May 8, 2013

6



class, Current Events

Musings on words and Charles Ramsey

Words and money are the currency on which our lives depend on. Loving and caring words, lift our spirits, keep us going and can even fill our hearts with joy. Money? You simply need it need it to live. There is no way around it.

Until a few days ago, it never dawned on me that as a wordsmith; even I could create words that while honest, simply missed the mark. Of course it’s easier to see when others fall short in their words but sometimes it takes a bit more to look at ourselves and acknowledge our own shortcomings especially when we assume we know.

I found myself in a rather uncomfortable place professionally a few days ago when I realized the words that I had been using while honest, simply fell short. Thankfully, I was able to make a course correction and there is light at the end of this challenging professional tunnel.

This unfortunate incident has made me ponder the greater issue of honesty and intentions in our words. It seems everywhere I turn, whether it is online or offline, everyone is being honest and speaking their truth and while that always feels good. There are times when honest words fall short. Either they are used as weapons to destroy and hurt others or an excuse to highlight our own personal failings and lack of common sense.

Then just when I was mulling this all over today, I heard about Charles Ramsey, the Black man in Cleveland, OH who helped rescue three missing women who had long been assumed dead. Charles Ramsey is like many relatives of mine, a plain talking, working-class Black man in the Midwest. For those not used to such people, Ramsey is a delightful and colorful man who is hamming it up. Really? In my extended family, we must all be hams then!  

No one disputes that Ramsey is a hero but what I find fascinating is how in using his words to tell a story which isn’t funny in my two cent opinion, it created a situation of humor for some.  His words are a reflection of his reality and to some degree his place on America’s invisible but not really class ladder.  I suspect the line between those of us laughing with him and those laughing at him is a thin line indeed. At the moment Ramsey is the toast of the internet and cable news networks with viral memes popping up, yet there is a part of me that wonders how many are uncomfortable with his honesty?

 In sharing his version of the story with us, he used his words to speak his truth, yet some honest and truthful words cannot ever be heard because we would rather be amused at times. Words…they are a tricky and messy business indeed.   

March 28, 2013

5



class, Current Events

Who’s the real scammer?

From a brief glance it would be easy to assume that the economic catastrophe of 2008 is nothing but a distant memory, a bad dream that we have all recovered from. After all, the stock market is up, business profits are up, CEO’s are taking home ginormous bonuses and it seems every man, woman and child in America is walking around the either the latest iPhone or a tablet computer. Clearly we are all basking in the joys of economic stability or maybe it’s all an illusion?

I work in social services, granted as the executive director I do a lot less working with people than I used to. But I still analyze the data and talk to professional colleagues and the one thing we all agree on is that things aren’t getting better. We are all continuing to see staggering numbers of people in need of essentials such as food, shelter and childcare. (sometimes even school supplies, coats and shoes too) The spigot was turned on in 2008 and frankly the basin is overflowing with people in need. At my agency, I am facing record growth which if I were the CEO of a profit making venture would be awesome but in my line of work, record growth means I spend a lot of time making hard decisions since record growth doesn’t mean record revenue to meet the needs of that record growth but that is an entirely different post.

What I am seeing more and more of is stories like this, national publications are actually starting to take notice of those folks that I have been talking about since 2009-the formerly middle class. Folks who might look a lot like you; they used to own the house, two cars, and a few fancy gadgets and even had a nest egg. Many of those folks are now living in ways they never dreamed of, mired in the hardscrabble new world of poverty. They often still cling to their middle class fantasies and dreams that they will turn their ships around but make no mistake, once you have entered a world of living in the pay by the week hotels and frequenting food pantries, your odds of taking the elevator back to the middle class are only slightly better than a winning Powerball ticket. Especially in this brave new world where permanent well-paying employment opportunities elude even the college educated. This brave new world is a place where we are all the captains of our fate, using fancy euphemisms to hide the fact that we lack the stability that was the norm only a generation ago. Consulting, freelancing, self-employed are all valid options but too many of us aren’t doing these things because we want to, we are doing them because they are our only opportunities for employment. After all, some money beats no money.

