.By Shamecca Brown-Granite State News Collaborative
I’ve spent years working in the trenches of advocacy, trying to fix the broken machinery of our social support systems. I’ve written the letters, sat in the meetings, and navigated the endless, soul-crushing bureaucracy that dictates who gets to survive and who gets discarded. I did everything "right." I played the game. And I am here to tell you, with the weight of my own grief and the clarity of someone who has seen the curtain pulled back: the system isn't broken. It’s working exactly as designed.
We are the "little people," but lately, that feels like a sanitized term for what we really are to the powers that be. We are the mangy dogs at the edge of the feast. We are expected to stand on the periphery, tail wagging, grateful for the crumbs of policy scraps they occasionally get tossed our way, all while they toast to their own prosperity behind closed doors.
But are you actually being fed, or are you just being kept in a state of constant, desperate hunger so that you’re too exhausted to bark at the truth?
The storm isn't coming; it’s already here, and it’s taking us out.
Every single day is a gauntlet. You wake up and face gas prices that make travel a luxury, rent that swallows your paycheck before it even hits your account, and energy and food bills that force you to choose between eating and keeping the lights on. They bleed us dry with taxes that vanish into a void, leaving us to fend for ourselves when we hit the inevitable wall of healthcare costs. They’ve turned basic survival into an extreme sport, and the house is rigged to make sure we lose.
And, as the economic floor falls out from under us, the air is getting thick with something else: a rising, ugly, and increasingly loud racism. It’s not hiding in the shadows anymore; it’s being shouted from the rooftops. This isn’t a coincidence. When the people in power want to keep the mangy dogs fighting each other over the few scraps left on the floor, they turn up the volume on hate. It’s a distraction – a tool to keep us from looking at who is actually holding the table.
They rely on our exhaustion. They rely on the fact that when you are grieving, when you are fighting for your family’s survival, and when you are busy trying to find the next meal or the next medical approval, you won't have the energy to demand the whole table.
I’m done with the polite discourse. I’m done with the "hopeful" calls to action that lead to dead ends. There is a profound, sickening corruption at the heart of this place we call the USA, and it survives because it relies on us looking away.
But look. Look at your bank account, your insurance denials, the empty spaces in your own home where loved ones used to be. The system didn’t just fail; it stood by and watched. It’s time we stop acting like we’re part of a society that cares about our existence. We are being managed, not governed.
It’s time to stop wagging our tails. It’s time to stop waiting for them to feed us. It’s time to open your eyes to the fact that we are the only ones who can save ourselves, because nobody in that marble building is coming to help.
So stop looking away. Start talking to each other about the real cost of living in this state, the rent, the food, the healthcare, the isolation. If we are going to survive this storm, it won’t be because the system finally decided to be kind. It will be because we stopped acting like dogs and started acting like a community.
Shamecca Brown is a New Hampshire-based columnist who is family-oriented and passionate about serving underserved communities. These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.