Local View: Community support needed, not more police, prisons

Local View: Community support needed, not more police, prisons

I grew up not knowing how to ask for help. My parents worked tirelessly — five jobs between them — to give my brother and me a decent life. While they worked, we were left vulnerable, and I experienced abuse that would shape my early years in ways I didn’t understand at the time. I became a teen mom. When my son was diagnosed with a rare liver disease, our lives became a blur of medical appointments six hours from home. Working was impossible, a…