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It’s always great to see the Asian American community rally behind a political cause, especially in a case like this where we are making ourselves heard on an issue we are not traditionally recognized as supporting.

Asian American Lawyers Support Same-Sex Union

Rene Villaroman/Asianjournal.com

LOS ANGELES — A team of Asian American attorneys and advocates here and in San Francisco announced Wednesday, September 26th that a coalition of over 60 Local, State and National Asian American organizations will be filing a legal brief in support of equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples. The announcement was made by Karin Wang, a member of the legal team and Vice President of Programs of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC)

“By filing this brief, Asian American organizations are joining together in an unprecedented show of unity and support for equal marriage rights within Asian American community,” Wang said.

“Together, we want to send a strong message to the California Supreme Court that Asian Americans support a just and fair California for all members of our community.”

Explaining the history of the lawsuit, Tara Borelli, staff attorney of Lambda Legal, said that the filing “is extraordinary, and incredibly important to the clients in the case.” Borelli said that “at least 30 amicus briefs are going to be filed in support of (gay and lesbian) couples who seek to marry.”

Borelli explained that the quest for marriage equality began in February 2004, when then Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, announced that it would violate the State Constitution if it denied same-sex couples to marry.

“So the officials (of the City of San Francisco) began issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples from mid-February to mid-March 2004. Thousands of couples went to San Francisco to get married,” Borelli related.

Almost immediately after that, lawsuits were filed, including those by conservative religious groups, to end the issuance of marriage licenses.

In mid-March 2004, the California Supreme Court ordered that the issuance of licenses be stopped until this important issue could be decided upon. Several months later, in a heartbreaking moment, after thousands had entered the marriage institution, the court indicated that the question remains whether the Constitution guarantees that same-sex couples will be allowed to marry, and invalidated those marriages. Borelli said the court left some important questions open whether the Constitution guarantees marriage equality to same-sex couples.

This latest brief was filed in the consolidated California “Marriage Cases”, currently pending before the California Supreme Court. These are historic lawsuits urging California courts to end the exclusion of loving and committed same-sex couples from marriage. The same-sex couples and their supporters are asking the Court to uphold the State’s current law denying lesbian and gay persons the freedom to marry violates the Constitution’s guaranty of equality.

“The amicus brief filed today by the coalition of Asian American organizations seeks to support basic fairness for same-sex couples and their families, drawing from the Asian American community’s own past struggle with marriage discrimination in the State of California,” Ms. Wang said.

The amicus brief was supported by many of the nation’s largest and most prominent Asian American civil rights advocates, lawyers associations, social service organizations, and community groups. Supporting organizations represented nearly every major urban area in the state with a significant Asian American population, including San Francisco, the Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego.

Together, these organizations also reflect the broad diversity of the Asian American community, including Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, South Asian, and Southeast Asian organizations.

“Asian Americans have fought hard to achieve marriage equality that was denied to us on the basis of race,” said Robert Chang, Professor of Law at Loyola Law School (Los Angeles) and currently visiting at the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law.

“We must be committed to ensuring that history is not forgotten and that marriage equality is not denied to lesbian and gay Asian Americans or to the broader lesbian and gay community.”, Korean Resource Center (KRC) Executive Director Dae Joong Yoon of added, “KRC believes that every human being, regardless of immigration status, ethnicity, race, gender, age, and sexual orientation, should have access to equal rights. KRC supports efforts to achieve marriage equality and believes that same sex couples should have the same legal rights of marriage as a matter of respecting the civil and fundamental human rights guaranteed by the Constitution.”

Personally, I see no reason behind denying gay Americans the same legal protections as same-sex Americans, and I certainly do not believe that we should be legislating inequalities amongst citizens. Anti-miscegenation laws would have prevented me and electroman from being married less than a century ago based on our races; there is no reason why gay Americans should be prevented to marry based on their sexualities.

I have been torn over the question of whether legalizing same-sex marriage would impede upon freedom of religion in this country. If same-sex couples have the right to marry, would churches be required to marry same-sex couples seeking a religious union regardless of whether that particular religion condemns or condones homosexuality?

