Anna Graves
Anna Graves is a retired ESL teacher and former clinical social worker of 25 years. She resides in Berkley with her husband, Jim Barnard. Click here to follow Anna on Twitter. Click here to view her March photos on Facebook.
UPDATE: After marching 105 miles, Anna had to leave the March on March 18 for health reasons and is recovering from her home in Berkeley.
Why I March:
I graduated from high school in 1965. I always thought I had received a good education. At the time California’s education system was considered the best in the country, if not the world. Today our dropout rate only gets higher and higher. Our education system is now one of the country’s worst-funded.
I graduated with a masters degree in social welfare in 1978, not long after Proposition 13 was passed. All everyone talked about at the graduation ceremony was how all these social services were about to disappear. Indeed, from ’78 to ’81, when I was a clinical social worker in San Francisco working with the chronically mentally ill, I saw the difference. At that time we did not have the epidemic of homelessness we have today. We didn’t have cardboard villages under bridges and men sleeping in parks. The mentally ill could get services in the community.
In the early 1980s we were shocked to learn that some of our clients would go parts of the month without shelter. The problem got worse throughout the ‘80s. Today, we have veterans returning home who aren’t getting support for post traumatic stress disorder. Many end up homeless. Our society should and can be better than this.
I am marching because we need to restore the most basic services we expect from our government. As someone who grew up in small town California, it appeals to me that we’re following in the footsteps of Cesar Chavez. It’s a wonderful opportunity for the public to see the faces behind the services we all take for granted.