12/27/22 12/27/22 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from new york, this is democracy now! just days after the taliban bans women from attending university, prompting protests of women chanting "either everyone or no one" the government has issued an order barring women

from nongovernmental organizations. many of those groups have now pulled out. we will speak with jan egeland and with leading afghani feminist jamila afghani. then we look at "insecurity," an series about people follow through the cracked of the social safety net during the pandemic. >> a lot of clichés rose up during the pandemic. everyone who wants a chuck yeager job. the great resignation. the quite quit. even people just want to work that hard. eshawney gaston cannot turn down work. she has pieced together to try to make a living wage. >> i am a low-wage worker. amy: pandemic poverty.

we will speak with the series host longtime journalist ray suarez. all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. the death toll from a once-in-a-generation winter storm that brought arctic temperatures and heavy snow too much of the u.s. has risen to 50. more than half the dead are in buffalo, new york, where search-and-rescue crews are searching for people trapped under more than four feet of snow. more snowfall is forecast for today. the new york governor says it is the worst blizzard ever in city known for its inclent winter weather. >> this will go down in history as the most devastating storm in buffalo's long stord history

of having battled many battles, many major storms. amy: the winter weather grounded thousands of flights and caused chaos one of the busiest travel days of the year. in texas, federal regulators have graded this greater proceed air quality limits and pollute more than usually allowed in order to make surging demand due to freezing temperatures. meanwhile, jackson, mississippi, has once again issued a boil water order for city residents after cold temperatures caused pipes burst and brought pressure to their crumbling water system to a trickle. in texas, the city of el paso extended an emergency declaration over the weekend as temperatures plunged into the teens and shelters reached capacity. the declaration came as hundreds of migrants spent the christmas holiday outdoors on the mexican side of the border despite freezing temperatures. they were unable to cross to the

u.s. to seek asylum after the supreme court last week ordered the biden administration to continue the trump-era title 42 policy, which has been used to expel some 2 million people from the border. this is a venezuelan asylum-seeker speaking from ciudad juarez on christmas eve. >> i would like to spend christmas in a place where it is not cold. i would really like to have shelter just as everyone here would like to spend christmas under a roof because the cold is strong. amy: hundreds of asylum seeker slept outside in freezing weather in el paso, texas. meanwhile, more than 100 asylum seekers arrived on buses outside the residence of vice president kamala harris on christmas eve as temperatures in washington, d.c., dropped to 18 degrees fahrenheit. they were the latest migrants sent by texas republican governor greg abbott to cities led by democrats. immigrant rights activist jenn

kauffman said the people seeking asylum were quickly given blankets and brought to shelter by members of the d.c. migrant solidarity mutual aid network. she added -- "this was intended to be cruel stunt by greg abbott, but people are woing around the clock to treat these families with the dignity they deserve." in afghanistan, the taliban decreed that women can no longer work for nongovernmental organizations including humanitarian relief agencies. under the new rules announced saturday, groups that employed women could lose their license to operate in afghanistan and at least fiveey ngos have now halted work there. character national, the norwegian refugee cancer, the international rescue committee, and islamic relief. >> we have got 50 staff including community volunteers in afghanistan. almost half of those are women.

so essentially, if we were to keep worng, we would have to turn up to work tomorrow with have our workforce missing. amy: this comes days after the taliban banned women from attending university. we will have more on this story after the headlines with the head of the norwegian council as well as a leading afghani feminist. south korea's military scrambled warplanes and helicopter gunships on monday after five north korean drones crossed the demilitarized zone separating the two countries. it was the first time since 2017 north korean drones have entered south korean airspace. south korea's military said it had sent its own drones over the north in response. officials in taiwan have extended mandatory military service for young men to one year, up from the current four months. the change in taiwan's conscription period came after dozens of chinese military aircraft on monday entered into airspace designated by taiwan as an air defense zone. it was the latest in a series of patrols and military exercises

carried out in the taiwan strait by both china and the united states. china's government says it will end quarantine requirements for international travelers beginning january 8 in another major shift away from its long-running zero-covid policy. beginning on january 8, arrivals at chinese ports will be required only to show a negative covid test result obtained within 48 hours of departure. the relaxed guidelines come after china's top health authority estimates that tens of millions of people are becoming infected with coronavirus each day, making china's current outbreak by far the worst in the world. this is an e.r. doctor at peking university in people's hospital. >> theatient's who come here have oxygen levels of only 6%. we feel a lot of pressure when it comes to severe cases. many colleagues are still working despite being sick. amy: russia says three military