However, it occurs to me that churches have historically held inequal beliefs. Certain religions mistakenly sanctioned slavery and imperialism, and also refused to marry interracial couples, until the legal system intervened and established equal rights for all Americans. Churches in this country should have the freedom to practice their believes, but not the freedom deny others their civil rights.

Last week, Mr. Buchannan, wrote a column about his take on the VT Massacre. In it, Mr. Buchannan commits the ultimate in appropriating a national tragedy for political gains: he blames immigrants of colour.

Electroman (aka James) and I were so blown away by Mr. Buchannan’s illogical bloviating (I learned a new word today!), that we decided to respond.

The Dark Side of Diversity

Since the massacre of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech, the mainstream media have obsessed over the fact the crazed gunmen was able to buy a Glock in the state of Virginia.

Little attention has been paid to the Richmond legislators who voted to make “Hokie Nation,” a Middle American campus of 26,000 kids, a gun-free zone where only the madman had a semi-automatic.

Jenn: Okay, hold up, we have to stop here. First of all, what rock is Mr. Buchannan living under. For an entire month now, we’ve seen the NRA and the anti-gun people snipe at one another (pun intended) over guns on campus. Specifically, we’ve had to put up with the idiotic stance that more guns in classrooms makes for a safer and more open learning environment. Just stare at that sentence and let it sink in. 

James: That White man crazy. While I concur with your point about safety in classrooms, the most insulting part of this argument, to me, is that America already has an ongoing experiment where we allow thousands of unregulated, uncontrolled small arms to infiltrate small, closed-in populations. These small arms contribute to thousands of unsolved and ignored homicides every year. We call this experiment the inner city. If you want to know what happens when everyone gets to carry a gun, go to the hood.

Jenn: All I know is, the next time I want to debate evolution vs. creationism, I don’t want to have to worry about the God-fearin’ Appalachian grad student pulling out an AK to show me the true meaning of natural selection.

Almost no attention has been paid to the fact that Cho Seung-Hui was not an American at all, but an immigrant, an alien.

Jenn: The man was a permanent resident, green card holder!!! He’s about as close to American as one can get!!! He spent more than two-thirds of his life in this country!!! Aaargh!!!

Had this deranged young man who secretly hated us never come here, 32 people would heading home from Blacksburg for summer vacation.

What was Cho doing here? How did he get in?

Cho was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation’s doors open to the greatest invasion in history, an invasion opposed by a majority of our people. Thirty-six million, almost all from countries whose peoples have never fully assimilated in any Western country, now live in our midst.

Cho was one of them.

Jenn: Beware! Yellow Peril alert!

James: Actually, no. Pat’s racism notwithstanding, the media portrayal of Seung Cho hasn’t dealt with his alienation as a 1.5-generation American. When I watched his room-mates tell their story, it reminded me of students I knew at Cornell who had no hope of interacting with mainstream Cornell life on any level. Seung Cho’s race kept him outside of what it was to be a Hokie. What’s depressing is that Buchannan acts like that’s a positive thing.

Jenn: To me, that’s not the task at hand. While it is important to remember what it’s like to be a 1.5-genner, and the isolation that such an identity entails, the association of Seung Cho’s actions with all Korean American immigrants is ludicrous! The 1965 Immigration Act opened this nation’s gates to countless talents and skills from around the globe; we can’t conflate one person’s actions with an entire race of people, based solely on skin colour and pathway to citizenship.

James: Then someone should tell the Korean Americans to stop apologizing for his ass.

Jenn: Touche.

In stories about him, we learn he had no friends, rarely spoke, and was a loner, isolated from classmates and roommates. Cho was the alien in Hokie Nation. And to vent his rage at those with whom he could not communicate, he decided to kill in cold blood dozens of us.

James: “Dozens of us”? Can someone tell me why people forgot that Seung-Hui Cho died at Virginia Tech? Three-three people died, not thirty two. They were all students and teachers at one of the nation’s top university. Cho was not the alien in Hokie Nation, he was a member of the Hokie Nation. Why do we have to Otherize anybody who isn’t White?

Jenn: To be fair, Buchannan is including amongst his “dozens of us” Black, Asian and Latino victims (who were not Cho). That being said, I take issue with this characterization of Cho as a cold-blooded deliberate killer who took the lives of thirty-two colleagues because he didn’t feel like talking that day. Cho was, by all accounts, mentally ill, and his illness was ignored for more than two decades. He was not evil, he was sick.

