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cannabisrefugee-esq · 5 years

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Benefits Attorneys are Professional Gaslighters. Language Itself is Gaslighting. Discuss. Or Don’t, It Really Probably Doesn’t Even Matter.

March 29, 2019

I spent my entire brief career as an attorney trying to get income- and disability-based benefits for vulnerable people. It was a grueling and traumatizing career track that I realize now (and kind of realized at the time at different times) was based not in actually helping people by understanding their circumstances and getting people what they desperately needed, but in cruelly gaslighting them and wasting their time and energy doing “intakes” and whatnot when they could least afford the expense. I have written here before about one potential client that was referred to me by a medical provider because he said people were threatening and following him. Turns out, this man was quite mentally ill and was having delusions and it was left not up to his doctors (who palmed him off on me) but to me, a young attorney, to put the pieces together for him and to figure out what was really going on, but not before wasting a significant amount of his time.

Of course, even if there were people following and threatening him there is little to nothing a lawyer could’ve done about it. I told the man to call the police if he felt threatened, and as was the policy of the nonprofit I was working for at the time, got the man’s consent to speak with the referring medical providers about his “case” when what I really wanted to do was punch the lot of them in the mouth for failing their own patient so egregiously and palming him off on me like he was garbage and I was a can. Don’t even get me started on how much I hated that job. I wasn’t well liked either and after 10 months was invited to leave. To be fair, if I hadn’t needed the money myself, having just quit a perfectly good job at a for-profit law firm (which I also hated) in order to take that one, I would’ve quit my dream job at this nonprofit after a couple of weeks once I realized what really went on there, and that “case” with the elderly Spanish-speaking mentally ill man is a decent example of what a day at the office looked like there. Here’s another:

Another of my clients was a Spanish-speaking woman who was about as bad off as anyone can get. I had gleaned from the referral paperwork that she had a couple of young kids and was close to being homeless in New York City (or was on either side of the homeless/sheltered line at different times, which is so common, I don’t even remember now). For readers who have never attempted to survive there with no resources and no money, and so don’t know what it’s like, New York City is something like a concrete meat grinder, with Satan himself at the controls, and pimps and “mental health” enforcers in every nook and cranny soaking up the blood and making sure the victims — the “meat” if you will — are never allowed to fully die. To say that these living and working conditions were brutal only underscores the problems with language that I will attempt to address in this post. “Brutal” and in fact any word or word-combination does not even come close to describing the reality of what any of this was actually like for myself or surely for my clients. Hellish isn’t enough. Suicidal isn’t enough, but it’s close.

What I remember about this woman, besides the fact that I wasn’t able to give her anywhere near the kind or degree of help she actually needed, was that it was almost impossible to communicate with her. I didn’t speak Spanish but in that situation it wouldn’t have mattered: her normal speaking voice was literally screaming and what she was screaming were not even fully formed words. My employer utilized an expensive, top of the line translation service that provided telephone translation for dozens if not hundreds of languages but in this case the translator was unable to tell me what she was saying because he couldn’t understand her himself. She was just screaming, screaming, Jesus. If she hadn’t been referred to me by a medical provider, and if we hadn’t already been conducting the interview in a hospital setting I probably would’ve called 911. Medical and social services providers just swished past my open door like what was happening in there was completely normal and not an emergent medical issue, but from what I could tell it wasn’t a legal issue either so this woman received no help from me or anyone.*

I had no idea what to do or how to help this woman because my job was to get information from her, have her sign paperwork and to “get the ball rolling” on emergency, short and long-term legal services for her. What I know now, as a hopelessly ill and unresourced person myself, is that my even asking the questions and wasting her time insisting that she talk to me was just gaslighting her, and she surely did not have the energy and mental or physical reserves/resources to be gaslighted just then. What I know now, because I am mostly there myself, is that the only relevant question for someone in her situation is “Do you need protection from any man in particular, or just all men?” and the only relevant action on my or anyone’s part would be to then assume she needed EVERYTHING and to get her every benefit available with no further discussion or delay including shelter, food, medicine, childcare, peace and quiet, and a permanent place to rest her head.