Funny thing is that despite this economic tsunami and its victims, we Americans are a proud lot; refusing to accept that the jobs are gone and that going out and getting a job is a lot easier said than done. Instead we turn on one another and destroy our own, lashing out at the man down the street who decides to apply for permanent disability status which will ensure him a permanent though meager paycheck, access to healthcare via the government funded Medicaid program and access to subsidized housing rather than continue to suffer the indignities of a job search that is futile.

We eat our own for lunch and feel disgust for the moochers and the scammers, eager to cut people off from the dribs and drabs of the economic safety net rather than turning our anger on the corporate overlords who truly own our asses and have made us their wage slaves. But hey who’s the moocher?

 

March 5, 2013

2



class, Current Events, Feminism/Womanism, Parenting

Diversity of voices, follow up to work life balance

Yesterday’s post was written on the fly, more in a fit of annoyance yet it has provoked a lot of comments and thoughts. So much that I feel the need to expand on it with a few more thoughts.

Growing up as a child of the working class, my first memories of work were that it seemed hard and dirty. Grownups went to work and came home tired and sometimes in pain. Work was a place where it seemed other grownups who were deemed more important told the masses what to do and when to do it. Looking back now, my initial assumptions about work made a lot of sense. As a kid, my father was a union fork lift operator and general hack, my grandparents both worked at plants where they stood on their feet all day but earned enough money that by the time I arrived in ’73, they were able to have a slice of the middle class pie. My grandma went to Jamaica every year, my grandpa had a big floor television, they owed their own house and they saved for retirement. Jobs like this once upon a time in America brought many people into the middle class. The downside was these were not jobs people would be doing until their 60’s or 70’s because often they were physically demanding; they were also jobs where employees had little if any autonomy.

All of my early jobs were very much like the work of my parents and grandparents, work that was either physically demanding or office work where going to the bathroom too many times could cause you to lose your job. I didn’t realize autonomy existed in the workplace until I was about 25 or so and started working at places where I had a say in my work, where being late for work was no big deal as long as I got my work done. It was about that time, I made the decision to go to college and embark upon a career and I am thankful for the choices I now have.

I now live in a world where if I decide to stay at home and work in my jammies, no one cares. Hell, as long as my staff shows up and does their jobs, I could work all the time at home. I have no boss waiting for me at the office; I see my bosses once a month at a board meeting. When my kid is sick, my days might be mildly stressed just from having a sick child but neither me nor my partner are concerned that her sick day will lead to no food on the table.  My life partner who is also a child of the working class (his Mum was a barber and father an electrician) also has work that he does from home. He hasn’t been in a traditional office in over a decade. This has allowed us to navigate the inconvenience of not having a village locally because our world of work offers us choices.

Yet I haven’t forgotten the times when I was a young divorced mother of a toddler and the only job I could get was working as a barista at a coffee shop in downtown Chicago. I worked the 5am to 1pm shift, a schedule that was untenable as a single mother and hard even when you have a partner. I didn’t last too long at that job but not before I moved on to working two four jobs every day while taking care of a small child full time…fun times…not. However those moments have continued to stay with me even though that is no longer my world.

Someone asked me yesterday how we can include more voices in the “discussions” being had about work-life balance. Well for starters, the recognition of our own class privilege would be a great place because where you are on the class spectrum determines what you find important. For the mom who works at the restaurant as a waitress, knowing that she can get shifts that allow her to be active in her kids waking hours would be a great place. Better yet, maybe we need to rethink how food service folks are compensated. In the US, most food servers are paid less than minimum wage because the assumption is that the server makes oodles of tips. Having done a few stints in my younger days as a server, I will say that can be true but the truly lucrative shifts are often the ones at odds with parenting. Too many jobs in this country are paid on an hourly wage basis which means no work, no money. Maybe we need to look at that too.

