Kentuckians aren't dumb. HB 5 is an attack on Kentucky's most vulnerable populations.
My grandmother was born near New Castle in 1911, the youngest of 9.
Her family moved to Indiana when she was five. She started school in a one-room school and completed through the 11th grade. She was the most educated person in her family. She hated being called a dumb Kentuckian.
Grandma was a young widow. My mom was 11 when they lost her father. Grandma was a single mother working odd jobs, but she was determined that her poverty wasn’t going to keep her daughter from going to college.
My mother was a hard working student. She graduated first in her class and won a scholarship to Indiana University and later went on to earn a Masters and other postdoc awards.
Because of the lives that she and my grandmother led, my mother is a firm believer that education is the great equalizer. It can work, when we invest in it. But we have to make education accessible to every young person—of every background and race and across all abilities—and celebrate the different gifts of each child.
I graduated from a public high school in Georgia in 1979. I moved to Kentucky in 1998 and I was able to buy a house with my own income. I achieved my dream because of the public education that my mother helped me value so highly.
Today I am medically disabled. My disability income is about half of what I was earning in 1998. If I lost my home today, I couldn't afford to buy another.
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These are all threads of my life. All of us have these threads. Hard work, hard luck, setbacks and hands up. That’s just life. We’re all out here living it best we can. The world is full of people who are thoughtful and brilliant and flawed.
The last thing any of us need is a bunch of lawmakers who dump on us when we’re down, and take away the tools we need to get back up. Unfortunately we’ve got too many of these legislators in power right now. Their goal is to stop government from working for all of us.
HB 5 is an attack on Kentucky's most vulnerable populations
If the legislators pass House Bill 5, I would become a criminal for being unhoused.
I hear the attacks on public education, poor salaries for teachers and lack of affordable housing. And I see the movement of HB 5 in the background. The legislature is attacking children, and people who have faced adversities that they can’t even imagine. They’re making the cracks that any of us could fall through so much wider.
And they’re doing this, all while legislative leaders are hoarding $3.7 billion in our Rainy Day Fund. These are public dollars for the public good, but lawmakers are setting them aside in their own tax cut fund.
Kentuckians aren’t dumb. We see what the legislature is doing.
Grandma moved to avoid being called a dumb Kentuckian. I wish I could afford to move too.
Melissa Perry is a former CPA, a resident of Louisville, and a member of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentuckians see what our legislature is doing. HB 5 hurts all of us.