servicemen were killed by falling debris monday after a ukrainian drone was shot down as approached an air base used to launch attacks on ukraine. it was the latest in a series of attacks by ukraine deep inside russian territory. in ukraine, fighting continued over the weekend after calls for a christmas ceasefire went unheeded. ukraine's government says russian artillery fire killed 10 people and injured dozens more on christmas eve in the city of kherson, which was recaptured by ukraine last month. russian attacks on the power grid left some 9 million people without electricity over the holiday weekend. on sunday, russian president vladimir putin said he was prepared to negotiate to end the war in ukraine, adding, "it's not us who refuse talks, it's them." ukraine's foreign minister, meanwhile, called on the u.n. to convene a peace summit with secretary-general antónio guterres as mediator. in and of how, the former leader of the insurgency that helped end the monarchal rule has been

appointed prime minister for a third time. he took the oath of office monday after winning the backing of coalition led by the unified marxisleninist party. he led nepal briefly in 2008 and 2009 and again 2016. he waged a decade-long civil war that ended with the abolition of the shaw dynasty in 2008 and the establishment of a republic. brazil's incoming justice minister says security will be tightened for the new year's day inauguration of president-elect lula da silva after authorits stopped an alleged bomb plot over the weekend. george washington de oliveira sousa, a 54-year-old businessman and supporter of outgoing far-right president jair bolsonaro, was arrested on terrorism charges saturday. he's accused of attempting to set off a bomb near the airport in the capital brasilia. local police say the suspect confessed that he intended to start chaos ahead of lula's

inauguration to "prevent the establishment of communism in brazil." facebook's parent company meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by plaintiffs who say the social media giant improperly shared users' information with cambridge analytica, a company founded by the right-wing billionaire robert mercer. during the 2016 u.s. presidential campaign, cambridge analytica harvested some 87 million facebook profiles without the users' knowledge or consent and us the data to sway voters during the 2016 campaign. and congressional democrats are calling on new york republican congressmember-elect george santos to resign after he admitted he repeatedly lied about his work, education, and family history. on monday, santos admitted to "the new york post" he fabricated his claims that he'd worked for goldman sachs and citigroup and that he'd earned a degree from baruch college.

santos also spoke with new york radio station wabc. >> i am not a fraud. i am not a criminal who defrauded the entire country and made up this petition character and ran for congress. i have been around a long time. a lot of people know me. they have had business dealings with me. i am not making excuses for that, but a lot of people overstate the resumes or twist a little bit. i am not saying i'm not guilty of that. amy: he also said he falsely claimed his grandparents fled the holocaust. he said -- texas democratic representative joaquin castro responded that congress should expel george santos if he refuses to resign and called on authorities to investigate him. castro added -- "just about evy aspect of his life appears to be a lie.

we've seen people fudge their resume but this is a total fabrication." and those are some of e headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. when we come back, the taliban has issued an order barring women from working for nongovernmental organizations on afghanistan. we will with the head of the norwegian refugee council which has pulled out of afghanistan as a result and with a leading afghan feminist. stay with us. ♪♪ [music break]

amy: "zan astam" by afghan singer aryana sayeed. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. i am in new york joined by democracy now! co-juan gonzález in chicago. hi, juan. juan: hi, amy. welcome to all of our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world.

amy: we begin today's show in afghanistan, where the taliban government issued an order over the weekend that women can no longer work for non-governmental organizations. this includes relief agencies. groups that employ women could lose their license to operate in the country. five top non-governmenl organizations have halted work in afghanistan as a result. care international, the norwegian refugee council, and save the children. the nrc and save the children noted they would not have jointly reached millions of afghans in need since august 2021 without their female staff. a taliban spokesperson acus female workers at the age groups of breaking dress codes by not wearing hijabs. that it needed to days after it banned women from attending university, property to protest wednesday? both. tele-van forces arrested five

protesters, three journalists, some of the women said there were beaten by security forces. also prevented hundreds of women from entering their colleges a day after the ban was announced. this is a student at kabul university who was turned away fr her campus. >> when i got close to the university, i saw a strange environment. taliban humve were part of the entrance gate. they were telling us, return to your homes. girls have no right to study anymore. the situation has a very bad impact on every female student. they make of this comes after the taliban barred afghan girls from attending secondary school earlier this year. for more we are joined by two guests. jamila afghani is an afghan educator and women's rights activist. she leads the afghanistan section of the women's international league for peace and freedom. she is the founder of the noor educational and capacity development organization. she created the first gender -sensitive training and afghanistan.