I think if we reexamined how people are paid in the US that would go a long way to starting a real dialogue on things like family leave time. Right now too many people whose livelihoods require that they be physically present are just not interested in hearing what many of us are saying because we aren’t talking the same language. (I have had this discussion with several of my child’s classmates who do work the restaurant industry as well as people who work retail)

Another thing that needs to be looked at is where are these discussions being held? On the surface many good dialogues are being held online but we and anyone interested in creating real change needs to consider that by holding these dialogues in limited settings are we creating opportunities for all voices to be heard? (Today’s Motherlode column in the NY Times is a perfect example, the people who respond to this most likely will be very similar since not everyone has time to read the Times and answer a survey) For people whose work is directed by others even down to whether or not they can go to the bathroom, they don’t have time to tweet or read blogs and start discussions. Online activism is great but for a segment of the population, they need to be reached with old fashion organizing.

In the US, a good 15% of the population is living in poverty which is defined as an income of $23,021 for a family of four and the median income is $50,054 which means that a fair number of Americans are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table as wages continue to stagnate. It also means that when people are struggling to meet their basic needs, it’s hard to look at the larger picture but for those of us who are talking and looking at ways to change things it means we need to make sure that we don’t forget these folks. I grew up as one of those folks and I don’t want to forget and I want to make sure when we are having these discussions that their voices are heard.

March 4, 2013

9



class, Current Events

Work-life balance and the working stiff at the bottom

For more than a week now the national media here in the US and the digital media world have been on fire talking about Yahoo’s increasingly unpopular CEO Marissa Mayer and her decision to end telecommuting at the struggling company. I wrote a piece last week for The Portland Phoenix with some of my thoughts on the situation and figured I was done with the matter. However it’s clear this issue won’t die which is actually pretty funny since with all the talk about work-life balance being bandied around, there is a growing segment of the population that is so invisible that they rarely merit any significant discussion. The millions of men and women in this country who since the Great Recession aren’t in the middle class and if they are working, the jobs they work at barely pay a living wage, much less allow for privileges such as telecommuting. After all how exactly can that 35 year old mother of two who serves up overpriced beverages to the privileged folks who have the luxury of working from either home or the local Starbucks do her job from home and still get paid.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine drinking a virtual latte, nor can I imagine having a virtual clerk at the local department store assist me from the comfort of her home. When we discuss issues that we hold dear, too often we are looking at them through a privileged lens where choices exist, where we can choose work to fit our lives and not the other way around. Work-life balance is important and technology is a beautiful thing but it pains me to see that for front line workers whose jobs cannot be done from home, who is speaking for them?

In the coming days and weeks with the sequestration cuts poised to take effect, for millions living is about to get a heck of a lot harder and balance… what is that? Can we be honest? Work-life balance is yet another perk that one gets for either being born on at least second base or somehow getting to second base and frankly I think that needs to be acknowledged. Growing up working class, I am intimately aware that there are more than a handful of jobs that won’t ever be done from the comfort of one’s home. After all when you need a plumber or an electrician, chances are you want them to actually show up at your house and resolve the problem.

For many working class folks, work-life balance might be more about making sure their jobs pay wages they can actually live off of. That means wages that pay the bills, allows one to save a little and maybe even get a vacation once a year. See, it’s hard to feel balanced when you never have enough money to make your ends meets yet that is the reality for millions. If we want to have a real discussion about work life balance, then we need to make sure that discussion involves people from across the class spectrum so that it is a true dialogue and not merely an echo chamber of like-minded people who see the world through the same lens.

November 27, 2012

0



class, Poverty

Hungry kids and why they exist

Despite the fact that one in five kids in America lives below the poverty level and that one in 45 kids are homeless, it has become increasingly clear to me that the average American doesn’t believe that they see poverty despite the fact that poverty is all around us. Media images of poverty, tend to show a face that is brown or Black or faces that are faraway. I think this creates a situation where it is  is hard for us to imagine that our kids may actually go to school with poor kids. Or that we may even know people who are skipping meals to make their food stretch longer, and who meet the technical definition of food insecure.  Poverty in 2012 is hidden if you don’t know what to look for, in my case, 15 years of working with the poor in several states and for me, the poor are everywhere.

Last week Frontline aired a piece called “Poor Kids” and for many people it was an eye opening experience. I had a chance to engage online with a few people during the airing who were literally blown away, unaware of the depth of what poverty really looks like in 2012 and who its victims are.

