Save the Evan Fowlers
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Ali Velshi reads an exerpt of my email on MSNBC
I'm including the full, unedited email to them here because it provides all of the necessary context (with jokes! And typos!).
Hey, guys,
My name is Evan Fowler. I am/was a comedian, event host, and MC in Atlanta, GA. Live events. All of my work involves basically taking large groups of drunk yuppies, stuffing them into as tight and cramped a space as possible, and then trying to keep them vaguely entertained so that they don't turn on each other. This is the grand unspoken secret of all live entertainment, really. Obviously, none of that is possible anymore. Therefore, as you can imagine, 2020 has completely ruined me. I mean, I was already poor (I mean, about half of stand-up gigs pay in literal chicken), but this horrible, nightmarish year has left me a single baby-step away from homelessness.
Even if they hadn't cancelled all live events from March-till-forever, I still would've had to go into long-term quarantine, because I am the sole caretaker for my elderly, disabled, diabetic, kidney-failing, heart-diseased Mother. Also, I am immuno-compromised due a near-fatal bout with genetic pancreatitis that almost killed me a few years back, necessitating the removal of 87% of my pancreas, and leaving me to recover in a hospital bed for thirteen months. Yep, good times. Anyways, I mention all of this just to be clear that I literally cannot leave this quarantine until it is safe (unless the CDC eviction moratorium expires, in which case, I guess we'll just die?). So, when they passed the CARES ACT, and because I am a gig worker, I signed up immediately. The $600 expansion was a godsend (not to mention, to a lesser extent, the 1200). It kept the rent paid, let us buy groceries, and cover all of the bills without having to fear... well... exactly what happened when the money ran out. See, without the expansion, I get $150 a week in PUA unemployment. That's it. We have no savings. We have no family to borrow from. Gig workers aren't even eligible for state UI. The expansion expired and we hit a wall.
Immediately, we had to cut groceries in half, because I didn't know when they'd pass the next relief package, so I had to save for as much rent as possible. That's when the hunger started. Groceries are more expensive when you order them anyway, right? So, half the groceries at twice the price. Great. That lasted just long enough for us to get kind of used to one meal a day, then it was either cut it in half again or stop paying bills. $150 a week doesn't last remotely as long as Republican Senators seem to believe it does. Or was it the $1200 that I was supposed to budget to last the rest of the year? Regardless, things just got thinner and thinner (almost a pun! Get it? Because we're starving. Ah, starvation puns, the last handhold to sanity for the malnourished comedian) until we had to stop paying rent and submit the CDC form to our apartment complex. They're still demanding money, but I'm almost comically incapable of doing anything to get it for them. I can't leave! It's insane.
You know, the thing that really kills me, that makes my vision cloud with hopelessness, is that I've spent most of this year listening to people tell me that they will not let me go over a cliff. That's all I've heard from politicians this year. "Don't worry. It's not your fault. We got this. We won't let it happen." They just say it and say it, like some kind of Orwellian mantra, while the cliff gets closer and closer. Then we go off the cliff. Know what's beneath the cliff? More cliffs. Deeper cliffs. First it was the expiration of the 600 that they said they wouldn't let expire. It expired. Then Trump did his weird executive order thing and we got a little boost, but that only served to pay the rent for a month and give us another couple of weeks of 1/4 groceries. This was the beginning of a relentless series of missed deadlines, continued false promises, and exhortations of helplessness. Following it closely has been one of the most harrowing, gut-wrenching things I have ever experienced in my life. And remember, this is coming from a man who LITERALLY had his guts ripped out. This was worse than that, because this isn't just happening to me. At the same time that I'm going through this, we've had to watch in abject horror as hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans die horribly. Even worse, we've had to watch the whole thing turn political and then watch the tragically misinformed arrogantly march directly into the jaws of death. It feels like a horror movie. Not to mention the acute personal fear of that fate for my Mom and I. It's basically my worst fear, at this point. Dying alone in a hospital bed, in a plastic room, unable to see loved ones, surrounded by nurses in spacesuits whose faces I cannot see. If someone were to devise the worse death for us, they would make this year.
It's a truly terrible thing to dangle over ruin for a year only to finally be dropped. And all of it for no good reason. That's where we are, though. Did I mention that they're turning off the $150 next week? Yep. We're going to be literally penniless for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then, when we're literally starving, we will be evicted. I don't know what to do. We have nowhere to go. We have nothing to appeal to. The stimulus was everything. EVERYTHING. It's not just me either. More than half of my friends and co-workers are in the same position. None of us know what to do. Luckily for them, though, they don't have the same kind of responsibilities and added dangers I do. For my Mom and I, January 1st feels like an execution date. It's like we've been sentenced to the death penalty just for the crime of being Americans.
To be clear, I get why we're here. I understand that the HEROES ACT passed the House months and months and months ago. I understand the "reasons" for it not passing and I've followed the stimulus negotiations close enough to realize why they're going nowhere. I get it, but what's going to happen to us? Here's a question that seems simple enough to me: if nothing passes until the new year and the CDC moratorium expires Jan 1st, with all of us having depleted the laughably inadequate $150-200 weekly checks that we've all been trying and failing to live on, and 30 million people are suddenly homeless and starving on the streets in the middle of winter/pandemic/flu season, then won't that make the virus about a thousand times worse? Doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of "holding out to crush the virus"? Do they even realize how bad this is going to be?
So, I guess, my other question is, do you know what I should do? Where should we turn now? I'm feeling more and more like a cornered animal (not gonna bite people, don't worry) and I just truly don't know what to do. I watch your show all the time and you and your staff are clearly much smarter than I, so I put the question to you. What do we now?
Any and all advice would be eternally appreciated.