she is joining us from canada. she has lived there since she was evacuated from kabul last august after spending time in norway. and in oslo, norway, we are joined by jan egeland, secretary general of the norwegian refugee council. one of the groups that has now pulled out of the country. we welcome you both to democracy now! we will begin with jamila afghani. if you can respond to the series of edicts and then we will go to norway where you were evacuated to from afghanistan more than a year ago to talk with jan egeland whose group is now halting work there because of this latest edict. first, your response? >> thank you very much for having me on your program. unrtunately, the ban on women's education and i on the ban -- and later on the ban on

the national ngos, wch were the main source of work for afghan women and children, the situation of humanitaria crisis and very cold winter. it was an act against humanity and it was. shocking news for all afghans and especially those women who were the breadwinner of their family. the situation inside afghanistan is very chaotic on a daily basis. i am in contact with my colleagues and everyone is sappointed from the action of the taliban. the taliban who promised to bring change come to allow women for their education, for their

employment but unfortunately, they are not keeping their promise. juan: could you talk about what has been the situation with women attending the higher educational university since the taliban took over and what you could tell prompted this action now? >> actually, taliban from the very beginning banned girls from going to school from grade 6-12. in the pt 20 years, we were engaged -- reopening of the schools. unfortunately, nothing worked. as we were suspecting, the taliban may ban girls from higher education. but with the latest announcement, taliban has banned

women from all level of education, even from religious educational centers. the reason the taliban are giving about hijab or not observing hijab, which is totally wrong justification. none of the women, even before the taliban this was not without hijab. everyone was wearing their hijab . but special dress code the taliban is taking, most of the girls are doing that. and a special that the taliban are dictating the women of afghanistan, it hasin islamic teaching. there isin islamic history about that. given the limits on everything

-- there is nothing the taliban is climbing. even his claim of taliban and active criminal -- an act of criminal putting wrong plain or bad flame on women afghanistan that they are engaged in immoralities. i am ashamed of having such an afghan person talking about these things in this way in front of the international community. this is not the world of afghan person. juan: you participated in the doha talks with the taliban and question them about what their position would be on women accessing education and being able twork. what did they tell you then and has anybody responded to why they have changed their policy so dramatically?

>> during my first -- in 2019, we directly asked the question and they totally were very open with the current draft code of afghan women and open about the education of women. they were saying this is the islamic right, the sharia right so no one can take away the sharia right. the minister of virtue and the other minister -- acting minister of higher education, it ems they have no knowledge of islam. they have been ignoring of the islamic teaching, that they don't know what is sharia, what is the rights of women in sharia islam. all i can see is the

stubbornness, the type of patriarchal mds. nothing with islam. people of afghanistan we understand the limitation in sharia. most of that we are observing. this person who is very ignorant in tele-van leadership must -- taliban leadership must remove them as soon as possible. they are breaking the bridge between nation and the current government on the international level and now they are foing people to be part of them. but this type of mindset, no one -- amy: jamila afghani, if you can respond to the taliban trying to frame this as the west versus

them and western organizations like jan egeland's trying to tell afghanistan what to do, trying to frame it as the west versus afghanistan rather than afghanistan versus the women. your response? >> afton women -- afghan women are part of humanity. we are part of humanity and afghan women are making half the body of the nation. how taliban or or any government can ignore that? cluding the local organizations, they were acting to provide humanitarian assistance for women and children of afghanistan. this is what international

community should do. although the sanctions in afghanistan -- still, these organizations were working with so much but now taliban banned them to work. this is a criminal act the taliban is doing. this is not responsibility -- this is the responsibility of taliban as an acting government to look after the people of afghanistan. they are putting this much pressure on people of afghanistan on -- to have the kingdom, to have the rulership. amy: i want to bring in jan egeland press secretary general of the norwegian refugee council. a u.n. official told the bbc the united nations could stop humanitarian aid delivery into afghanistan if the taliban don't

