Nikki McLean
Portland Organizing to Win Economic Rights
Portland, Maine
My name is Nikki McLean. I'm 60 years old and I come from Portland, Maine, where I've been an active POWER member for over five years. I could fill a book with all the economic rights violations I've experienced, and that still wouldn't tell it all. But I'm here today to testify on the rights to basic utilities.
As a single mother with four children, no matter how hard I worked we were always poor. If I could keep a roof over our heads I considered us lucky. I was always juggling, paying one bill one month, and another the next. But there was always more bills than money, and time and again, they cut us off. I can't count how many times we've had the lights, the gas, or the phone cut off. Or how many times we had no heat or hot water because I couldn't afford to put oil in the furnace.
“I'm from Maine and it gets damn cold in the winter, sometimes well below zero...Not having heat is like a form of torture”
Now I'm from Maine and it gets damn cold in the winter, sometimes well below zero. Not having heat is like a form of torture. No matter how many layers you put on, you can't shake the cold. Your bones ache and you're always getting sick. Condensation freezes on the walls so bad you can write in the frost. Things like cooking oil and dish soap and toothpaste freeze. The water in the toilet freezes. The pipes freeze and sometimes break. But where I come from, going without heat is all too common. In fact, any member of our group's delegation can tell you what it's like, because we've all been through it.
More times than I care to remember I've had to go down to City Hall or General Assistance and practically beg them to get any help. They make you show all your bills and pay-stubs, and receipts for everything. Sometimes they help you and sometimes they don't. Either way they they act like you're taking money from their own pockets, and treat you like you're lower than dirt.
One time when my kids were still young, we ran out of oil and the City wouldn't help us. Things were real rough then. It was the dead of winter, and my kids and I were freezing. We moved into the kitchen and tried to keep warm the best we could by lighting the oven. This turned out to be a big mistake. The gas fumes didn't affect me or my two older children. But my Benny was born premature, and his lungs weren't fully developed. I didn't realize those fumes were basically killing him, until one night during a terrible snow storm, he stopped breathing. I almost lost him.
I was terrified. The phone was cut off, so we had to run out in the street and yell for help. The neighbors called for an ambulance, but it was in the middle of a bad snow storm and nobody would come for us, not even the police. Then by the grace of God somebody in a cab heard what was happening over the scanner and told the driver to come get us instead. It was practically a miracle. I didn't even have money to pay the fare, but the cab driver had a good heart and took us anyways. We got Benny to the hospital just in time.
Then, while we were on the waiting list for public housing, we had to stay in a real hell hole. At first it seemed decent enough, that is, until winter came. The heat was supposed to be included in the rent, but as it turned out the furnace wasn't even connected to the apartment. By that time I was just too tired to risk moving again and being homeless. So we stayed. Every winter we'd turn up the burners on the stove and huddle around it to keep warm. You could draw pictures in the frost on the walls. The pipes would freeze off and on and we'd have no running water. One time the pipes burst wide open and there was water and raw sewage running all through the place. It was dreadful. At that point I'd about had it.
When we finally got into public housing, I was just about at the end of my rope. Ten years we wound up waiting on that housing list. And after all we'd been through, it felt like winning the lottery.
In this rich country, it's inhumane that anyone has to live this way. There's no reason for it. All we ever needed was just enough for the basics, to live decent, like human beings. It sickens me to think that my government spends billions bombing other countries but won't even spare a dime to keep it's own people from freezing. And I'm not going to let them get away with it. For as long as there's a breath in this body I'm going to keep on fighting for our rights.