National Radio Project

MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #44-98 U.S. Poverty: Realities and Possibilities
November 4, 1998

Program description at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/1998/9844.html

Norman Solomon: Welcome to Making Contact an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information. I'm Norman Solomon. More than three decades ago in the mid-1960s, President Johnson announced what he called a War on Poverty.

Today, no one in the white House or in the Congressional leadership talks that way. Meanwhile the United States remains a country with many poor people.

The Institute for Food and Development Policy also known as Food First, points out that 30 million Americans go hungry. Somewhere between 5 million and 7 million are homeless. More than 40 million Americans have no health insurance and in the United States we have the highest rate of child poverty among the industrialized countries.

On this round table edition of Making Contact we're going to discuss realities of poverty and possibilities for creating positive social change. Joining us here in studio is Barbara Ehrenreich whose essays have often appeared in many magazines including Time, The Progressive,The Nation, and Z. Her books include "The Snarling Citizen" and "Blood Rites."

Barbara, welcome to Making Contact.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Glad to be with you.

Norman Solomon: Also with us today is Fannie Brown. She is an activist with a nationwide group ACORN which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Fannie, thanks for joining us on Making Contact.

Fannie Brown: Glad to be with you.

Norman Solomon: Let's begin with you. ACORN has active chapters in about 32 cities, 20 states, all with 120,000 members nationwide. I understand ACORN has been around since 1970. What really is ACORN up to?

Fannie Brown: Well, right now ACORN is about change. We are dealing with low and moderate income families throughout the United States in trying to get jobs with a livable wage, and bring poor people out of poverty. And when we say bring people out of poverty -- meaning if you can get a job, or if you can get a job with enough income to suffice for what you need to do for your everyday living or for a family, that you would be more able to think about some of the other things that you need to do for your family and what's happening right now in our lower and moderate income families -- we have the working poor. First we have the poor. Then after we have the poor we have the working poor, and they're working but they are depressed.

The families have been split up. We have the drug situation. Drugs have just taken over and so what we need is better jobs, better paying jobs so we would be able to suffice the way of living for our communities.

If we could suffice the drug situation we wouldn't have children having to be in foster care, or being adopted or being taken away from their families. A lot of children are very angry because they have to be taken away from their families because they don't have jobs to take care of them and they are just out there.

And they feel that they are alone. That nobody cares. But from time to time we have families that take children in and give them a place to stay or see that their needs are met. And right now we just don't have enough programs in our communities to take care of a lot of the situations. We need a lot more counseling. We need a lot more after school programs for even the children who don't have -- who have parents at home but a lot of their parents are not really there because they are on drugs or whatever. And they are not able to give the children what they need.

We have children that are starving because the drug situation has took over the family and they are not feeding their children. They are not getting medical help that they need -- children that need their shots or if they have a strep throat or virus or whatever.

Some children have pneumonia and some children are never seen by a doctor -- they have ear infections and they never see the doctor for their ear infections so that destroys their ears. And they are unable to hear. We have some children that lose their sight because they haven't had the medical treatment that they need to suffice their eyesight. So we have a lot of poverty around the United States that needs to be addressed.

At this point as a mother of three, when my children came along things were a little bit better because my husband and myself both had a job. And we were able to survive and support our children and do fairly well.

But now in these days and times being in poverty, people are getting worse and worse and worse. And the drugs have taken over.

Norman Solomon: Comparing now to say ten, twenty or thirty years ago, what has been the difference in terms of making a minimum wage. What does that do for meeting your budget, being able to pay rent, food, clothes and all that. How would you compare now to say the late '60s, '70s or '80s.

Fannie Brown: Well, in the late '60s, where I was raised in the South, we were making $2.50 a day. Compared to now, prices have risen high above that amount of income. Even at making a minimum wage today, you cannot survive off of what we survived off of then because the prices are too high and you don't have the income. Back then if you had $2.50 a day, that was money.

Norman Solomon: You also mentioned the social programs that there are not -- the extent of those programs are needed. And I want to ask you about the trend in that regard. What's been happening in terms of access, whether it’s housing subsidies, nutrition programs, after school education, latch key, all of that kind of stuff.

Fannie Brown: Where they had programs before -- all those programs have been cut. They've been chopped down from the top and those programs are just not there anymore.

Years ago we had all these programs in place and they were working, but as time goes on, somebody somewhere along the way decided we didn't need these programs anymore. So they chopped off the top, so we are way down to nothing, hardly.

