Culture of Poverty
Policies that Actually Promote Self-Sufficiency
Published June 26, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
The Boston Globe ran an editorial yesterday chiding the state for policies that deny the working poor real opportunities to move off public assistance. Published to coincide with the release of a new report by the Massachusetts Asset Development Commission, the editorial highlighted the reality that almost 50% of state residents are considered asset-poor - i.e., they have less than 3 months worth of financial security should they lose a job or income stream. Despite this, many poverty programs in Mass - and nationwide - penalize recipients if they earn beyond an arbitrary baseline amount, spend money on things like education, or own a car worth more than a certain value. The Commission's report identifies this as the "cliff effect"
"whereby working people reach a wage threshold and are precipitously cut off from benefits. These people are working hard at difficult jobs; they shouldn’t have to choose between reaching for a better life and losing support programs that make working possible."
Seriously - isn't this common sense?
When You're Hot You're Hot!
Published June 26, 2009 @ 06:39AM PT
I must be nuts. Days like this convince me of it. But I can’t really complain…
It’s the heat. I live in a humble, but normally comfortable, RV. By choice and for many reasons I don’t use my AC, even on days when outside temps bump 100 and humidity hits near-swamp level. I usually can find a place to go during the worst of the heat, but as I returned this evening the thermometer indicated a balmy 101 inside.
Eating Healthy on a Food Stamp Budget...
Published June 25, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
...is it possible?
I'm certainly not the first one to ask this. Doing a little Google "research," I've come across quite a few bloggers (here) (and here, for example) who have asked the exact same question.
While theoretically it is possible to survive on the meager allotment allowed through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP aka Food Stamps), many who have attempted to prove this through a month-long (or longer) "food stamp" diet do not take into account the realities of needing to survive on such a budget.
Yes, if everything goes exactly as planned through an entire month, it is probably possible to eat a relatively healthy diet on a food stamp budget. But what if your car breaks down and you need to get it repaired so you can get to work? What if you or one of your children has to make an unexpected trip to the doctor's office? It is this kind of unanticipated expense that cannot be simulated in any sort of experiment.
Putting Mothers To Work Watching Their Own Kids
Published June 23, 2009 @ 08:05AM PT
A report released last week shows that
the percentage of underemployed workers in Los Angeles County has doubled in the past year to 18 percent...Underemployment takes a broader look at the economy than official state unemployment figures because it also includes those who have given up on looking for a job or have been involuntarily reduced to part-time employment.
The report, "Ebbing Tides in the Golden State" by the Economic Roundtable also demonstrated that insecure employment has been hit hardest:
“Many of L.A.’s industries that have lost the most jobs in the first year of the recession have high rates of informal employment, including retail trade, construction, non-durable manufacturing, wholesale trade and hotels,” said report lead author Daniel Flaming, president of the Economic Roundtable, which is a non-profit public policy research organization in downtown Los Angeles.
As mentioned here previously, 1099s, those surviving on cash transactions, are really getting slammed in this recession. And now, California wants to keep unemployed mothers from job seeking and training, and pay them to stay home and care for their kids instead.
Atlanta On Track to Demolish All Its Public Housing
Published June 22, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
To be rebuilt, of course, as mixed-income communities.
The nation's first public housing project, Techwood Homes, was built in Atlanta in 1936. Atlanta has long had the highest percentage of its residents living in public housing, though that # was still less than 4% (at least through the 1970s). Within a year, it will have demolished all of its old projects. This article laying out ATL's plans is full of interesting, valid and opposing views.
Poverty in America's Image Problem?
Published June 22, 2009 @ 09:49AM PT
Sorry for the long delay posting this weekend and today. I've been traveling around CT, NY and MA for wedding-related activities. I had a chance to catch up with a group of friends Saturday night that included fellow political junkies and writers and some finance types. People were pretty interested in my blogging gig, and Change.org more generally, which was very cool. A friend of mine's husband who I don't know too well wanted to know what the other causes were at Change.org, and was surprised to learn how popular global warming was compared to domestic poverty - and not because he's particularly interested in the latter. It was an interesting conversation in its randomness and it got me thinking - again - about how or whether people think about poverty in the U.S.