James: He was still a cold-blooded deliberate killer, even though he was mentally ill.

Jenn: No, he wasn’t. He was undiagnosed.

James: (ignoring Jenn) …That being said, the denial of Cho’s membership in this American community because of his actions seems like a deliberate attempt to dissect Cho’s insanity from the Hokie Nation that nurtured it.

What happened in Blacksburg cannot be divorced from what’s been happening to America since the immigration act brought tens of millions of strangers to these shores, even as the old bonds of national community began to disintegrate and dissolve in the social revolutions of the 1960s.

To intellectuals, what makes America a nation is ideas — ideas in the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, Gettysburg Address and Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

James: (holds his head in his hands) This low-budget, rotund, redfaced, ignorant conservative idiot! Yes, I’m being mean, but I don’t care. This is the dumbest load of… just to spell it out for y’all: not only is this contradictory and illogical, it’s terrible writing.

Jenn: And, of course, for James, that is the Single. Greatest. Offense. Ever.

James: You’re damn right it is! If you can’t write, you can’t think! Case in point: in the first paragraph, Buchannan laments the so-called “dissolution” of the American community amid an influx of non-European immigration into the social upheavals during the 1960’s. Next, in the second paragraph, Buchannan lists the thematic underpinnings of our American community… and includes an intellectual centrepiece to the very social upheavals of the 1960’s he laments in the first paragraph! (James sounds indignant.)

Jenn: I’d just like to interject: where does Buchannan get off describing immigrants post-1965 as “strangers” and his not-Native American ass as a true American?

James: That’s easy, Jenn. John Locke’s not from Shanghai. By the way, does Pat realize that railing against post-1965 immigration means that he thinks Michelle Malkin should go back to that crazy place where they churn out illegitimate racial minorities that attack everything that racial minorities stand for? Or the Phillipines, whichever is closer.

Jenn: Y’know, maybe he’s got a point on that one.

But documents no matter how eloquent and words no matter how lovely do not a nation make. Before 1970, we were a people, a community, a country. Students would have said aloud of Cho: “Who is this guy? What’s the matter with him?”

Teachers would have taken action to get him help — or get him out.

Since the 1960s, we have become alienated from one another even as millions of strangers arrive every year. And as Americans no longer share the old ties of history, heritage, faith, language, tradition, culture, music, myth or morality, how can immigrants share those ties?

Many immigrants do not assimilate. Many do not wish to. They seek community in their separate subdivisions of our multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual mammoth mall of a nation. And in numbers higher than our native born, some are going berserk here.

Jenn: Okay, first of all, Pat Buchannan is apparently completely ign’ant (yes, I did say “ign’ant”) of the immigrant experience. Of course he should be: he’s an idiotic, yet supremely privileged, White dude. That being said, how could he know that immigrants arrive in this country, with nothing but the deepest desire to assimilate. That is why they come. They come to America to try and participate and contribute, to try and learn and give back, and to pursue the American Dream. The American Dream exists beyond White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

Ethnic enclaves do not preclude this assimilation. Immigrants form communities that speak a non-English tongue, celebrate non-European holidays, and eat non-Western foods — but we are all as American as those supposed “native-born” descendants of this country’s original immigrants.

James: One need not praise the immigrant experience to find fault with Buchannan’s reasoning. His conception of pre-1960’s America as a utopian cultural community where people looked out for one another is not only flawed, it’s racist. The destruction of this utopia (in Buchannan’s eyes) happened when the Civil Rights Movement broke down the walls of silence White people used to ignore the oppression that benefitted their group. Sure, Buchannan doesn’t want to blame immigrants for their supposed anti-assimilation, but he can’t help it because he’s so caught up in attacking the post-Civil Rights Movement era. This is nothing more than another divisive, racist argument designed to pit minority communities against one another and promote gated-community suburban White fear of anybody dark.

Jenn: I know that I’m fearing you right now, James. Grrr. Grrr. Feel my waves of hate.

The 1993 bombers of the World Trade Center and the killers of 9-11 were all immigrants or illegals. Colin Ferguson, the Jamaican who massacred six and wounded 19 in an anti-white shooting spree on the Long Island Railroad, was an illegal. John Lee Malvo, the Beltway Sniper, was flotsam from the Caribbean.