I had a chance to watch Poor Kids and any of the kids featured could have been the kids I see daily in my work. Kids who are all too aware of what lack and scarcity means, kids who have a familiarity with food pantries and other assistance programs that no young child should have to have. Kids whose firsthand knowledge of poverty and scarcity has taken away their youthful innocence and belief. Poverty’s scars start early and last a lifetime.

A few days after the airing of Poor Kids, I saw the question asked “How does a child in the US go hungry.” Until this afternoon, I didn’t have the words to answer that question, but after today I may be closer to an answer.

Rarely do I work directly with kids in my program anymore; as our staffing has grown and my duties have increased, there simply isn’t time. However local parents know that my door is always open to them if they have a request or simply need to talk.  Today one of the local moms came to ask my assistance in creating a budget. I have made no secret of the fact  that I grew up working class and in my early days as a young wife and later single Mama, I didn’t have much money. I have always thought my experiences brought me a certain amount of street cred since unlike many social service providers, I thought I knew about being broke…I learned today that I know jack. Really.

Long story short, this young single mother of three kids including a pre-teen has a monthly income of $1234 and gets SNAP benefits. After we went through her basic living bills like rent and lights, she has a whopping $274 a month left to cover the toilet paper, tampons, toothpaste, gifts for kids, aspirin. Turns out the SNAP benefits don’t cover all the food costs, so she regularly must go to the food pantry to make her ends meet. This strong beautiful woman has no car, and walks everywhere sometimes upwards of 3-4 miles in one direction to get the best deal on foods with kids in tow.

It hit me that when we look at the actual amounts of money that people are living off of, it is very easy to see how a child can go hungry in this country. For starters, social service providers vary from area to area. In larger cities such as my hometown of Chicago, there are lots of social services and allied agencies ran by professional staffs and are typically better funded than their counterparts in rural or less populous states. I have joked; it really is much nicer being poor in a large city.  In state’s like Maine and similar sized states, social services is often a hodge podge of services often with overworked and really underpaid staff and well-meaning volunteers and frankly not enough services to assist all that need help. I learned today that there is no assistance for security deposits in the town I work in. This young mother who is moving out of a bedbug infested building into a clean and safe place will have to spend every single dollar she has for the next two months to cover her first month’s rent and security deposit which her new landlord is so generously letting her pay in installments.

Think about that. For the next two months this woman will have no money to pay even her light bill (but once she gets a disconnection notice then she can apply for help with the lights) or buy tampons, all so that she can have her kids in a safe and clean place.  That means these kids are at an even greater risk of going without a meal, sadly this story isn’t unique, it’s the story of millions trapped in poverty.

Kids go hungry in America because the resources that exist are not equally distributed. The social safety net is a string and private charities are not equally funded and the needs outweigh the means. It means that I can serve 400+ kids on an annual budget of a hair under $100,000 and with lots of prayers and dedicated volunteers and a staff that believes in the work as much as I do so much that we all work for far less than market value to assist. Yet in larger cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, etc. an agency that serves the same amount of youth will operate on a budget 10-15 times the size of mine.  Until we see all kids and people as equal regardless of location, race, etc. we won’t stop seeing hungry kids.

 

 

October 23, 2012

3



class, Current Events

Race to the cell, the only thing America excels at in 2012

I really did not want anything to do with the final presidential debate; frankly these debates are starting to make me rage. Of course circumstances put me in a situation where I ended up listening to parts of the last debate and catching the running commentary on twitter.

The debates are simply good theater, the candidates are putting on a show for us and since most Americans are too busy to actually read/research the candidates we look to the debates to tell us all we need to know about the candidates. The funny thing, is that the debates and the entire election season with the campaigning and the billions of dollars being spent to one up the competition, shows us just how not exceptional we are as a nation despite this belief we hold that we are an exceptional nation.

I will take Obama any day over Romney, but that doesn’t mean I am jumping with joy because the truth is presidents for all the power they hold are essentially Cheerleaders in Chief. As this recent piece in the New York Times covers, no one who wants to truly make deep, systemic changes in this country is going to be elected and if they do, they will learn real soon, that we as a nation only like surface change. To create change is to acknowledge publicly that we have problems and when you think America is the “hope of the world” it can be hard to admit that the only thing we are excelling at these days locking up our citizens. Yep, America is the winner in the “Race to the Cell”.

