John Koopman: A Veteran of America

11/08/21 • 26 min

John Koopman has been a Marine, a war correspondent in Iraq, and a manager at a strip club, among other things. His journey through precarity in the weird 21st century started in earnest after the bottom fell out of the newspaper business. That was when sacrifice or experience seemed to matter, and John found himself laid off and out of the middle class. It was a different war than the one he had experienced before: This time the battle was for consistent and meaningful employment, and its timeframe was indefinite.

On this episode of Going for Broke With Ray Suarez, John explains how he went from Baghdad’s Firdos Square to working at a strip club, and all that came next, including stints at a dive bar, driving for Uber, and more. You’ll hear how John came to rely on a vital safety net: the Veterans Health Administration. We’ll also hear from Aaron Jackson, a scholar studying the VA at the University of California–San Francisco, about how the agency could be a model for the health care system the rest of us need.

To be the first to hear all the episodes in this season, subscribe to Going for Broke With Ray Suarez on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes premiere each Monday.

Going for Broke With Ray Suarez is a podcast by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Nation. To learn more about the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, sign up for our newsletter. To support all of The Nation’s journalism, including our podcasts, subscribe today.

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Lisa Ventura: The Daughter’s Burden

Lisa Ventura is a housing case manager by day, but for years she's also been her family’s unofficial social worker by night. Lisa was just a kid when she learned to help her Spanish-speaking mother navigate the welfare system. It was a struggle, but she could handle it. But she wasn’t prepared for what it would feel like when her isolated father lost his job during the pandemic and needed her help filing for unemployment. Battling the bureaucracy during Covid on top of a troubled family history takes its toll.

What Lisa experienced first-hand is what experts call "administrative burden," the mountain of paperwork and forms we all have to fill out—but like many burdens, this one falls disproportionately on those already experiencing financial hardship. On this week's episode of the Going for Broke podcast, Ray Suarez also talks to Pamela Herd, professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, and coauthor of the book, Administrative Burden: Policy-Making by Other Means.

To be the first to hear all the episodes in this season, subscribe to Going for Broke with Ray Suarez on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes premiere each Monday.

Going for Broke With Ray Suarez is a podcast by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Nation. To learn more about the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, sign up for our newsletter. To support all of The Nation’s journalism, including our podcasts, subscribe today.

Next Episode

Jen Fitzgerald: A Poet Without a Home

During the pandemic, Jen Fitzgerald, a poet and teacher, became a statistic, forced to find an apartment under duress as the city closed down around her. The situation the fifth-generation New Yorker and single mom found herself in has everything to do with what has happened to her city—and other hyper-prosperous American metropolises—during the last decade. They are now built to exclude the poor and even the unstable middle class, and certainly most of the poets.

In COVID lockdown, Fitzgerald was thrown back on her resources, which included poetry she wrote about her period of homelessness. Her greatest asset might have been her robust social network, which she reached for in her desperation. And it was through community that the light poured back into her life.

On this episode of Going for Broke With Ray Suarez, Jen tells her story, and shares her profound poetry that came out of the experience. We also hear from Matthew Murphy, executive director of the NYU Furman Center, a think tank devoted to trying to solve the housing crisis.

Want more from the Going for Broke team? Join us on Wednesday, November 17 at 8pm ET for a special event, featuring Ray Suarez and Ann Larson, hosted by Laura Flanders. RSVP today.

Going for Broke - John Koopman: A Veteran of America

Transcript

RAY SUAREZ: From the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Nation, this is Going for Broke, stories of people living tough times, and conversations about solutions that give us hope. I’m Ray Suarez. This episode has special meaning as Veterans Day approaches. It’s the story of former war correspondent and ex-Marine John Koopman, and where he landed after he lost his newspaper job.

JOHN KOOPMAN: The first night I went to work a