Thank you,
Evan Fowler
I'm including the full, unedited email to them here because it provides all of the necessary context (with jokes! And typos!).
Hey, guys,
My name is Evan Fowler. I am/was a comedian, event host, and MC in Atlanta, GA. Live events. All of my work involves basically taking large groups of drunk yuppies, stuffing them into as tight and cramped a space as possible, and then trying to keep them vaguely entertained so that they don't turn on each other. This is the grand unspoken secret of all live entertainment, really. Obviously, none of that is possible anymore. Therefore, as you can imagine, 2020 has completely ruined me. I mean, I was already poor (I mean, about half of stand-up gigs pay in literal chicken), but this horrible, nightmarish year has left me a single baby-step away from homelessness.
Even if they hadn't cancelled all live events from March-till-forever, I still would've had to go into long-term quarantine, because I am the sole caretaker for my elderly, disabled, diabetic, kidney-failing, heart-diseased Mother. Also, I am immuno-compromised due a near-fatal bout with genetic pancreatitis that almost killed me a few years back, necessitating the removal of 87% of my pancreas, and leaving me to recover in a hospital bed for thirteen months. Yep, good times. Anyways, I mention all of this just to be clear that I literally cannot leave this quarantine until it is safe (unless the CDC eviction moratorium expires, in which case, I guess we'll just die?). So, when they passed the CARES ACT, and because I am a gig worker, I signed up immediately. The $600 expansion was a godsend (not to mention, to a lesser extent, the 1200). It kept the rent paid, let us buy groceries, and cover all of the bills without having to fear... well... exactly what happened when the money ran out. See, without the expansion, I get $150 a week in PUA unemployment. That's it. We have no savings. We have no family to borrow from. Gig workers aren't even eligible for state UI. The expansion expired and we hit a wall.
Immediately, we had to cut groceries in half, because I didn't know when they'd pass the next relief package, so I had to save for as much rent as possible. That's when the hunger started. Groceries are more expensive when you order them anyway, right? So, half the groceries at twice the price. Great. That lasted just long enough for us to get kind of used to one meal a day, then it was either cut it in half again or stop paying bills. $150 a week doesn't last remotely as long as Republican Senators seem to believe it does. Or was it the $1200 that I was supposed to budget to last the rest of the year? Regardless, things just got thinner and thinner (almost a pun! Get it? Because we're starving. Ah, starvation puns, the last handhold to sanity for the malnourished comedian) until we had to stop paying rent and submit the CDC form to our apartment complex. They're still demanding money, but I'm almost comically incapable of doing anything to get it for them. I can't leave! It's insane.
You know, the thing that really kills me, that makes my vision cloud with hopelessness, is that I've spent most of this year listening to people tell me that they will not let me go over a cliff. That's all I've heard from politicians this year. "Don't worry. It's not your fault. We got this. We won't let it happen." They just say it and say it, like some kind of Orwellian mantra, while the cliff gets closer and closer. Then we go off the cliff. Know what's beneath the cliff? More cliffs. Deeper cliffs. First it was the expiration of the 600 that they said they wouldn't let expire. It expired. Then Trump did his weird executive order thing and we got a little boost, but that only served to pay the rent for a month and give us another couple of weeks of 1/4 groceries. This was the beginning of a relentless series of missed deadlines, continued false promises, and exhortations of helplessness. Following it closely has been one of the most harrowing, gut-wrenching things I have ever experienced in my life. And remember, this is coming from a man who LITERALLY had his guts ripped out. This was worse than that, because this isn't just happening to me. At the same time that I'm going through this, we've had to watch in abject horror as hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans die horribly. Even worse, we've had to watch the whole thing turn political and then watch the tragically misinformed arrogantly march directly into the jaws of death. It feels like a horror movie. Not to mention the acute personal fear of that fate for my Mom and I. It's basically my worst fear, at this point. Dying alone in a hospital bed, in a plastic room, unable to see loved ones, surrounded by nurses in spacesuits whose faces I cannot see. If someone were to devise the worse death for us, they would make this year.
It's a truly terrible thing to dangle over ruin for a year only to finally be dropped. And all of it for no good reason. That's where we are, though. Did I mention that they're turning off the $150 next week? Yep. We're going to be literally penniless for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then, when we're literally starving, we will be evicted. I don't know what to do. We have nowhere to go. We have nothing to appeal to. The stimulus was everything. EVERYTHING. It's not just me either. More than half of my friends and co-workers are in the same position. None of us know what to do. Luckily for them, though, they don't have the same kind of responsibilities and added dangers I do. For my Mom and I, January 1st feels like an execution date. It's like we've been sentenced to the death penalty just for the crime of being Americans.
To be clear, I get why we're here. I understand that the HEROES ACT passed the House months and months and months ago. I understand the "reasons" for it not passing and I've followed the stimulus negotiations close enough to realize why they're going nowhere. I get it, but what's going to happen to us? Here's a question that seems simple enough to me: if nothing passes until the new year and the CDC moratorium expires Jan 1st, with all of us having depleted the laughably inadequate $150-200 weekly checks that we've all been trying and failing to live on, and 30 million people are suddenly homeless and starving on the streets in the middle of winter/pandemic/flu season, then won't that make the virus about a thousand times worse? Doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of "holding out to crush the virus"? Do they even realize how bad this is going to be?
So, I guess, my other question is, do you know what I should do? Where should we turn now? I'm feeling more and more like a cornered animal (not gonna bite people, don't worry) and I just truly don't know what to do. I watch your show all the time and you and your staff are clearly much smarter than I, so I put the question to you. What do we now?
Any and all advice would be eternally appreciated.
Thank you,
Evan Fowler
Organizer
Evan Fowler
Organizer
Roswell, GA