My DMs were open for the better part of three years.

I tried to help as many people as I could.

But, with every month, the suffering compounded. And more and more of the "safety net" was cut away.

Imagine how desperate you must be to ask an internet stranger for help

because you can't get the medical care you need or you can't feed your kid.

Imagine how hopeless it is to have no where else to turn but the DMs of some random lawyer on twitter. Just one person with no real resources other than some knowledge – no funding, no staff, no grants

...we're in a :much: better financial position now, but when all I was getting was my $783 a month from SSI, I'd sometimes send a mom $20 for groceries while I tried to figure out how to solve the SNAP problem bc I just couldn't let that kid go hungry. And there was no one else.

It kept getting worse as the Trump administration slashed and cut and burned their way through America's already inadequate social program. 'Social service providers' I had successfully connected people with started to exceed capacity or fold altogether.

And the government itself? Issues I used to be able to help people resolve with Social Security became impossible as the agency became not just cruel and intransigent but downright sadistic.

Medicaid agencies squeezed and squeezed until people choked.

We fought the systemic, policy fights too – I ran commenting campaigns to try to help defend Medicaid bc I knew the litigators could use them in court & maybe, just maybe, we'd help sway a federal judge. I lobbied on the hill, I did press, I wrote pieces.

But we were losing.

Not just on healthcare, we were losing on SSI, on SSDI, on SNAP – on all of the programs that make this country just a bit less cruel, a bit more survivable for those pushed to the margins.

We were running out of time.

At some point, the nightmares got to be too much – I had to close my DMs.

I threw myself into the policy fights - yes, because they mattered, because I could help far more people with even a marginal victory, but also to try to drown out the guilt.

The thing is (and you don't have to believe me, it's fine if you don't, because I won't violate anyone's privacy to "prove it") there are a non-trivial number of people who are okay because they DM'd me.

There are people who are alive because they DM'd me.

I'd already been in the policy fights, but I doubled down, I threw myself into them 200%

Because, in part, it was how I could deal with the guilt of knowing that even the internet stranger's DMs had closed

And we managed to hold the Trump admin off for longer than I dared hoped

But our time was running out.

And if Trump had won this election?

We were facing total defeat – Medicaid, SNAP, SSI, SSDI, LIHEAP, even CHIP - there's nothing they wouldn't destroy.

The suffering would have been unimaginable.

So, today, when @KamalaHarris & @JoeBiden declared victory?

I felt the kind of relief I've only ever known when I've been in deep trouble, life and death trouble, at one of the world's best hospitals and I found out I was going to make

I'm writing this to say how bad things were, how unimaginably bad things were, even before covid. How close we were to catastrophic defeat that would have caused just unimaginable suffering

I want to say that, publicly, as someone who was on the frontlines & in the policy fights

It's okay to feel relief today.
It's okay to feel relief today.
It's okay to feel relief today.

Because we weren't anointing saints, we were recognizing new elected leaders.

Leaders we will, undoubtedly, have policy disagreements with. But here's the thing...

We've spent the last four years fighting people who are, and I do not use this term lightly, evil. Malevolent.

With Donald Trump there was never anywhere to go – just evil.

But we know how to push Joe Biden to be better, that's a thing we can do, together.