of pallor named Brooke Rollins, said millions of adult Medicaid participants who will now face stricter work requirements under y'all's president's "big beautiful bill" should replace migrant farm workers deported under y'all's president's police state-level ICE-led immigration policies.

So the "solution" to addressing any issues with immigration in the United States and the damn-near slave labor work options that many migrants have when they come to the United States is to spend taxpayer dollars to continue mass terrorism deportations of the folx who work hard to ensure most of us have food in our supermarkets and replace those folx with people on Medicaid, forcing what they perceive and verbalize as "able bodied" Medicaid recipients to work for their medical benefits coverage (coverage that will already be ravaged by y'all's president's "big beautiful bill," mind you) or die.

This is what some of y'all wanted, right? Migrants and immigrants "took your jobs," right? Now is your time to shine!

Y'all ready to get to work like your life depended on it?

Because for many of y'all, it does.

MAGA, amirite?

#eternalsideeye

Image description: A picture of Brooke Rollins, the current United States Secretary of Agriculture, side-eyeing another woman of pallor. Rollins looks like she is trying to figure out how she can use her Karen powers to harm another Karen in real time.

[Image description: A picture of Brooke Rollins, the current United States Secretary of Agriculture, side-eyeing another woman of pallor. Rollins looks like she is trying to figure out how she can use her Karen powers to harm another Karen in real time.]

How to Cook Like The People You Just Deported

Image description: a faux cover to a cookbook entitled, "How to Cook Like The People You Just Deported: Authentic Ethnic Flavors for Bigots who Don't Deserve Them."

It never shocks me how much ethnocultural impact communities of color, the Global Majority, Black and Brown folx, have on people of pallor and what they think is the "American way" of life.

There is no "U.S. culture" without melanin building its foundations and giving the whole thing flavor and life.

A whole lot of y'all hate AAPI communities, yet love your Christmas Day Chinese dinner.

A whole lot of y'all hate Black folx but love fried chicken, peanut butter, every bit of southern cuisine on the continent, and hundreds of dishes and food combinations created by Black folx as the original struggle meals that you now posit as "upscale cuisine."

A whole lot of y'all hate Indigenous communities but have stolen their fashion and cultural heritage to use as aesthetics to deck out your bodies and homes.

A whole lot of y'all hate Mexican, Hispanic, and Latine communities but enjoy the creature comforts of the food they harvest, cultivate, and grow.

But, you know, gon' 'head and deport and endanger the legitimate backbone of your country like it's not going to upend the comfy-ass multi-colored tapestry of an existence you live in and benefit from.

[Image description: a faux cover to a cookbook entitled, "How to Cook Like The People You Just Deported: Authentic Ethnic Flavors for Bigots who Don't Deserve Them."]

Day 5

I've lived in my house since 2012. I have lived around the same neighbors, give or take a few, since 2012. There's a woman of pallor whose house I've walked by at least 100 times in the twelve years I've lived in my neighborhood, whether on the way to doing something or just taking a stroll. This woman of pallor has seen me at least fifty times in those twelve years and has never spoken a word to me. Today, while pulling my garbage and recycling cans from the curb and into my backyard, this woman of pallor talked to me for the first time.

And she questioned me as if she was planning to call ICE to knock on my door.

This woman asked me my name, my MIDDLE NAME, if I owned my home or had children.

This woman has never said two words to me in twelve years.

She asked me all these questions and then tried to frame it with, "Well, you can never be certain. It's dangerous out here, so it's good to know who's in your neighborhood. With all this 'woke' stuff? You just never know. It wasn't like that in my day." She also tried to invoke her religious convictions, giving me her information and stating that God would not let her ask all these questions without introducing herself.

I guess Elizabeth Ann wanted me to know the name of the person likely to call ICE on me so I know who to thank when they show up at my door.

It's day five of what 60% of cis males of pallor and 53% of cis women of pallor voted for.

Five f'n days.

Five. Of 1,460.

Thanks, people of pallor. I'm feeling great. I've watched people I know and care about sit in fear with millions of other citizens over the past five days; as the world unravels around them, their rights and privileges begin to disappear, and the current administration does everything it can to deport them or threaten their existence. And now I get the added icing on the cake of being extra vigilant about having three forms of identification on my person whenever I leave my home while being prepared to defend people being harmed by hateful people and ICE agents.

Are we great again yet? Let me know when we're great again so I can circle the day on my calendar.