reverse their edict banning women aid workers. you, the norwegian refugee council, has already decided to halt your work there as a result of this latest taliban edict. can you talk about what went into your decision? who were the women who worked for you? what this could mean? >> it came out of the blue, really, christmas eve, december 24. it was from the minister of economy. it went to all -- virtually all of the nongovernmental organizations and said females cannot anymore work. [indiscernible] they are colleagues that we have promoted to management officials. they are central to our work. thats why weid not pl out

some places. we are still there. we did not go with the west that left and yuriko. -- that left a year ago. we have been in taliban -controlled territory for decades. the reason we did hold work are twofold. number one, we cannot operate without our female staff. it would be inferior operations. we cannot directly give aid to women. women and children [indiscernible] the second reason is that we would disintegrate aa principled and good employer. we have a global program and have said to the taliban many times in kabul and even when they came to norway that we respect the traditional

afghan values and live by them in their country but we also have values and we cannot compromise. juan: jan egeland, the claim of the taliban that those afghan women who work for international aid organizations not wearing the hijab, have they raise this at all previously as a concern of theirs or did this just come out of the blue? >> it came out of the blue. they came banging on our door when they took over and into places where they took over. they told us they would strictly enforce the islamic stand, the traditional values. and since then we have -- are our female colleagues have

respected the hijab. we have separated the men and women. we even have guardians traveling with the females on longer travels. as the previous speaker said, much of this we did during the previous government as well. maybe one or two examples they have of an office where a hijab was not in place when they came. so give warning to that group. toaralyzwork for millions of people in the midst of the winter, it is really a gut blow to the population, tthe people of afghanistan. we cannot compromise on this. amy: and how -- juan: what do you perceived to be the impact, particularly of the western sanctions and afghanistan? the inability of the

international organizations that are there -- what is right now the impact of those sanctions? >> sanctions are still a problem in the since there is still a lot of [indiscernible] money belonging to the afghan central bank, development money was withdrawn. this was a new place with the west and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars to provide for the 40 million civilians. when they sanction, they closed many of thes development streams. western banks were so afraiof the sanctions, the american sanctions, they stopped -- we now have permits to do our work. the biden administration -- we

have struggled with having western companies work with us. however, the problem is squarely the taliban hard-line that were able to enforce extremist lines out of kandahar. it is a struggle of values within the taliban. i am glad the u.s. seems to take the lead in working for a reversal of this ban. amy: i want to ask jamila afghani about whether you support these groups pulling out at this point and what you think the chances are of the taliban reversing themselves on this? there is also so interesting we have you on with jan egeland because you appealed to the

norwegian authorities as the u.s. was pulling out to evacuate you. you are very challenged as a child. he suffered from polio -- you suffered from polio, physically challenged, then you were shot in the head during the soviet occupation. he wanted to get you and yourself out and it was norway that helped you get out. >> i am really thankful as an afghan woman, as an individual, we have of all my sisters and people of afghanistan, the organization like norwegian care, irc, and other organizations that they have helped women of afghanistan and people of afghanistan for decades providing multilayer

activity and support for the people of afghanistan. even during the former government when fighting was going on in many provinces, they were present and they were supporting people of afghanistan. the pullback means a lot press in terms of they are in solidarity with us, with women of afghanistan, with people of afghanistan. and they are really understanding what the situation is on the ground. where we are disappointed from the taliban authorities, especially from the hardliner authities, that they not belong to afghanistan, they do not understand people of afghanistan, they do not have the knowledge of what is going on, the situation on the humanitarian crisis in afghanistan. as i was individually in very hard moment --

everybody left afghanistan. everybody. but still i was supported and evacuated and i spent one year in norway with. good -- with very good support. i was shifted here in canada. when these international organizations are not working with afghanistan, there will be a dilemma. a dilemma that the humanitarian might not have such an example of it. taliban are ignorant. they are not understanding what is going on. injecting $40 million casmoney afghanistan and a good some of this money is going to their pockets.

