At this point I think nothing but direct action is going to do anything — we need to have actual boots on the ground and bodies there. It’s a risk, but at this point I’m literally homeless living in my car — that’s a risk I have to take.
Steve lost his job as a bartender at the Hyatt in Vancouver in mid-March, and applied for unemployment shortly after. His claim was held up for several weeks, and he had to start working for DoorDash to afford food, insulin, and his car payment.
He was staying with a friend who was immunocompromised, and had to move out because he couldn’t risk bringing home the virus, so he’s now living in his car and continuing to drive for DoorDash despite being at-risk due to diabetes.
He already wasn’t getting payments but on Sunday he was asked to verify documentation & he uploaded it within half an hour – but he’s heard nothing back, now has a new adjudication on his account, and when he was finally able to get through the phone line this week, they told him they couldn’t do anything about his case because he now had a fraud flag on his account, so this may add additional weeks to the weeks he was already waiting to get his case individually adjudicated. He’s been told it may be up to 10 weeks before he gets through.