For those of us who work with the most vulnerable among us, there is a growing sense of frustration as we see that poverty in this nation has changed. The face of poverty has changed and it looks more and more like us. Our smartphones and cars may hide those facts and the stiff upper lipped American way of keeping our financial lives private, hides a great deal. Ask any social service provider what they are seeing and they will tell you, that today’s client in need is just as likely to be a college educated person with no easily solvable problems and a solid work history as the stereotypical single mother with no education. It’s just easier to have the appearance of still being financially stable when we who are experiencing the economic downturn personally, still have the accoutrements and trappings from our formerly middle class lives. It also doesn’t hurt that many of us and I include myself since in recent years I have struggled financially are reluctant to share our business and talk about how bad things have gotten for us.

To some degree we have no one to blame but ourselves when we see politicians not discussing the issues that affect the millions who struggle daily to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. After all why would politicians want to discuss those issues when we ourselves can barely admit to family and friends that we have hit hard times? Yet in a nation that is sinking, we need to talk, and talk often on these issues.

Child poverty is a very real issue in this country; I see it every day at my job. Child poverty is the only reason I have a job at the moment. Out of the 35 most economically advantaged nations, America and her exceptional self, ranks number 34 in child poverty. That means you see child poverty too but don’t notice it because we expect child poverty to be a black, brown or tan face in a third world country. However ask any school teacher in America and they will tell you what child poverty looks like because they see it in the classroom. It’s Suzie who comes to school and has a bellyache every morning, because she is not getting enough to eat and her parents are too pride filled with American exceptional-ism to fill out the paperwork that would officially label them needy so that Suzie can actually have a full belly and focus at school. Instead we say Suzie has attention deficit issues, which is easier to acknowledge than the fact that Suzie is going hungry in a nation of plenty.  Ask Suzie how exceptional America is when at a tender young age she knows food is not a given. I see American exceptional-ism every day at my center when the same group of kids is more eager to eat the snack then to play in a fun activity after school. Not too damn exceptional if you ask me.

Our infant mortality rates are horrid for such an exceptional nation and social mobility here is a myth compared to most of Europe, Canada and Australia. Yet half of America is looking at Mitt Romney and his “success” and despite the fact that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have no fucks to give for the little guy, they will vote for these guys because the Horatio Alger myth is deeply ingrained in our psyche. This belief that hard work will turn us into millionaires is the lie we tell ourselves because we can’t handle the truth.

The problem with avoiding the real discussion on how unexceptional America and what our real issues are is that we keep putting a patch on the roof when really what is needed is a new roof. Eventually the patch job will fail and when it does, it is taking the whole damn house with it.

 

 

October 16, 2012

6



class, Racial and Cultural

Black talk, is it good, bad or maybe it’s just language

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” –Audre Lord

This well-known quote by Audre Lorde came to mind last night as I read this post over at Denene Miller’s My Brown Baby. It’s an excellent piece written by Denene’s husband Nick, about the subject of code switching in the Black community. In light of recent discussions in the national media about President Obama’s known tendency to code switch when addressing predominantly Black audiences, I thought this was a timely piece.

Code switching is nothing new, African Americans have been doing it for years and it’s not a Black phenomenon by any stretch of the imagination. It’s not uncommon for someone raised in the working class who ends ups in the upper middle class later in life to change their dialect based on who they are talking to. I have white friends with working class roots who are no longer working class yet they change their dialect when talking to different people.  People with deep southern American roots who leave the south are also known code switchers at times.