Because that’s what all women and all oppressed people need, and the fact that she was alone in my office screaming was the only type and degree of communication I should’ve needed and the only kind she should’ve been expected to provide, but it doesn’t work that way. Also, I wasn’t a fucking social worker but referring her to one would’ve just been more gaslighting since they, along with her medical providers, were the ones who referred her to me in the first place, but they never actually told me why or hinted at how or why they thought the law could help. They probably just needed/wanted the incoherently screaming Spanish-speaking lady out of their hair. And on it goes.

Do you see what I am saying? Just asking oppressed people what their situation is is fucking gaslighting on its face when we know their situation is that they are oppressed and everything that flows from that including poverty and extreme physical and mental strain. Utilizing an expensive “translation service” means that providers can maybe sometimes — but not always — gaslight people in their own language but it does nothing to get them what they actually need, which is a respite from hell and an emergent, short and long-term plan to not be oppressed anymore. But that “plan” and that kind and degree of help does not exist nor will it ever. And in that situation with my client, we were both left with the impression that she received no help that day because of her failure to “communicate” with me but in reality, she was telling me everything I should’ve needed to hear. Just being there exhausted both of us because being gaslighted is exhausting and gaslighting oppressed people is exhausting, or at least it’s exhausting for providers who actually want to help but are stymied at every turn and all the straightaways too where “communication” and “information” is absolutely required to do our jobs but our clients are too far down the grief-hole or chronic illness-hole or hell-hole to give us what we need. Of course, there is no guarantee that benefits or services will be available at all depending on the information we receive.

I have noticed (and experienced firsthand) that particularly women don’t even ask for help until they are not just drowning but going down for the final time because particularly women know what happens when women ask for help of anyone, and that the “help” they need is just not there. They know their friends, families and communities are frequently unable or unwilling to help in any meaningful way if they are able to offer anything at all; they either know because they were never helped/supported at all from day one, or because they’ve already asked for help/support at different times and been denied. On some level I imagine women are also clued-into that fact — that there is no help available no matter how badly it’s needed and even if you ask — by the objective, observable reality that if this was a society that freely offered “help” this society would probably offer “help” meaning, food, shelter, medicine, childcare, peace and quiet and a permanent place to rest our head in the first place without us having to fucking ask for it.

And finally, I will point out that just asking for help under these conditions and all that “asking” requires is so depleting that it makes oppressed people legitimately need even more help even more than they needed it before. It makes them worse. There simply are no words for how evil and life-sucking and tragic this all is and that’s kind of the point: words fail. They fail women all the time.

*I hadn’t yet recognized that medical and social services providers often palmed hopelessly physically and mentally ill patients off on legal service organizations, nor had I realized that doctors seem to think that lawyers are fucking social workers but that’s probably what was going on there. My directors didn’t mind any of this because just getting warm bodies in the door equaled funding for their program whether we were able to actually help these people or not. I, of course, was only there because I wanted to “help people” and elevate both my soul and my career but I failed at all of that.

#male violence #corrupt cops and courts #lazy sexist cops #lil peep #girl interupted #social work #benefits #capitalist healthcare

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ayellowbirds · 7 years

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By STACY COWLEY MARCH 30, 2017

More than 550,000 people have signed up for a federal program that promises to repay their remaining student loans after they work 10 years in a public service job.

But now, some of those workers are left to wonder if the government will hold up its end of the bargain — or leave them stuck with thousands of dollars in debt that they thought would be eliminated.

In a legal filing submitted last week, the Education Department suggested that borrowers could not rely on the program’s administrator to say accurately whether they qualify for debt forgiveness. The thousands of approval letters that have been sent by the administrator, FedLoan Servicing, are not binding and can be rescinded at any time, the agency said.

The filing adds to questions and concerns about the program just as the first potential beneficiaries reach the end of their 10-year commitment — and the clocks start ticking on the remainder of their debts.

Four borrowers and the American Bar Association have filed a suit in United States District Court in Washington against the department.

The plaintiffs held jobs that they initially were told qualified them for debt forgiveness, only to later have that decision reversed — with no evident way to appeal, they say. The suit seeks to have their eligibility for the forgiveness program restored.

