2009- Dulce Galicia's Testimony

Dulce Galicia’s Testimony
Teach-In & Dialogue
Oakland, March 19, 2009

The situation we face…is not cleaning our streets of Richmond, or beautifying the city, or fixing the infrastructure of run-down schools. Those are all real problems, but when our community is not healthy, our city is not healthy.

I moved to Richmond as a Freshwoman in College when my parents decided to purchase a home in the East Bay. In Richmond, our residents are overwhelmingly people of color with persistent poverty and crime. In 2007, Richmond had 17.6% of residents with incomes below the poverty level. To contrast that, the percentage of Californian residents with incomes below the poverty level is 12.4%.  Statistics help convince or dissuade our policy makers, but when you are living the reality, you do not need statistics to tell you what is going on in your community.

As I walk down to Foods CO., there are at least ten foreclosure signs within five blocks. Homelessness and people looking for jobs is the reality. But as soon as it starts getting dark, people take refuge in their homes with their families. I had never lived in fear until I moved to Richmond. As a woman I am afraid to walk at night in the city of Richmond, and as a daughter, aunt and sister, I am afraid to loose my family. A block away from our house, my mother almost got shot coming home from work. I am speaking out of my lived experience. As a poor community, we are neglected a healthy community and cradled by injustice.

The neighborhood I live within Richmond is largely made up of Latinos. Latinos are less likely than any other ethnic group to have any form of medical insurance  and by the year 2042, we will make up California’s majority and currently, we make up 13.1 million, one-third of the state’s population.  We have a growing lack of health insurance among Latinos. It is reported that 1 out of 3 Latinos are uninsured by the U.S. Census Bureau.  Despite the high participation of Latinos in the labor force, a large and increasing number—especially children, have no health insurance or coverage.  My newborn nephew was uninsured during his first five months, and my sister did not know what to do. She struggled to get him insured. We come from a working class background-living paycheck by paycheck. There was no way that my sister or my parents could afford his coverage.

This brings me to another point: the main reason why many Latinos do not have health insurance is because they generally have lower incomes and their work is concentrated in the service industry working for companies that do not offer health insurance. 

What if my mother had been seriously injured when that man almost shot her at point blank range? How would we have been able to pay for my mami’s hospitalization? What if my nephew needed to be in an incubator for weeks or what if he needed special medical attention, what would we have done? We are denied healthy communities and our realities and experiences reflect that. Our community’s poverty is marginalizing, leaving us out of a just health care system.