they have a good life. they are bearing for the second time, third time, fourth time. they don't understand the people of afghanistan are suffering. juan: i wanted to ask you, what is been the response of the massive afghani men to the latest acts of t taliban, especially young men and afghanistan? have therisen up in protest at all or expressed solidarity with the women who are being put under this almost fascistic rule? >> afghan men also stand in solidarity with afghan women and some of the university -- refused to go for their final exam because of the announcement came right on the last day of the final examination. some of the boys, some of the

students walked out from the examination. and some joined the protest. but the taliban was very harsh, very brutal with them, especially in kandahar and some other provinces. forced beating, killing most of that is why the situation is very hard. you can see even the journalists are not also protected from any kind of coverage of the scenario. but yesterday and the day before kabul andome other provinces, men and women stand on the top of their roof and they were shouting for the right of women. in the darkness, from the f ear of beating and killing. this is the situation that is very bad. even we had a lot of good

support from prinent scholars of afghanistan about the support of women's participation in education and empowerment and their employment, they stood beside us and invited taliban for religious dialogue. i am also inviting taliban for religious dialogue. if it is sharia, we need to know what type of sharia their understanding. it is totally different. we are inviting them to the table and discusabout the aria. we will bring men and women to discuss wi them to find out what is the reason. but this type of acne rents, this type -- ignorance, this type of ban of women in

afghanistan, that is totally ignorant. my question for the taliban, -- with their own mothers and sisters? they are putting blame on the women of afghanistan that they are not moral, they're doing some active immoralities. this is such a big shame stop you're putting this on the name of all women of afghanistan? this is such a big shame. all men and women of afghanistan are fine people. before taliban, they were muslim , they are muslim now and they will remain muslim after taliban . this is too much for us. amy: we want to thank you, jamila afghani, for joining us, afghan education -- educator and women's rights activist. leads the afghantan section of the women's international league for peace and freedom. founder of the noor educational

and capacity development organization. jan egeland, is it your sense that there is a division within the afghan leadership that this could turn around? >> yes. it is very clear this is the hardliners who wanted this. they have the upper hand now. we cannot reverse it. we must reverse it. then we can start to resume work but we need to do it with our femaleolleags. amy: there are how many afghan colleagues at your organization, their new regent refugee council, out of how many? >> one third of our staff of our 1400, 1500 aid workers are female. they are highly personal, highly committed, working very hard, the breadwinner of their family. we need them to be able to communicate with and work with the afghan people. amy: jan egeland, secretary

general of the norwegian refugee council, speaking to us from oslo, norway. next up, pandemic poverty. stay with us. ♪♪ [music break]

amy: "you're not alone" by allison russell featuring brandi carlile. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with juan gonzalez. as we end today's show looking at some of the people who are falling through the cracks of the social safety net during the pandemic and how they are coping. they are the focus of a new series of video reports by the economic hardship reporting project and the intercept called "insecurity" that look at women leaving the work force, the impact of the expanded child tax credit, and the wave of union organizing. each day this week a new report will be published.

this series narrated by longtime award-winning journalist ray suarez, who will join us in a minute. >> i haven't covering the news for more than 40 years -- i have been covering the news for more than 40 years. hillary clinton. before that, pbs and npr. when al jazeera suddly collapsed, i shoved down my panic. i kept one eye on my dwindling bank balance and staed to freelance and kept another eye out for the next big thing. when i lost my job, my wife and i had to make the tough decision , especially around the cost of health care. for that and other reasons, i have become particular interested in the pandemic and life in america itself. i teamed up with the economic hardship reporting project and the intercept to tell the story

of people on the front lines, people facing different struggles. amy: that's a clip from the introduction to the new series "insecurity." one of the episodes this week focuses on eshawney gaston working multiple jobs but still unable to afford to live on her own with her newborn son. this is another clip. >> i have had different jobs over the years. i have been in the health-care care industry, nursing aide, in homemade. i've been in fast food, mcdonald's, burger king, waffle house. >> none of those jobs have paid enough or her to have her own place, so to survive she lives with her mother and son who was born premature. >> my son came out with issues so we have a lot of specialists and go to the doctors a lot. trying to juggle being a mom, a job. it is a struggle. amy: for more we're joined in

washington, d.c., by the host of "insecurity," ray suarez longtime journalist and an author who is also the host of the radio program and podcast called "on shifting ground." joining us from new york is alissa quart, executive director of the economic hardship reporting project and author of "squeezed: why our families can't afford america." her new book coming out soon, "bootstrapped: liberating ourselves from the american dream." we last had her on with the late great barbara enright. we welcome you both back to democracy now! ray, take it from those two clips we just heard where you tell your own story and then tell the story -- well, have women themselves telling their own stories about pandemic poverty. what motivated you to do this? >> well, when the crushing economic impact of the pandemic again, the government did step

