Working for Rep. Anna Eskamani has been an incredibly enriching experience thus far. Although this internship is teleworked, I feel like I have gained more hands-on experience in advocacy and community empowerment than I have received in any other political work before.
As this is my first time working in politics in the legislative sphere as opposed to the campaign side of the action, I have never had the opportunity to interact with constituents on a personal level and help them with their day-to-day issues in our district, typically advocating for my candidate through phone banking and canvassing instead in these past experiences. Now, in this role, I mainly work with constituents to address their issues with Florida’s broken unemployment system, whose flaws have only been highlighted and exacerbated by the spike in unemployment as a result of the pandemic.
On a typical day, I call about 10 constituents who are experiencing issues with their unemployment claims as a result of the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity’s incompetence. This has really helped me develop my people skills, as a large portion of this job is being able to empathize with our constituents — a task that is so simple and human, but incredibly important in these times, as many of the people I talk to on a daily basis have been unlawfully evicted from their homes, are struggling to feed themselves, etc. One commonality remains between all of these varied cases: they have all been neglected by our state’s government and DEO, whether it be through a refusal to answer calls, a constantly crashing website, or a governor that refuses to take responsibility for Florida’s grossly inadequate unemployment system.
During these calls, I try to answer as many of the constituents’ questions as possible, given that I do not work for the DEO myself and therefore cannot actually change anything in the system. Instead, I file complaints for each struggling constituent on behalf of the representative that go directly to the DEO through their online system. These complaints contain the issue that the constituent is experiencing and their account information and are meant to flag their application to the DEO so someone from the department will contact them to fix the issue on their end or will just go in and fix it themselves if it’s a glitch in their system (which is the most likely case). Although some of the people I have tried to help have not received any further assistance from the DEO as a result of our work, many constituents have started receiving their benefits after I filed a complaint for them and have called me back to update me and thank the Rep. Eskamani team, which is an indescribably amazing feeling.
While this job is filled with a lot of tough, emotional conversations with constituents and dead-ends with the DEO, I am really grateful to work for a representative who genuinely cares for her constituents and goes out of her way to help them. The one thing that amazes me about every call is regardless of how desperate their case is, each constituent I talk to ends the call by thanking me for helping and praising Rep. Eskamani for everything she is doing to help, noting that she feels like she’s the only person who’s fighting for them. Although it breaks my heart that our government has wronged its citizens to this extent, it gives me hope to know that the representative I dedicate my time working with is an empathetic, compassionate individual who aims to serve her community instead of filling her own pockets. In fact, Rep. Eskamani actually donated her entire salary to people who are in dire situations as a result of the pandemic. I could not be more proud to work for her, and am incredibly grateful to the Women’s Leadership Program for awarding me the Humphries Award so I could pursue this opportunity and help Floridians struggling during this time in any way I can.