Collecting the Evidence:
Poor People All Across America Are Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Fighting
Back!
by Jesse Leah Vere
"Well I went down to the president's house and I took back what he stole
from me..."
— Freedom song
Have you ever had to work more than one job just to pay rent? Have you ever
gone without healthcare because you just couldn't afford it, yet you were
denied Medicaid because you made too much? Do you ever find yourself
choosing between medicine and food? Have your lights, gas, water, or heat
ever been turned off? Have you ever been homeless? Have you ever been laid
off? Ever had to wait for an entire day at the Department of Human Services
or General Assistance or the Unemployment Office, just to find out if your
family would have a place to sleep that night, if you'd get to heat your
house, or buy some groceries - and then get treated like dirt for it? If
your car broke down, would it put your family into economic crisis?
Far too many of us answer yes to far too many of these questions. The
federal poverty line for the year 2002 is a monthly income of $1252 for a
family of three. Ten percent of Mainers — roughly 128,000 people (!) — are
currently living below that poverty line. The hourly livable wage for a
single parent with two children in Maine (in 1999) was $14.61, or a monthly
wage of $2337.60. But how many of us are earning anything close to a livable
wage, and how much longer are the lines for basic things like fuel
assistance and food stamps and section-8 housing going to get?
Thanks to welfare reform’ single mothers are forced to work 30 hours (Bush
wants to make it 40) at lousy, dead-end jobs to get their TANF (temporary
assistance to needy families) benefits, making barely enough to pay rent,
childcare, and transportation.
As factories pick up and leave the state for cheaper labor overseas, thanks
to so-called free trade policies, such as NAFTA, whole communities are being
laid off from their jobs. With no remaining jobs that pay well enough to
support a family, no medical care, and with unemployment benefits shriveling
up, whole towns are dying off.
As the cost of living rises, many of our cities and towns are courting
tourist dollars to foot the bill that we locals just can't afford. That
leaves us with an awfully rough scenario: those of us who are from here
can't afford to live here, yet many of us are too poor to leave. And damn it
- if things really were the way life should be’ we wouldn't have to!
Isn't America the land of opportunity, where anyone who works hard enough
can get ahead? In the richest nation in human history we find also the
greatest disparity between the rich and poor of any comparably
industrialized nation, where the wealthiest 1% of the population owns 40% of
the wealth, while the poorest 80% of the population owns a meager 20% of the
wealth.
This means that over 78 million people in this country are barely surviving.
A very clear example of economic human rights violations is Clinton's
draconian welfare cuts. During the 1990's the US economy experienced a surge
in growth and resulting wealth. Instead of investing this wealth in ways
that would help the nation's most desperately poor, however, the Clinton
administration chose to take away what little they had. Since the
implementation of what's called the "Personal Responsibility and Work
Reconciliation Opportunity Act" (PRWORA) of 1996, poor mothers with small
children have been taken off the welfare rolls in the tens of thousands,
simply because their lifetime five-year limits are up. Those who are still
eligible for TANF must work at least 30 hours for their benefits, often for
less than minimum wage, in unsafe conditions, and without the benefit of
childcare.
As a result, women and children now represent the fastest growing group of
homeless people in this country. In Detroit alone, since 1996, the infant
mortality rate among black families has increased a staggering 57%. People
lacking in their most basic needs should not be punished, persecuted,
sanctioned, or blamed for what in fact is wholesale neglect, mistreatment,
and outright malfeasance on the part of the US government and corporate
America. For it is the government, and its corporate benefactors, who must
be held accountable for depriving people of their most basic rights.
The last thing poor people are asking for is handouts; we are demanding the
recognition of our right to live with dignity. A person should not have to
be rich in order to have the right to flourish. In all other comparably
industrialized countries, living wages, food, housing, medical care, and
education are standard rights enjoyed by everyone regardless of income or
class privilege.
Because, unlike other industrialized nations, our healthcare system is
entirely privatized, healthcare is considered a privilege, such that many
people cannot afford to buy their medicine or see a doctor. According to the
World Health Organization, while the U.S. spends more money per capita on
health care than any other comparably industrialized nation (that pay 1/3
to 1/2 of what we pay for health care), the US ranks a miserable 37th in the
quality of our health care, with the highest infant mortality rate. And
although it would only take four billion tons of food to feed everyone who
was hungry in this country, every year 40 billion tons of food are
destroyed.
As Martin Luther King observed, the US has more than enough capability to
eliminate poverty, but "...The real question is whether we have the will."
As in the past, the government will not fulfill its obligations on its own.
That will that King spoke about must come from all of us. We've suffered in
silence and isolation long enough. When alone, we experience the frustration
of having to go without heat and hot water when it's 15 degrees outside (and
inside); when we go alone to the General Assistance Office, we find out
we're not eligible for food vouchers that week; when we get sicker and
sicker because it costs too much to go to the doctor, it really dehumanizes
us.
For most of our lives we've blamed ourselves for our plight, we've felt bad
about ourselves, we've felt guilty and ashamed, we've tried to hide the
extent of our poverty, we've internalized our anger and frustration.
But what happens when we realize that being poor is not the crime? The more
we get together and share our stories, the more we see that what is criminal
is poverty.
As we go to press, a busload of poor, working poor, and homeless families is
expected in Portland on December 6th, part of a historic, national
pilgrimage to organize, educate, and document poor people in America.
Poor people come in all ages, races, religions, genders, sexual preferences,
abilities, and immigrant statuses. History has shown us that when we remain
isolated from one another our battles are quickly lost, our strength
diminished, our resources depleted, our resolve exhausted. Furthermore, the
more divided we remain, the richer our enemy gets, and the more we find
ourselves adapting to lower standards of living.
But when working poor and organized labor and welfare recipients and migrant
workers and the unemployed and the laid-off and the homeless join hands in
the same fist, when citizens and residents and immigrants converge and share
the same fight - wow. Suddenly we are a voice, we are a force - a voice that
cannot be silenced, a force that cannot be stopped, and we shall overcome.
Many different groups throughout Maine are organizing in their communities
to prepare for the New Freedom Bus Tour's arrival here. Together we are
collecting our stories; together we are going door to door to hear what our
neighbors have to say. We are taking road trips with our plastic cameras and
notepads to down-sized communities that lost their well-paying jobs when
their former employers abandoned them for cheaper sweatshops overseas. We
are passing out fliers and questionnaires in the lobbies of our welfare
offices, at clinics, doctors' offices, and university campus centers, in our
peace and justice centers, in our places of worship, in our union halls,
food pantries, and homeless shelters.
The New Freedom Bus Tour is just the beginning of our efforts here in Maine,
something that is inspiring us and our allies to do our own Freedom Bus Tour
throughout the state some time in late Spring.
"It's under my feet, under my feet, under my feet... Ain't no system gonna
walk all over me."
Jesse Leah Vear is a low-income activist, a member of P.O.W.E.R (Portland
Organizing to Win Economic Rights), and a native Mainer "working for justice
until justice works for all of us."
Back to Peace Talk Index, Winter, 2002-2003