forward and try to put in some emergency provisions to cushion the worse of the blow, whether it was amnesty on repayment of student as, help with rent and mortgage, stopping people being ejected from their housing. there were attempts made but part of the problem that we see across the series with eshawney, katie, lisa, is programs are not meshing with people's real lives. they are insufficient, completely shield people from the worst lives of the downdrafts under the american economy right now. we illustrate how. juan: ray, we recently saw the new centers for disease control and prevention statistics about life expectancy in the united states at a 2.5 year drop in

life eectancy since the start the pandemic. and even though since 2021 was supposedly a economic rebound, life expectancy continue to plummet. your reaction to -- has what has impact been now on the american people not only the pandemic, but the failures of our safety net? >> this is the perfect illustration of how these attempts to help people in need brought about by the pandemic just were insufficient, did no go far enough. in the case of the decline in life expectancy, one of the effects of the pandemic was to keep people out of hospitals. keep people from getting regular treatment for already existing chronic conditions. so people were not getting their cancer screenings regularly. people were not getting colonoscopies regularly. the despair, the mental health

problems that we saw during the pandemic often went untreated. so we have seen a spike in suicides. we have seen a spike in drug overdoses. and those two big drivers, those deaths of despair, two big drivers of that client in life expectancy for americans. juan: and your series focuses largely on women. could you talk about the decision to do that in the series? >> the old cliché is they hold up half the world but really they were picking up a lot more than half of the work. we see in the first installment that is available starting today, lisa, social worker in the new york area, and how an unseen part of this problem, something called administration burden, falls so heavily on women, falls heavily on immigrant groups with perhaps

less experience in navigating bureaucracies that are sometimes set up just to make it really hard to get the benefits that american workers are promised as part of the social contract. so women, it turns out, they may hold up half the sky, but they carry more than half of the weight in a lot of these areas. amy: let's go to lisa ventura the talk about, you profile in it episode of "insecurity," talking about the barriers in order to obtain social services for everything from housing to food. >> grew up on welfare in section 8. recertification packet. as a kid, you have to translate from english to spanish and i just had to learn how to do that, how to navigate that.

>> lisa has dedicated her professional and personal life to wading through the social service bureaucracy. what she is expensing, the battle to obtain social benefits, has a name most of the administrative burden. it is all the paperwork and red tape that blocks people from the help they need. amy: another excerpt of this excellent series called "insecurity" that is done with the intercept and the economic hardship reporting project, which alissa quart is the director of. why do you collaborate from there, why lisa is a part of this story, as well as the woman we are about to introduce, katie. >> lisa and katie were contributors to the economic rdship repting project. they wrote about their experiences during the pandemic. what we do, we find voices, develop them, supportive

canonically, and -- economically and then publish. lisa had never published before. she was experiencing this incredible burden, redpe burden. either she could not get services for families, working as a social worker. a lot of labor that women did during the pandemic and don general that is unrewarded, unsupported. child tax credit was supposed to help with that, it did for a while and it was lost. her story is important about what a lot of women had experienced. katie was another writer who came with us about a sry of not being able to access therapy and psychiatry which had a mental health crises during the pandemic. she is a profound example of what i meant in particular often suffer, where they could get through medicaid, insurance,

therapy in general is very costly and rare to find service. katie saw one therapist on her an and was ghosted by that person. a lot of struggle here with depression and anxiety. we don't really have the resources right now to get the help we need the mental health care. that was the story i wanted to develop. that is why we included katie. amy: let's hear katie's story in her own words, this clip from an episode of "insecurity" focusing on mental health and health care. as you described katie struggling to find a psychologist. katie prout decides to do community outreach activities to help with her mental health. >> katie found an outlet, a sense of purpose by helping people suffering from substance abuse. >> i would go down to the south loop and hand out harm reduction

supplies. as i got to know people, they would talk about their lives. people would open up about their own emotional turbulence. >> through those conversations, katie unexpectedly got advice for where to find a psychiatrist that accepts medicaid. >> i felt lucky to be able to find the psychiatrist when i did, but it was like a better chance of luck because you should not have to need luck in order to get your needs met. amy: that is katie prout. alissa quart, you mentioned medicaid. many millions of people are going to fall off medicaid in this next year. talk about the significance of this and how it shaped so much of what katie was dealing with during the pandemic. >> to be fair, she was on medicaid and could not access therapy. it is going to be much worse