It was only a few short decades ago that Black Vernacular English or African American Vernacular English was discovered to be a very real language, not something relegated simply  to the unlearned. Yet despite the fact that Black Vernacular English is very real and at times much needed (the DEA was actually looking for speakers of Black Vernacular English not too long ago). Many Black Americans are frankly conflicted about its use especially those in the middle and upper classes. Too many Blacks see Black Vernacular English as a sign of ignorance which is confusing…George W. Bush served 8 years as president and mangled Standard American English regularly.  I think this speaks to the fact that deep down many of us struggle with our identity, too many times we fear being associated with the rampant stereotypes about Black Americans. So in many cases we try to overcompensate by disassociating ourselves with that which we view as the negatives about being Black and that includes Black language. However in doing so, we are hiding parts of our history and roots and no good can ever come of pretending. Granted there are many Black Americans especially those with immigrant roots who have no connection to Black Vernacular English and in that case this post doesn’t apply.

Nick Chile’s piece talked about how he and his wife have made the decision to expose their kids to Black vernacular English and how they want their kids to be proficient in the art of code switching. While many commenters seemed to understand their views, there was more than one who didn’t instead using the old criticism why would anyone want to deliberately teach their kids to speak in a grammatically incorrect fashion? Again ignoring the fact that even linguistics scholars fully recognize that Black English is real English, just a different form of English.

In 2012 when we live in an ever increasing multicultural world one may wonder is there real value in teaching a Black or even a biracial child code switching if it’s not something that they are naturally exposed to and I say yes. I live in Maine but I was not born or raised here, most of my family is either in Chicago or in the south with a few exceptions. My eldest at almost 21 has split his time between the Midwest and New England and even as a college student in Northern Wisconsin has learned that code switching has value.

For me code switching is about being able to meet people where they are and making connections, human connections. In my decade in Maine code switching allows me to connect with other Blacks; on the surface there isn’t a lot of code switching in my corner of the world, but it makes the difference in my experiences and interactions with others. It’s the difference between going to one of the two Black hair salons and getting ho-hum service or getting awesome service. Right or wrong, it just is. I use code switching to a lesser degree in my professional life as well, the way I talk to a colleague or donor is different than the way I talk with one of the families served by the agency that I run. Again, I am trying to make connections and meeting people where they are and making a deep connection means being mindful of how best to connect.

Truthfully we all code switch, one could say Mitt Romney was code switching when talking privately or so he thought with other rich folks about the so called forty-seven percent. In the end, the only value that exists between Standard American English and Black Vernacular English is the value we assign, otherwise it is simply language. Both can exist side by side and as a parent I want to prepare my kids for the world they will live in, so like Denene and Nick, I am a fan of exposing Black and biracial kids to Black Vernacular English.

October 9, 2012

2



class, Poverty

Kill the poor police!

I grew up in a house with no cable television (granted cable barely existed when I was younger) and we rarely ever had more than one television set at a time. Most of the time, our televisions were only black and white and if we were lucky we were able to receive more than five channels. So it’s no surprise that I am really not a big television person.

My first taste of cable TV came in 1991 in my first apartment but I quickly realized I couldn’t afford it and pretty much didn’t have cable again until the late 1990’s when I married the Spousal Unit. The man was pretty attached to the idea of cable television and since cost wasn’t an issue, I said why not? By and large though television ain’t my thing, I prefer to kill my brain cells on the internet.

When it comes to actual television sizes, I have never owned a television larger than 27 inches and that one was gifted to us. I currently own two television sets, a 10+ year old 13 inch and a 22 inch which in TV land both are considered small and seen as strange. I learned this tidbit when my old 13 inch died last year and I went to buy a replacement and after walking around Best Buy I actually had to ask where the small sets were and the clerk looked at me like I was an alien. I did learn though that smaller television sets weren’t terribly inexpensive and that larger sets were probably a better deal.

All that said, many people like television and for people with limited financial resources television is often seen as one of their only forms of entertainment. After all, TV can entertain all the family members and is fairly economical compared to things like museum visits, outings to theaters, and visits to a first run movie theater. I mean have you been to a museum lately? A few months back, the seven year old and I went to the Museum of Science in Boston, just to walk in the door for one of us was over $20! By the time I splurged for 2 inexpensive add on’s in addition to our admission, I was out $60!

