From a Mother Jones interview with Barbara Ehrenreich

[firecat]

I'm incredibly fortunate never to have been laid off or fired, but many people close to me have, and this quote really speaks to me:

http://www.motherjones.org/interview/2006/06/ehrenreich.html

BE: There's a huge stigma attached to unemployment. People who have been laid off are very ashamed and depressed. There's a need to come together and overcome that shame. In those early meetings in the feminist movement of the seventies, people were ashamed to talk about having been raped. They were ashamed to talk about having been molested as a child. To be able to say that has happened to other people proved transforming. So let's bring it out, let's see what the problem is here.

TE: Isn't this the problem without a name again?

BE: Exactly. So I see the need for something at the same level of emotional involvement as in the early women's movement.

Comments

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

I just finished a year in which I was technically unemployed after being laid off after seven years with a company. I was pretty fortunate in some ways; I had savings, I live in a cheap place, I was working on my master's anyway so I just did a couple of things for that degree that needed to be done during the day. I also did some consulting.

The nice thing about it is to realize that I could be unemployed for an entire year, not have to cut down my lifestyle much, and still have savings at the end. Granted, I don't live in the Bay Area.