On the road yesterday with my fiance, I ventured that domestic poverty needs an appealing iconic image. He offered the migrant mother - taken by immigration, I responded. Homelessness is its own category; children offer represent hunger, child abuse or neglect, or the failure of public education. Or child poverty as its own issue area. Poor men are often memorialized as white homeless men, perhaps with mental illness or substance abuse problems, or as African-American criminals. Thanks to Reagan and the rest, all we're left with is the "welfare queen." Native American poverty is virtually invisible to the public eye, and the current economic crisis has disappeared the working poor, who, in their employee uniforms waiting for the bus, were the emerging image of domestic poverty in the 21st century.
The other challenge for domestic anti-poverty activists is to distinguish our work from global anti-poverty efforts. Of course, there's an indelible connection between our exploitative, global economic systems and poverty at home and abroad, and we'd benefit from a global workers' movement. But the surge in activism in recent years to significantly cut global poverty often overshadows the enduring problems we face here at home. The combination of our siloed approach to social justice with the scope of global poverty with our negative, individualistic approach to poverty in the U.S. really creates a rough road for us fighting economic hardship here at home.
I cruised around Flickr and Google this morning, comparing search results for the different Change.org causes and our respective blogs Google rankings. "Poverty" on its own is actually the biggest topic after immigration. But the more one encloses parameters around poverty, adding "America" or "domestic" or "United States", the more the web and image results shrink. "Poverty in America" is one of the smallest.
I'm pleased that this blog is in the top 20 Google results for "poverty in America" (3), "poverty" + "America" (6), and "domestic poverty" (14). I really believe a renewed anti-poverty movement is afoot in this country, but it's not going to look like the War on Poverty of years past, but more likely will grow hand-in-hand with rights-based movements for workers, immigrants, women, and as part of racial justice, environmental justice and economic human rights movements. Social justice is not neatly packaged nor successfully achieved within single-issue activist frames. The beauty of Change.org is its aggregation of a multiplicity of social causes in one place. But we must work together and learn from one another to make our world a more just and equitable place.
You want to know more about Poverty in America? Believe me, have we got it covered here at Change.org.
(Top photo from Newark, NJ by Tony the Misfit; bottom photo of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign's March for Our Lives at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN by Andrew Ciscel)
Happy Father's Day!
Published June 21, 2009 @ 06:16PM PT
Pop over to Jen's post on the link between female-headed households and children living in poverty. That is, women raising children alone are much more likely to be poor than households with two parents. This correlation exists for so many reasons: wage inequality; less access to opportunity for women; terrible family leave policies; women's position in the labor market in lower-wage, less secure jobs; gender inequality in child-rearing; etc. etc.
I always hesitate to lecture men on fatherhood like Obama has done this year and the last (at least). I'd rather spend my time making life easier, fairer, safer, and more rewarding for women and the children they raise. But I also know how lucky I am to have the father I do - someone who worked his way out of poverty with the support of his parents, the Army, and by being able to take advantage of opportunities opened up to him as a smart, earnest, hard-working, able-bodied white man. Even though my parents divorced when I was young, he's always been actively involved in my life and fiercely devoted to me. And we like each other, which helps. :)
I also have a wonderful, loving stepfather. And growing up, I lived on the first floor of a 2 family with my mom, with my aunt and uncle living upstairs. An uncle who also kept an eye on me, expecting me to shovel the driveway with him in the snow, expecting me to respect my elders and pull my weight in our family. Basically, I know what it's like to have strong, loving men help raise me, even if they're not my biological father.
And that is what I wish for kids. I wish everyone had a dad like mine, but committed, loving, invested adults who can parent kids is just as good, IMO. Fathering and mothering are verbs, and biology does not necessarily equip people for these roles. What matters is the love, consistency, trust, and resources that adults can deliver to make children's lives stable, secure, healthy and happy. Sometimes its two dads, sometimes its aunts and mothers and grandmothers, sometimes its uncles or big brothers or older cousins, and sometimes it's a mom and a dad.
Happy Father's Day to all the dads, uncles, granddads, and men who are busy raising kids in the U.S.
Re: the attached PSA vid on fatherhood - I just love this video!