The reason I have TV on the brain is that last night while cooking dinner I was listening to Marketplace Money as I do most Sunday nights. The subject was how the poor spend money which considering that I work with low income families, definitely caught my attention. The first family interviewed was a young family with 4 kids, living in a government subsidized house, dad was the stay at home parent and mom worked since the childcare costs if both parents worked, meant work didn’t pay off. Nothing surprising there since childcare costs are crazy and if you need to put multiple kids in childcare unless you are a higher wage earner, in many instances even breaking even would be a dream.

What really caught my attention was that Tess Vigeland, the host of Marketplace Money questioned the family on why they had not one but two larger sized televisions and cable television. It seems the family paid less than $200 total for both sets and cable is their only luxury.

Funny thing is Tess’s question is in line with the questions that many ask of the poor, how they can afford cable, large TV’s, internet and cell phones. What I want to know is on what planet are people living on and when did the poor police become a very real thing?

Being poor sucks, I know this first hand since only in the good years of my childhood were we even working class. The thing is growing up in the 1970’s and 80’s it was a different world. One where getting a job only required going into a business and filling out an application. Televisions only required rabbit ears and back in the good old days things like TV’s were actually expensive.

The funny thing is that many of the items that are considered “luxuries”, but only for the well-heeled actually aren’t very expensive at all. A pay as you go smartphone via AT&T can be had for a mere $65 a month which apparently includes unlimited texts, calls and 1 GB of data for email access and browsing. Call me crazy but that isn’t too bad of a deal especially if said smartphone also serves as one’s only phone line. Hell I pay almost $30 a month just to keep my home land-line.

However the poverty police believe that proper poor people are not worthy of things such as communication devices, never mind maybe the poor person wants to better their lot in life? Sorry, you are shit out of luck. I admit I get ragey when I hear people being judged for things like internet access at home. Have you actually used the internet at the public library? Assuming you are in walking distance of your local library which many aren’t (when I last lived in Chicago, getting to my local library was either a drive or a ride on the bus), most libraries have time limits on using their computers. These limits tend to range from 30-60 minutes which if you are looking for an actual job is nothing and if you have homework, you may not have time to get the work done. Even in the lower grades of elementary school it’s not uncommon at times for assignments to be given that require access to the internet.

I am sorry, but in 2012 if you don’t have consistent access to the internet you are at a distinct disadvantage. Hell, even the daily newspapers (provided you still have one of those in your area…New Orleans Picayune anyone?) aren’t cheap. So are we basically saying that the poor don’t deserve knowledge and access to useful things and maybe even a little entertainment?

While I personally am not big on TV, even I own one and I actually pay for basic cable or extended cable because sometimes I don’t want to be online but knowing what’s happening is a useful thing and both of my kids like to watch, okay, primarily the little one.

Policing poor people is dehumanizing and frankly doesn’t do anything towards creating a more just and equitable world. Instead of judging the ways that the poor and financially insecure try to survive in a world where the deck is stacked against them, how about looking at the systems that keep people poor and create imbalances where wealth is held by few and most of us are closer to those poor folks we try to police.

PS: Many question why the poor even have kids but had my own parents used that logic I wouldn’t be here. I am glad they chose to have my brother and I even though they didn’t have two nickels to rub together.

September 14, 2012

0



class, Current Events

Mitty, you have a connection problem

Dear Mitty, (May I call you that?)

Whatever would we do without you? Seriously! Already this week alone you have shown us how things might look under a Romney regime (oops, presidency). I mean you wasted no time showing us how you would deal with enemies of America, facts and tact be damned, just start running your mouth…good going! I imagine you learned that approach in all your years of running Bain Capital and hey you were good at that, really good. Shit, everyone knows the same skills that one uses to make bushels of money are probably what one needs to run a country, after all country, company, they are all the same.

Just today, you were very gracious and answered a question I had been wondering about, here on my little slice of the digital world. I wanted to know what exactly is middle class in 2012 and it seems today, you told the whole world that in Romney land, the middle income folks are those having an income between between $200, 000-$250,000 a year or less. Thanks Mitty, I always had a funny feeling I really wasn’t middle class and you definitely confirmed that for me and millions of others. In fact you were asked if $100,000 was middle income and you very clearly told George Stepanopoulos that $100,000 is not middle income.