Norman Solomon: Barbara Ehrenreich, we just heard that these programs were working and yet the conventional wisdom from many pundits and many in the media has been that social programs don't work that the so-called Great Society programs were failures.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Yes, I know. That's the inversion of reality that's a myth. We know that social programs, in fact, had a very positive effects. Actually Norman it should be said first, most of the increase in social spending, in the 1960s, was not on programs for the poor. It was on programs for everybody. Meaning primarily middle class people, like Medicare and increases in social security. That's where the big money went.

The War on Poverty was teensy compared to that. And I think the things that mattered probably most to improving things for poor people was Medicaid and the welfare benefits went up in many places, mainly because there was a welfare rights movement. So, it's not like there was this huge amount of money ever pouring into the poor which was mis-spent and we had to pull back.

It was always underfunded. But I think the point Fannie is making is probably the most important one -that one of the arguments against social programs and welfare spending is "Let them get a job and make it on their own." "Just pull yourself up, take care of yourself." And if jobs don't pay enough, that doesn't make any sense.

The decline in wages, and I'm talking about real wages adjusted for inflation -they have declined. Even though we can go back 50 years ago and say, "Well, it was just dollars-a-day then," -the price of housing has gone up astronomically and yet they still calculate poverty in the old way, the 1960s way, based almost entirely on the price of food. And so we come out with a poverty rate of about 12 or 13%. That does not reflect the real experience of people who are working at these low wages, $5, $6, $7 an hour.

Norman Solomon: Early this autumn 1998 there was a burst of publicity from the census data and various think tanks to the effect that poverty has diminished in the United States. It seems in a way there is a parallel universe there's the ones of officialdom and mass media on the one hand and then there's the world that people are living in and their needs being met or unmet. How do you see the trends in terms of the official versions of reality and what's happening on the streets and in people's lives?

Barbara Ehrenreich: You said it. There is a big divergence between those things going on. It's laughable to think that we could be so smug about poverty rates declining, when we know for a fact that something like one out of five homeless people today is employed full time. That there is homelessness and it's not just people who aren't working. It's people who are working. When we know that 30% of the work force is people who are at the poverty level and can't get out of it, even though they work full time year 'round. Those things should not give us any comfort.

And also I should point out the economy has been booming. One would expect poverty to fall. One would expect it to fall a lot more than those rates reflect it at all. The amazing thing about the last five or ten years is that as the economy boomed and grew and so on, poverty was not effected. And now, it's just effected just this tiny amount there is this kind of boasting about that. We've had prosperity for just a very small [group] of people at the top.

Norman Solomon: There's a lot of imagery in the media of poor people being people who don't work and yet you both are talking about many millions of people in the United States who work, who work full time, who are still below the poverty line by virtually any definition. I wanted to ask you about the realities of the working poor.

Fannie Brown: We have the working poor -- that work but are still below the poverty level and what we have been trying to do with ACORN is get ordinances passed in different cities around the country for a livable wage. In Oakland we just got a living wage ordinance passed in April for Oakland which raised from the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour to $8 an hour with benefits or $9.25 without for the city of Oakland.

We've worked in several other cities so we have about five cities that we have actually got ordinances passed for a livable wage. We have the Welfare to Work Program in Los Angeles that we're working on. We have 1500 families that we are working with in Los Angeles to try to improve their working conditions for a livable wage. Norman Solomon: So to clarify -- if someone lives in Oakland, California is that person guaranteed a wage above the federal minimum wage?

Fannie Brown: Well, it's only for city work that has subsidies and contracts with the city of Oakland.

Norman Solomon: I see. It's a strategy to build that concept of a living wage?

Fannie Brown: Right. That's what we are working on. Building strategies for a livable wage around the whole country in every area that we can improve. ACORN is out there trying to improve so we can have a better living for our low and moderate income families and the working poor and the poor.

Norman Solomon: What could be the effects of this concept of a living wage? Does that reframe the debate?

Barbara Ehrenreich: I think it's good that this focuses on wages. I don't even really think that we have to make a real big line between the poor and the working poor, in a way, because the people who aren't working at all are usually people who are chronically ill, disabled, who are raising small children and have been on welfare because of that, or have been trying to find a job and haven’t been lucky in finding a job. And even with help wanted signs hanging out everywhere, if you are of a certain age or color or whatever, you aren't going to walk into all those jobs. It's not that simple. So there's a lot of people moving in and out. Low wage jobs are very high turnover jobs. You can have a job one month and then be told you're not needed the next month. But the fact is, what Americans’ employers are doing is sending out a signal to a lot of people saying, "We don't honor your time, your labor, enough to pay you enough to live on." And I think that's really a big turning point for our country. When you come to a culture that no longer really values people's effort.

The whole social contract is based on the idea that if you work hard and put in an honest effort, you're going to be paid and you're going to live all right. And that's no longer true.