“It’s been really perplexing,” said Jamie Rudert, one of the plaintiffs. “I’ve never gotten a straight answer or an explanation from FedLoan about what happened, and the Department of Education isn’t willing to provide any information.”

The forgiveness program offers major benefits for borrowers, advocates say, to the point of persuading some people to take public service jobs instead of more lucrative work in the private sector. The program generally covers people with federal student loans who work for 10 years at a government or nonprofit organization, a diverse group that includes public school employees, museum workers, doctors at public hospitals and firefighters. The federal government approved the program in 2007 in a sweeping, bipartisan bill.

About 25 percent of the nation’s work force may qualify for the program, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimated. Eligibility is based on a borrower’s employer and whether it meets the program’s rules, not on the specific work an applicant does.

On its website, the Education Department directs borrowers who believe their employer qualifies to submit a certification form to FedLoan. If the form is approved, the Education Department transfers the borrower’s loans to FedLoan, which collects payments and tracks the borrower’s progress toward the 120 qualifying monthly payments they must make before the remaining balances will be forgiven.

Only a small fraction of the millions of workers who might qualify for the program have begun the process of using it. Fewer than 553,000 borrowers have submitted at least one certification form to FedLoan and received its approval, according to Education Department data. Borrowers are encouraged to submit a new certification form each year.

But some of those approved borrowers might get bad news because it is unclear whether the certifications are valid.

Mr. Rudert submitted the certification form in 2012 and received a letter from FedLoan affirming that his work as a lawyer at Vietnam Veterans of America, a nonprofit aid group, qualified him for the forgiveness program. But in 2016, after submitting his latest annual recertification note to FedLoan, he got a denial note.

The decision was retroactive, he was told. None of his previous work for the group would be considered valid for the loan forgiveness program.

What changed? Mr. Rudert said he did not know. After filing a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he received a reply from FedLoan saying that his application “had initially been approved in error.” He has not been told what the error was, and has not found any way to appeal the decision.

Mr. Rudert and the American Bar Association filed their suit in December, alleging that the Education Department acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in making its decisions about which employers qualified.

Last week, the department filed a reply that said that FedLoan’s responses to borrowers’ certification forms cannot be trusted.

A FedLoan approval letter “does not reflect a final agency action on the borrower’s qualifications” for the forgiveness program, the department wrote.

The idea that approvals can be reversed at any time, with no explanation, is chilling for borrowers. Mr. Rudert, who graduated from law school owing nearly $135,000 on student loans, said he would have picked a different employer if he had known that his work at Vietnam Veterans of America would not qualify.

A FedLoan spokesman would not comment on the case, referring questions to the Department of Education. A department spokesman also declined to comment on the suit or on any of the issues it raised, including whether any mechanism exists for borrowers to challenge a denial.

That lack of transparency has been a hallmark of the forgiveness program, said Natalia Abrams, the executive director of Student Debt Crisis, an advocacy group.

The program’s rules are complex. Only certain types of federal loans qualify, meaning that many borrowers need to restructure their debt to make it eligible — and the Education Department has done little to clarify gray areas, Ms. Abrams said.

No borrowers’ debts have been eliminated. Because 10 years of service are required, the first wave of qualified workers will be eligible to submit applications for debt forgiveness in October.

At that point, others whose certifications were approved by FedLoan could discover that the Education Department has a different position. Some employers clearly qualify — the definition of a “government organization” is fairly straightforward — but the rules for certain nonprofit organizations are harder to interpret.

“It’s kind of a no man’s land,” Ms. Abrams said. “We don’t know how this will pan out.”

Linda Klein, president of the American Bar Association, called the department’s response “illogical, untenable and bewildering.” An unreliable certification system “exposes those undertaking public service work — exactly what Congress intended them to do — to crippling financial risk,” she said.

Mr. Rudert left Vietnam Veterans of America in 2015 and now works at Paralyzed Veterans of America, helping former service members appeal denied applications for disability benefits.

The work is almost identical to what he did in his former job, Mr. Rudert said. Last year, FedLoan approved his certification request and deemed Paralyzed Veterans of America a qualified employer.

#long post

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