Thread by @keith_vartanian

A thread about my father;

My Dad is one of the healthiest guys I’ve ever known. Worked out 7 days/week, was a gymnast, played in a rock band, and was a practicing physical therapist.

In April of 2008, he should’ve died from an Aortic Dissection.

In May, he suffered a stroke.

That stroke left him paralyzed on the left side of his body.

After rehabbing relentlessly every day for months on end, he was up walking, moving his arm with limited mobility.

And he was fired from his clinical educator position from the New England Baptist Hospital.

Don’t get it wrong - his job was to educate newer PTs. They fired him because of his disability.

After a years-long settled lawsuit with a giant too big to topple, he decided he would get his PhD. Nobody would deny him a job then.

In 2015, I graduated with my bachelors, my father with his PhD.

Living on disability is hard. They give you a certain amount every month, but if you then make over another amount, they strip your disability completely. It keeps the sick at home and depressed.

My father has had a couple one-semester teaching positions over the years, but nothing substantial enough to justify losing the disability money. As a result, my father will stress over money until the day he dies, and my mom will work 3 jobs until the same to manage fallout.

We as a country need to rethink how we define someone’s value. My father was incredibly valuable in raising me. He was instrumental in his students lives, be it on his gymnastics teams, hospital wards, or high school science classrooms (he did that, too).

He is valuable because he is who he is - not how much he can input into our economic machine.

Only one candidate addresses these issues in a #humanityfirst way.

We need @AndrewYang.

My Father needs @AndrewYang.