Norman Solomon: There's been a lot of talk from the Clinton administration for several years now about job creation and every once in a while you will hear Clinton or Gore or somebody else making a speech saying, "We've created this many millions of new jobs" and the statistics I've seen indicate that most of those jobs are very low paying jobs. and I wonder how that plays out when people feel that the jobs opening up are very much at a very minimal subsistence level -- what kind of impact that has in the long run?

Fannie Brown: In the long run I would say that those jobs are there but we have a lot of people that don't have an education and now what they're telling you to apply for a job is that if you don't have a high school diploma, or a GED or some kind of college credit, you can not apply for the job. Janitors, gardeners they have to have degrees in order to become a janitor now or to become a gardener. Whereas before you didn't need all these things, you could just have the know-how and could do the work and could get the job.

But now we're at the point that everything you have to have a college degree and we have poor people that just don't have those degrees and really cannot afford to go to school.

Norman Solomon: When you watch TV, or read news weeklies, you might get the impression that we're moving towards a classless society or at least where the past divisions of class that were so rigid are breaking down. I wonder how real that is, if at all?

Barbara Ehrenreich: Well, that's an old form of capitalist propaganda, if I can use the term. You know in the early 1960s before the war on poverty, before the poor were "discovered", because there was a point in the media when suddenly the media "discovered" the existence of the poor -- but before that point that was the dogma. We are a classless society, one big middle class.

If you are a middle class and you live in a suburb or urban area where everybody else is, it's very comforting to hear that you don't have to be concerned about any body else. So I think we can just toss that point.

Norman Solomon: That's Barbara Ehrenreich whose most recent books include: "The Snarling Citizen" and "Blood Rites, Origins in History of the Passions of War" also with us in the studio here is Fannie Brown who lives in Oakland, California and is an activist with the ACORN organization, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

By the way if you want to get in touch with ACORN, anywhere in north America, you can do that by calling 1-800-327-4429. That number again is 1-800-327-4429.

I'm Norman Solomon and you're listening to Making Contact radio program. We'll return to this discussion in a minute.

If you'd like to receive free background information on the subject we're discussing today, you can call Making Contact at 1-800-529-5736 and give us your mailing address. You can call us anytime for that free information 800-529-5736 and at the end of the broadcast we will repeat that number.

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Well, with that accomplished, let us resume our discussion.

Fannie Brown, what would you most like to see change about public attitudes towards poverty here in the United States?

Fannie Brown: Most things that I would like to see about change would be more jobs, more and better paying jobs. [Then] a lot of the problems that we are having we wouldn't have if we had more and better paying jobs.

Norman Solomon: In terms of a strategy to bring that about, traditionally people who have served as core constituencies for the Democratic Party have often been encouraged to say, "We've got to vote for good people." Usually we're told, Democrats, to accomplish something like creating better jobs. What is ACORN’s approach? How do we bring that about?

Fannie Brown: Well, we're out in our communities organizing and getting people together to try to bring about a change and make our voices heard. Where we are able to make our voices heard, we've learned over the years, we can bring about a change but we have to be heard. And in order to be heard, we have to have numbers. We cannot be heard just one person alone.

They will stand up and listen and take notice of what we are saying if we bring numbers together. And change is going to take numbers. Not just one person standing alone, but numbers of people standing together.

Norman Solomon: There's a lot of notion in the media that people can't create a lot of change. Do we have evidence to the contrary?

Barbara Ehrenreich: Yes. I think we've all had experiences to the contrary here. Between you and me and Fannie we could think of a lot of them.

There's again another, shall we say, deliberate myth of the very comfortable. First, that there are no uncomfortable people, second, that if there are any poor people that they are not deserving of any help because it's their own fault. And thirdly, that you can't do anything about it anyway. Those are all very self-serving myths.

I think there's a lot we can do and I think there's another thing I would like to throw in here because I'm against drawing certain lines. There isn't a real sharp line between the poor and the middle class. If you count issues like health care, affording health insurance. If you count the issues like affording college for your kids, housing too is becoming a frightening issue for a lot of middle class people. So eventually we are going to have to make connections there and stop thinking of the poor as some kind of exotic different kind of people. And see that these are really shared problems that we're all going to have to get together around.

Norman Solomon: What about unity across that spectrum from very low income through the strata of income levels that are often called middle class. How does that work out in practice for organizing?

Fannie Brown: For organizing and working with both classes of people, the middle class working people understand that we have poor people or poor working people in our communities and they feel for them so we all work together to try to bring about a change and make it better.