Angel Resendez, the border-jumping rapist who killed at least nine women, was an illegal alien. Julio Gonzalez, who burned down the Happy Land social club in New York, killing 87, arrived in the Mariel boatlift.

Ali Hassan Abu Kama, who wounded seven, killing one, in a rampage on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, was a Palestinian. As was Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy.

The rifleman who murdered two CIA employees at the McLean, Va., headquarters was a Pakistani. When Chai Vang, a Hmong, was told by a party of Wisconsin hunters to vacate their deer stand, he shot six to death. Peter Odighizuwa, the gunman who killed the dean, a teacher and a student at the Appalachian School of Law, was a Nigerian.

Hesham Hadayet, who shot up the El Al counter at LAX, killing two and wounding four, was an Egyptian immigrant. Gamil al-Batouti, the copilot who yelled, “I put my faith in Allah’s hands,” as he crashed his plane into the Atlantic after departing JFK Airport, killing 217, was an Egyptian.

Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, the UNC graduate who ran his SUV over nine people on Chapel Hill campus and said he was “thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah,” was an Iranian.

Juan Corona, who murdered 25 people in California to be ranked with the likes of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, was a Mexican.

James: Told you! First two people he starts talking about are two crazy Black men. Of course Pat, their insanity has absolutely nothing to do with the treatment they and people within their demographic garner in today’s America. I don’t pretend to excuse the actions of anyone in this list. But the problem here is that pundits like Buchannan always assume that nothing about America’s laws, culture or society can possibly create the criminal violence found in the aforementioned list.

Jenn: Yes. I said it before, and I’ll say it again: in my opinion, Seung Cho was a mentally ill man who was failed by America’s apathy towards mental health issues in the Asian American community. He was further ostracized because of his ethnic and racial differences; let’s not forget the instances in which he was mocked, derided, and labelled as a “chink”.

James: The problem is people of colour get into a habit whenever a person of colour commits a violent act of trying to explain the violence through a prism racial prejudice. The downside of this habit is that people like Buchannan have no frame of reference for and do not care about racial prejudice.

Jenn: But, I think we need to keep in mind that the racial prejudice did influence the violent act. We can’t forget it because we’re afraid of the backlash.

James: No one’s afraid of the backlash. My point is that when Colin Ferguson or John Malvo goes off and kills people, it’s not necessarily a statement about how every Black person feels about White people, even though those instances of public violence are inherently racialized. Pat Buchannan can’t assume that the immigrant status of any public terrorist has anything to do with their chosen terrorism.

Jenn: Absolutely. And I’m not saying that the racism and ostracism that Seung Cho faced as an Asian American justified or excused his actions. Being the victim of racism does not allow anyone to go out and kill a bunch of folk. I’m just saying we can’t forget the racial prejudice.

Where does one find such facts? On VDARE.com, a Website that covers the dark side of diversity covered up by a politically correct media, which seem to believe it is socially unhealthy for us Americans to see any correlation at all between mass migrations and mass murder.

“In our diversity is our strength!” So we are endlessly lectured.

But are we really a better, safer, freer, happier, more united and caring country than we were before, against our will, we became what Theodore Roosevelt called “a polyglot boarding house for the world.”

James: To paraphrase Donald Trump, “Pat Buchannan … is a loser”.

Jenn: And an ugly loser, at that.

James: Seriously, this is a defeatist sentiment, the kind of language one would use when they know they’ve lost the battle. Ask any Fortune 500 CEO, mainstream elected official, Hollywood producer, or Joint Chiefs general — diversity is necessary. To compete on the global stage in anything involving money, influence or power, we need to have members of our society who emerge from everywhere in the world. We can’t sell to people we don’t know, and Buchannan’s isolationism appears outmoded, outdated, and old.

Jenn: Of course. Diversity is necessary: we need the best and the brightest to stay competitive and we cannot limit ourselves based on xenophobic hysteria. Besides which, it is easy to declare ourselves strong and united when we are all the same, it is a greater feat to be united despite our differences.

James: Besides which, Buchannan assumes in the last paragraph that increased diversity decreases public safety, happiness and freedom. I strongly disagree.