when people are kick off. that is happening -- will happen at greater levels. we mentioned earlier the administration burden, the burden that was by design to prevent many americans from accessing things they are eligible for. during the pandemic, people weren't able to access medicaid, -- people did not have to recertify. now that that is all changed, we'll be back to try to certify the people who are losing their medicaid. that will add to illnesses, mental health crises, and other health crises that will inflict people so we should keep our eyes out for that. the point of the film, the pandemic has a legacy for people. but there's also hope, and we can get to that, too. in the clip we just showed with katie, in helping other people

she helped her sell. that is one of the messages i hope "insecurity" will give the viewer. juan: i would like to get back to ray for a second. i think was barely a decade ago, i remember covering some of the earlier protests for $50 an hour minimum wage -- $15 hour minimum wage. some of my colleagues said it was pie-in-the-sky. today, $15 an hour in many states is far from sufficient to be able to have any kind of decent living. i am wondering your view on how in some states the federal minimum wage is minimum wage and what the minimum wage should be in this country for workers? >> the living wage, as you note, something that is not paid in a lot of places. in our episode with eshawney

gaston is a beautiful illustration of that. she was at the time we came into her life working two full-time jobs and not clearing $30,000 a year. that kind of low-wage work, chronic low-wage work mix eligible for various kinds of programs -- medicaid, women with infant children wic programs, she gets support for special needs for her boy. but who is subsidizing eshawney gaston? these are often called entitlements, these programs. and people resent it. they talk about people who don't want to work. eshawney was working 80 hours a week. but those low wages being paid by her two bosses were being subsidized by the taxpayers of the united states. they were able to pay a wage that does not provide enough

sustenance for eshawney and her child and the federal government makes up the gap. the people who are buying the picture frames that she was packing at one of her jobs, buying the chicken so much is she was making at another one of her jobs, they are being subsidized. there cheap chicken soldiers and low cost picture frames are in fact cheap for them to buy because the employers themselves don't have to bear the cost of getting this work done. we really have to look that in the face, who is benefiting from chronic low wages? it is not the worker. it is not necessarily the public -- i mean, you and i are paying the gap for eshawney and millions of workers like her. who's being subsidized is the

employer who does not have to pay a living wage. amy: yet what gives eshawney hope is obviously not the level of hours she is working, the number of jobs she has, but organizing, pushing for unitization, pushing the fight for $15 with a community activist group she says she will devote her life to, ray. >> it has given her a sense of purpose. it has given her a crusade to become a leader in and find her own voice as a leader, rallying workers in these two low paid fast food industry to get representation that will help them pay for benefits, and also fight for higher hourly wage. amy: -- >> and she is getting a sense of purpose, getting a political education, and also fighting to

put food on her own table. it is a very inspiring story. juan: alissa art, we hear a loabout the great resignation in recent years and this paradox on one hand is a labor shortage d yet, especially among older workers, more and more people dropping out of the workforce. what has this series told you about this whole issue of the great resignation? >> well, we have two instances. one person who did quit -- and you will find out about that. she was burned out. and another, eshawney, who could not afford to quit. the great resignation, we have to look at who is quitting and who isn't. she is not quitting. she is working whatever job she can get. and often the people who are leaving have to take care for children. i think the whole story that the great resignation is this radical moment, i mn, we like

the story, but we should look at why -- you and why people are leaving. like who can and who can't and what in the end it will mean for us. people like eshawney, she will take what she can get and she is not part of the great resignation because she has a son she has a son she has to take care of. amy: rate, what you take from this? >> that people who work hard and work always to make a living know what's up in the biggest lie we tell ourselves is americans don't want to work hard. amy: ray suarez, thank you for doing this, and all of your work over the decades, longtime, award-winning journalist, host of the new series by economic hardship reporting project and intercept called "insecurity" launching a new episode each day, looking at pandemic

poverty. and alissa quart, executive director of the economic projecd author of "squeezed: why our families can't afford america." her forthcoming book, "bootstrapped: liberating ourselves from the american dream." a very happy belatedxxxxxúó>ñz■0

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