Now Mitty, you are a rich and powerful guy and you are entitled to live by your own rules, but maybe someone who works for you should pull your coattails and inform you that the median income in the USA, that place where you want to run things is a meager hair over $50,000…a year!  It seems your plan if elected is to reduce taxes for middle income Americans. One small problem is that by your standards there aren’t going to be many folks taking advantage of that benefit since most working stiffs make far less than $200,000.

I understand that in Romney land, $200,000 is probably chump change but just to give you some perspective, remember that time when you made that $10,000 bet? Well there are plenty of people living on like $10,000 a year. No, I am serious. I actually see these people every day in my work, see I provide social services to people in need and in Maine (that state next door to New Hampshire, where you go to relax) has a lot of poor people. For real! You should stop by some day and I would love to show you what I see.

Look, Mitty, all jokes aside you have a connection problem. Most people in America like to think they are middle class and you basically just told em they are poor. Remember, when you said, “you aren’t very concerned about the poor because they have an ample safety net.” Well Mitty, I am here to tell you they don’t…in fact in America we have plenty of people with no net.  By the same token there are a lot of people who don’t care for President Obama, who would be happy to vote for you, but the more you talk, the less likely some of those folks may be to vote for you. After all, you can’t go around popping people’s bubbles and telling them they are poor and therefore you aren’t concerned about them.

Anyway, I have taken up enough of your time, best of luck to you.

Signed,

Black Girl in Maine

PS: Seriously, you should come and visit me, just so you can see up close what life is like for the poor people and no, 211 can’t help them.

September 13, 2012

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class, Current Events

Marriage as the cure, America’s reality problem

America has a reality problem and it ain’t Snooki, J-Wow and Honey Boo. Americans are stuck in the dreams of yesterday and a place and time where life was a lot more black and white and not the shades of grey that have become the reality of modern day life in America. Our reality problem or rather refusal to look at reality as a collective whole is why we avoid looking at what we have become and working towards real solutions, instead we assess blame and look the other way.

Recent Census data shows that America, the land of dreams and prosperity has taken a terrible detour, we are lost. Yet instead of acknowledging that we are lost, it’s easier to nitpick hence a report I heard on NPR this morning ‘Can Marriage Save Single Mothers From Poverty’ of course folks on the conservative side think that marriage (but only marriage that involves one man and one woman) is the magic cure-all. Sure 40% of all births in the US are out of wedlock, but rather than look at the fact that wages have been stagnant and in the past decade the middle class has been hammered and the poor have been forgotten all while the rich have grown richer, it’s easy to say get married and the number of poor will decrease. Really?

In the NPR piece, Stephanie Coontz, a professor at Evergreen State College, makes a good point, sure women know that marrying a man who earns a good wage probably will be beneficial but the reality is these men with good wages are often not available. In lower income communities they simply don’t exist as wages have stagnated and even in so called good communities, many of these men have watched their own opportunities decrease as evidenced by this piece featured a few weeks ago in the New York Times. Where once solidly middle class men with wives are no longer the breadwinners, instead it’s the wives who are earning the bread. In many cases, globalization has changed the game and in this case, the game has changed for good.

To take a financial issue and turn it into a moral/social issue once again takes the pressure off the powers to be to create real change. It pits neighbor against neighbor and creates a false sense of security for the remaining haves while they cast dispersions at the have-nots. To even link single motherhood to poverty and use marriage as the cure, once again threatens the rights of all women and threatens to take us back to a time when women were less than.

Marriage under the right circumstances can be a beautiful thing, hell I have done it two times and so far seem to be pretty successful at it this second time around. Make no mistake though, more marriages crumble due to financial matters than anything else. If we look at the upper middle class and above and say they have higher rates of marriage and lowers rates of divorce, we can’t ignore the fact that financial stability allows a couple to have less pressures and more access to resources when there are problems. A financially solid couple can see a marriage therapist, afford the babysitters and time away that can keep a marriage on track, all things that are harder to do when you are just trying to keep the lights on.

Until we all have access to financially stable jobs with solid benefits, let’s just leave marriage out of the discussion.