A few years ago in 2022, I spoke about my experiences with being poor, having low wages, and food insecurity at the March on Washington Poor People’s Campaign in DC with my mother. This is the transcribed version of my speech. I wanted to include it in this blog because it is a time I felt empowered to use my voice about my experience growing up in a poor household. The way I grew up influences how I look at the American Dream, the American government, and its involvement in welfare.
My Transcript
Hatso, I am Kateri Daffron from Oklahoma. I’ve experienced and lived in an impoverished community all my life. I grew up in Anadarko, Oklahoma where there are jobs that lack the guarantee of living wages. This caused my family to experience food insecurity, job instability, and poverty. In one of the most successful countries in the world, we are barely getting by. Although I have moved away, I am still in poverty. I can’t leave poverty. I am 17, a child, and yet the country has already failed me. This is wrong. I a child, shouldn’t have to worry about whether or not my family is going to be able to pay the rent this month. I shouldn’t have to worry about whether the SNAP benefits will be enough to feed me and my family. I am not old enough to vote, yet I am one of the many teenagers experiencing this justice. I shouldn’t be the one to have to carry this burden. How do you expect me to contribute to your American Dream when I don’t even know if I will have a home next week? I don’t want handouts. I want a fair and equal shot and until then, we won’t be silenced anymore.
Although I felt vulnerable delivering this speech in front of thousands of strangers, I felt empowered and heard on that stage, because I knew many people could relate to my experience. At this point, I had not had many public speaking experiences outside of clubs and school. I believed that the American Dream was a collective dream, a standard of how average Americans are expected to live. Additionally, I wanted to use my voice about poverty to call for economic equity. My experiences shapes how I think about the American Dream, that not everyone achieves the American Dream due to systemic equality and history of oppression of groups of people. I intend to keep using my voice about economic inequality and the importance of equity and justice as the solution by learning about the American Dream and how others fit into it.