Leslie boyd

Candler, NC

I was mother to Mike Danforth. He was born on my 22nd birthday and he had a birth defect that left him vulnerable to cancer of the colon.  We did not know that when he decided to take a year off of college he would never be able to get insurance again. He applied for disability and it took 37 months. His first check came 9 days after he died.  This is what we are doing to people in this country now. We are starving them, we’re letting them die of preventable causes. We are forcing poor people into the military - I’m calling it the poverty draft. Society is a tapestry.  When you remove most of the threads, you can’t fix it by putting just one back. I’m not afraid of anything anymore. You took the most precious thing from me that could ever be taken and that was my child. I have to stand with my brothers and sisters who stand for education and the environment and voting rights. All of these things need to be restored every last one.