Norman Solomon: And to what extent are there very tangible common interests? Take the issue of health care. 40 plus million Americans uninsured. How can that play out in terms of people organizing?

Some people listening to us now live in Montana rural areas, some in Los Angeles, some in Vermont, for instance, or for that matter in other countries. What has worked for ACORN in terms of developing a program around issues like housing and health care and nutrition across some of those barriers?

Fannie Brown: Well, as far as housing: we have a program that we have all across the country that we help poor and moderate income families buy their own homes. We have a home loan program around the country. We have one in Oakland that we organize and find families that need their own home or want to own their own homes and we help them get their credit cleaned up and we help them get a loan to actually buy their own home.

Norman Solomon: Barbara Ehrenreich, you spoke at a national meeting of ACORN and I wanted to ask what your perspective is on the kind of organizing that ACORN has been doing?

Barbara Ehrenreich: Well, I was very impressed by the national convention. It was the most up-beat event of a large number of people that I've been to for a long time.

Norman Solomon: That was in Milwaukee?

Barbara Ehrenreich: Yeah, and what I liked about it was the spirit of it. It was not "We're going to wait for certain kind of political leader who'll come along and change things," but people really feeling mobilized to make change in their own lives.

And I think a lot of people there, and Fannie could correct me, probably are not people with a lot of education, or a lot of assets of any kind but who have a spirit to make change which I think is really inspiring to me. I came away feeling really good and that we can do things if we get together. Large numbers of people and recognize, "Hey, people have made changes in the past and we're going to do it again."

Norman Solomon: In this case we're talking about a group, ACORN, that presently has 120,000 members across the United States and I should mention if people listening want to get in touch with ACORN, if you'd like to go on the worldwide web you can find ACORN there at www.acorn.org/community.

And one more time now I want to give the 800 number to call ACORN at their national office: ACORN at 1-800-327-4429.

In the last couple of minutes we have to talk on the program today, I'll ask a very difficult question and that is if each of you had one or two points that you would want to underscore to the listeners so that they would hopefully think about it in the next few days, what would you want to leave them with, what is the key point or two that you would want to emphasize?

Fannie Brown: My main point would be that we could have better education in the United States than we have. Our education has kind of been put on the back burner and we need more education. And as I said before, we have children that need help and there's none out there. We need more counseling for our families, not just the children but for the whole entire family to make it a better place.

Barbara Ehrenreich: I don't even know where to start -- there are so many things. Off the top of my head though, I would like to say I would like to think of every product we buy, everything we use in terms of what kind of labor went into that and what those people were paid. I know it's good that there's been attention to sweat shop exploiters like Nike, but it's so much bigger than that.

I think we have to put consumer pressure for one thing, and disapproval, moral disapproval on all those places, all those fast food joints, all those factories, everything that is insulting people by paying them for their labor an amount which is fundamentally not enough to live on.

Norman Solomon: And looking ahead to 1999 and beyond, what on the horizon looks encouraging, if anything?

Barbara Ehrenreich: Well, I think ACORN does, among other things; and I think the fact that the trade union movement has been getting a little life back into it and finally beginning to pay attention to low-wage workers, who are often women and minorities, is great. How about you Fannie?

Fannie Brown: I feel the same way as you do in that area. There's a lot out there to be done, a lot of organizing to be done, a lot of work to be done, but I feel that ACORN is moving towards a great change and I believe we can make a difference.

Norman Solomon: Okay. and with that I'll remind you folks listening one last time ACORN is a national organization. It can be reached at 1-800-327-4429 and for those of you who go up on the worldwide web and especially convenient for people outside of North America who are listening, just go to the web at www.acorn.org/community.

I have been speaking with Barbara Ehrenreich whose essays appear in many magazines and whose most recent books are "The Snarling Citizen" and "Blood Rites." And also with us today activist Fannie Brown representing ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Thanks to both of you for joining us.

That's about it for this edition of Making Contact. If you would like a transcript or tape of today's program or more information about Making Contact, please get something to write with because in a few moments you'll be hearing a toll free number which can be used from anywhere in the United States and Canada.

Making Contact is an independent production funded by individual contributors. Our producers are Philip Babich and David Barsamian. Our executive Director is Peggy Law.

To receive some free background information call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. You can also order tapes and transcripts by calling that same number. 800-529-5736.

This edition of Making Contact was co-produced by the Institute for Public Accuracy. If you would like to get in touch with us at the Institute, go to our web page at www.accuracy.org or if you would like to get on an automatic e-mail list send an e-mail note to accuracy@accuracy.org. Thanks to KQED in San Francisco and to Howard Gellman for engineering the program today. This is Norman Solomon for everyone involved in Making Contact, bye for now.