The article about me (“Arrest That Man,” 8/13) didn’t tell the whole story about being unemployed.

Women are being forced into prostitution because unemployment-insurance officials are fiddling with their claims. For example, some people have been awarded fewer weeks than they are legally eligible to receive (not everyone gets 26 weeks), while others have had their claims suddenly disappear from the computer. In both cases, persons employed by the unemployment office are responsible.

Other people are going bankrupt, are living in penitentiary hell, or have even killed themselves—all because of (1) a corrupt agency administration and (2) an educational system that issues credentials without also providing the necessary and suitable employment, or just the training to hold a real, well-paying, and meaningful job. If Franklin D. Roosevelt were president, he would never let this type of disaster occur.

D.C. public schools don’t give their students the books to help them obtain an education. And D.C.’s teachers—and virtually everyone else who is hired by the city government—don’t have to pass a mandatory civil-service exam that tests competency with kids as well as reading comprehension and math ability.

The 5.5 percent official unemployment rate is a sick joke. While the number says that jobs have been added since George W. Bush came to power, the much larger employer survey says that jobs have been subtracted over the same time. Mathematically, one of these figures must be wrong. Do you suppose it is the number of people unemployed or the number of jobs that businesses have lost? (Hint: Unemployed people contribute very little cash to Republican candidates.)

If people shared their stories, then we could better understand why we must nonviolently demonstrate against a system that is screwing us out of our jobs, our meager unemployment money, and our children’s futures.

There will be a public meeting at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library on Friday, Sept. 3, at about 2:55 p.m. At least one government building should be greeted, shortly thereafter, by a group of people angry enough to get arrested for civil disobedience (e.g., blocking an entrance).

There are never to be any firearms, knives, explosives, chemicals, or thrown objects at any unemployed demonstration. Anyone who even brings any of these forbidden things to a demonstration or meeting is most unwelcome. Don’t even bring a nail file.

Depending on the local turnout, I am calling for national civil disobedience at all local unemployment offices to take place on the first or second Friday every month, at 10:30 a.m., just after the unemployment rate is released. I trust that others in other free countries are as unhappy about being unemployed/ underemployed as I am.

I don’t have all the solutions, but I definitely know that in the economically richest nation on this planet, our leaders are woefully lacking in their moral spirits and compasses.

Dupont Circle