Jenn: You’d better. I very well might be one of those post-1965 strangers that he’s talking about.

James: And I’m Black.

Jenn: Holy shit! You are?!?

James: … Stop interrupting! (Geez, now I sound like Buchannan!) Look, what’s really problematic is that he doesn’t have faith in American ideals enough to believe that immigrants can absorb those ideals while maintaining their cultural roots – and public safety, for that matter. To assume that people who don’t speak the same language, who eat funny looking foods and wear weird clothes automatically endanger American citizens speaks to a fear that has never been integral to the American founding, a fear that this country never needed.

Jenn: Moreover, what is with this bright-eyed, nostalgic glorification of the pre-1960’s era when we were supposedly happier, better, freer and more unified? Lest we forget, this was the era of Jim Fucking Crow — the very definition of segregation and disunity. And it sure as hell wasn’t safe or happy if you were a person of colour.

James: Have you seen Pat’s new book title? The Jim Crow Era: When Negroes Knew Their Place.

Jenn: Oh, Pat, you so craaazy.

(Hat-tip: Racialicious)

It’s difficult processing the events of the last few days. Monday morning, 33 lives were extinguished at Virginia Tech. The gunman was identified as 23-year-old Korean American Seung Cho, whom the news cannot help but to identify as a “South Korean native” and “creepy”.

The Korean American community fears backlash, but translates those feelings into unnecessary apologies – for what? Harbouring a killer? Being culturally tied to a murderer? Rocking the boat? 

Meanwhile, Craigslist and the blogosphere abounds with anti-Asian sentiments so numerous it would be impossible to document. However, one thing is clear: in the wake of yesterday’s release of Seung Cho’s “multimedia manifesto” (a travesty of alliteration if ever I heard one, NBC ought to be ashamed of that term), people seem to be falling all over themselves to paint Seung Cho as a “psychopath”, emasculated, and just plain “evil”.

But, I’m not going to jump onto that bandwagon. Knee-jerk dehumanization plays into our baser instincts while simultaneously throwing a rug over the larger issues at hand. To suggest that some people are simply inherently evil suggests a level of pre-destination that I am simply not comfortable with, and excludes rationality from a discussion that desperately needs a level head.

I didn’t need the “multimedia manifesto” to convince me of this, but it certainly helped solidify my position. Seung Cho was not evil. He was not cold. He was not heartless. He was not manipulative. Seung Cho was a man; a man who made some very wrong choices, but they are not the ones you think. Given his actions, his statements, and (most telling for me) the interviews conducted with Seung Cho’s former roommates and teachers, I believe the system failed Seung Cho like it failed the other 32 men and women who lost their lives this week. Although he pulled the trigger Monday morning, I consider him the thirty-third victim in a tragedy that has engulfed the country.

Why is Seung Cho a victim? He exhibited classic warning signs of being depressed and suicidal. He was maladjusted, socially awkward, clearly uncomfortable amongst his peers, and obviously angry about his isolation and loneliness. He seemed frustrated at being misunderstood and ignored. He raged about class and privilege that — though certainly not a justification for murder — deserve some consideration as a possible insight into vulnerabilities in our collegiate system. And although his peers and advisors noticed Cho’s increasingly erratic behaviour, they ultimately did nothing to help a man who obviously was not well enough to judge his own mental health.

Yes, Seung Cho made a mistake to not go seek therapy when his mental illness was not severe enough to impede his judgement. He made a mistake when he decided to funnel his feelings into anger and rage, rather than to seek help. And nothing justifies the massacre Monday morning. But the fact that Cho’s mental illness was allowed to fester for as long as it did does not make him any less a victim of his mental illness. Mental illness is not something that strikes and just as quickly evaporates: yes, Cho snapped but whether he did it minutes or months from his decision to kill doesn’t make his degenerating mental health any less of a factor. A mentally ill person, by legal definition, can no longer discern right from wrong; why do we expect Cho to have behaved like a sane individual because his mental illness was left untreated (for, apparently, two years)?

