(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Top Comments: Linda Tirado [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-26 Warning: Tonight’s topic is pretty depressing. Feel free to skip to the comments. But first, a word from our sponsor! Top Comments recognizes the previous day's Top Mojo and strives to promote each day's outstanding comments through nominations made by Kossacks like you. Please send comments (before 9:30pm ET) by email to topcomments@gmail.com or by our KosMail message board . Make sure that you include the direct link to the comment (the URL), which is available by clicking on that comment's date/time. Please let us know your Daily Kos user name if you use email so we can credit you properly. If you send a writeup with the link, we can include that as well. The diarist poster reserves the right to edit all content. Please come in. You're invited to make yourself at home! Linda Tirado’s fame began, ironically, with a post about poverty. Her response to victim-blamey questions about poor people “making bad decisions” was a viral post that launched her into a career in journalism and a deal for her brilliant book, Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America. I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don't pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing? It's not like the sacrifice will result in improved circumstances; the thing holding me back isn't that I blow five bucks at Wendy's. It's that now that I have proven that I am a Poor Person that is all that I am or ever will be. It is not worth it to me to live a bleak life devoid of small pleasures so that one day I can make a single large purchase. I will never have large pleasures to hold on to. There's a certain pull to live what bits of life you can while there's money in your pocket, because no matter how responsible you are you will be broke in three days anyway. When you never have enough money it ceases to have meaning. I imagine having a lot of it is the same thing. Her strong sense of justice stayed with her — and now, in a painful irony, that’s about to cost Tirado her life. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the George Floyd murder, Tirado was in the streets, getting the story right. While she was visibly wearing her press credential, Minneapolis police shot her in the eye with a “non-lethal” rubber or sponge bullet. In addition to losing the eye, she suffered traumatic brain injury. She continued speaking out and fighting the good fight while struggling with brain injury. On Twitter, she was known for connecting people in need with people who could help them. Last week Tirado, just 42 years old with a husband and two children, entered hospice care. "But I don't feel lucky, or unlucky," she added. "I feel nothing but joy and peace and pain and fear, all of it all at once so that it bleeds into itself and can only be described as emotion raw and pure and beautiful and perfect, and also fleeting." Defiant to the last, Tirado posted on Xitter a few days ago: Hi it’s me Thanks for all the lovely wishes Here’s what to do with that energy: hit up your next local council meeting and give them hell for me Tell them I said I sent you <3 On to Top Comments! No submissions tonight! Folks, please remember to send those awesome comments in! Top mojo, courtesy of mik: Picture quilt remains borked. No, I didn’t accidentally destroy it while trying to aim space lasers at Marjorie Taylor Green’s shoes, and any rumors to the contrary are slanderous. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/26/2248079/-Top-Comments-Linda-Tirado?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/