No, I think the problem lies in the fact that none of Cho’s peers, family or friends — who were mentally healthy — did anything to force Cho to seek help. They couldn’t relate to the magnitude of what being mentally ill is about; they still expected him to think logically and rationally about his own treatment. Someone — be it the university, Cho’s family, or his fellow students — should have taken Cho by the hand and sat with him in the counseling centre until he went into a psychiatrist’s office. They should have accompanied him on each visit, and built a support network for Cho outside of these visits. With each interview of Cho’s friends and teachers, we hear the same story: “he was creepy”, “he scared me”, “he needed help”, “I wanted to get away from him”. All were content to ignore his illness so long as it did not disturb them. No one tried — genuinely tried — to help this man. Indeed, no one genuinely cared to see that he became mentally well.

Seung Cho was wrong in killing, but let us not let our thirst for bloody vengeance cloud the fact that we are all to blame for letting Seung Cho’s illness slip through the cracks. Monday’s tragedy could have been prevented had there been some system, any system, in place that would not allow us to discard a person like Seung Cho, but to treat him and help him to become healthy.

Such a system might include more resources invested into on-campus mental health and counseling, more culturally-diverse counseling options, or simply more support networks for students feeling isolated or lonely. Perhaps Cho felt a social stigma, as many Asian Americans do, about seeking therapy for mental health issues. Perhaps he simply felt an inability to connect with a mental health program that does not consider his particular cultural perspectives, being a 1.5-generation Korean American. By villifying Seung Cho, we deny ourselves the opportunity to understand the circumstances that allowed him to make the horrific decision to kill — and in essence, we let the system fail him twice. And, then the other 32 deaths become even more senseless: the irrational actions of a deranged psychopath.

33 bright lives were lost Monday morning — before we bid farewell to each of these people, let us not let them have died in vain. Let us at least open our minds and hearts enough to learn something about ourselves from this tragedy.

… or maybe this army recruiter was just an idiot.

Either way, CNN has a video clip up of a report regarding a homophobic Army recruiter who emailed an openly gay Black man she had solicited, telling him to go back where he had come from and do a “gay, voodoo jig”.

There’s more choice quotes in the video clip.

It was interesting to me that the report on this story slanted it towards the homophobic slurs and didn’t really address the overt racism of telling an African American to go dance around half-naked in Africa.

63-year-old Timothy Bowers was unemployed and facing mounting bills. He had lost his job as running deliveries for a drug wholesaler in 2003 after the company went bankrupt, and, unable to collect his social security, he decided this week that prison sounded better than homelessness. So, Timothy Bowers walked into a bank, handed the teller a note detailing that he wanted money, stole $80, returned it to the security guard in the lobby, and waited peaceably for the police officers to arrive and arrest him. The judge at Bowers’ trial sentenced him to three years in prison for his crime. On the plus side, he would be able to get Social Security by the time he got out. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about a roof over his head, until then.

This is one of the saddest stories I have ever read.

What kind of country do we live in when a silent minority of poor elderly can live in abject poverty and honestly feel that they’d rather break the law than continue to live so miserably within the law? These are not unskilled people (indeed, many are extremely adept at their jobs, having the benefit of years of experience), nor are they people unwilling or unable to work — but the rampant ageism of our society discourages the hiring of anyone over the age of 55 for any but the most menial of positions and turns the other cheek when these hard-working employees are “upgraded” for younger models before their mandatory retirement age.

Ageism is only perpetuated by a ridiculous mandatory retirement age which cuts short the careers of employees who could work in good health for another several years. This mandatory retirement age justifies the mistreatment of older employees who become “lame ducks” in the workplace, knowing that their shelf-life is almost up without their consent. The existence of a mandatory retirement age suggests that anyone at or near the age is no longer capable of serving a full work-day even if their job performance has not suffered in the last several years, and when employers are seeking to cut their personnel, the first to go are usually the oldest — because it’s a poor investment to maintain an employee on the payroll who’s going to have to leave you soon anyways.

And for Bowers to choose prison over a minimum-wage job is also telling. It illustrates exactly how minimum wage is still insufficient in this country — what does this wage mean if one still can’t support themselves fully on it?

I have no easy solutions for this problem. I know that doing away with the mandatory retirement age will introduce a plethora of other problems that we may not be ready for. But this problem can’t and shouldn’t go unnoticed — breaking the law should never be a viable alternative to financial woes.