The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives (18 page)

As Jessica Bartholow of the Western Center on Law and Poverty puts it, this is a grievous state of affairs. “Below 50 percent of the poverty line, we’re putting kids in extreme danger—they’re going to the hospital more often, missing school, missing opportunity at a great rate.” At that level of poverty, the basic realities of daily life become so difficult to navigate that people end up facing not just temporary hardships but permanent handicaps. They are more susceptible to life-threatening food-borne diseases such as cysticercosis, and, because of the poor housing and sanitary conditions that they face, are more likely to become infected by, and to have to live with, insect-borne sicknesses such as dengue fever and Chagas disease.
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Exposed to deep poverty as a child, a person is likely to grow into adulthood burdened with poor health, lower life expectancy than their wealthier peers, inadequate education, possibly low self-esteem. For people born and raised in deep poverty, the playing field has not been leveled; they are, quite simply, left to run uphill throughout their often-truncated lives.

It’s the opposite of a virtuous circle. Witness, for example, the trajectory described by community organizer Gloria Dickerson, who had returned to her hometown of Drew from the state capital of Jackson to work with impoverished residents on bettering their lives. The Mississippi Delta town that she worked in, said Dickerson, looked like

neighborhoods with a lot of blight; people who are feeling hopeless; people stuck in their place; a place where the educational levels are very low because the schools are not performing well. The infrastructure is deteriorating—the roads: potholes. People want to do
better, but people feel like they don’t have a way out. They find ways to accept the way they live. They’re stressed, because of a lack of money to pay the utility bills, water bills, put food on the table. A lot are dependent on low-income housing, food stamps. It looks like children who are probably more hopeful than the adults, but they’re looking for someone to help them succeed. They want good schools; they want to be able to be successful.

In Drew, half of the kids didn’t graduate high school—and the schools themselves had been taken over by the state. “There are no extra-curriculum activities in the school. The kids are feeling like they’re not learning what they need to learn; the teachers aren’t doing what they are supposed to be doing; the administrators aren’t doing what they are supposed to be doing; the adults aren’t taking care of the kids in terms of education; the parents aren’t involved in the schools. The schools are lacking in funding and lacking in resources.” Many of the kids simply dropped out, ran the streets, ended up in trouble with the law.

“We have a lot of lockup of children in the Drew area. If they’re not going to Parchman, a state penitentiary seven miles north of Drew, they’re being locked up in town jails, county jails. A lot of it is for drug use. The parents have really given up. They say ‘We don’t know what to do, how to help these children.’ They are unemployed; they’re trying to find some ways to enjoy life. They enjoy parties and coronations and basketball games. However, when you talk about things that affect their lives—like politics and community organizing—most of them talk about ‘
They
should do this,’ or ‘
You
should do that,’ rather than coming together as a community.”

Most of it, said Dickerson, was “generational poverty; the attitudes have been handed down from generation to generation. ‘I can’t.’ ‘It’s too hard.’ ‘Nobody’s going to hire me.’ Until people start to have hope and know that things can change, nothing’s going to change. Nothing’s going to change. So my part is working on the hope, and showing them that things
can
be possible in this town.
We all have to come together in terms of people coming together and talking about ‘how can we turn this little town around?’ It takes work to turn this thing around. It’s a long-term process, but we just gotta keep working on it. We’re still fighting.”

Overwhelmingly, in the aftermath of 2008 politicians of both major parties downplayed the struggles experienced by those such as Raquel, or by the rubber-room WEP workers in New York—those truly at the bottom of the economy. Instead, they declared their concern for the struggling middle classes. It was a turn of phrase that, while being imprecise and elastic enough to include the majority of Americans, couldn’t really be interpreted to include those out on the far margins: the long-term unemployed, the homeless, residents of trailer parks and shanty towns, patrons of food pantries and overcrowded free medical clinics.

How, for example, could one consider 43-year-old Frank Nicci, a onetime chef who, in 2008, lost his leg to an infection related to his diabetes, his job because of his ill health, and his home in the hotel at which he worked once he lost his job, part of the middle class?

In the fall of 2011, Nicci was back in the hospital, in the small town of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in the Susquehanna Valley, with another diabetes complication, the stump of his amputated leg hidden beneath the thin white hospital sheets. He and his wife, Julie, didn’t seem in any hurry to go home; after all, home was now a run-down trailer, and cash was so tight that Frank no longer even had the gas money to go see his 8-year-old son, who lived with his ex an hour or so drive away. Julie worked part-time in a store, Nicci got disability payments. Between the two of them, they brought in under $20,000 a year. “It’s very hard, from anyone’s standpoint, to make it from week to week, let alone from month to month. She has three children and I have a son. We try to get them once a month, per our custody agreements. But we can’t do that, because we don’t
have the money to get them. Try telling an 8-year-old you can’t get them because you don’t have the money. It’s very devastating, very frustrating.”

For Frank and Julie the most basic parts of daily living had become a constant battle. “We don’t have the money to put gas in the car. Some months we get behind, you use money for food that you should be using for bills; then your bills get behind and you get shutoff notices. We’ve got shutoff notices on our electric. It’s very hard. We found a place cheaper than what our subsidized housing was, a two-bedroom trailer, and we pay $350 a month in rent. I get discouraged a lot.”

Even if he managed to reenter the workforce, Frank would likely spend the rest of his life hobbled by unpayable medical bills and the loss of credit that he experienced because of his inability to get on top of these obligations. For despite being on Medicaid, because he had no secondary coverage he had to pick up 20 percent of his medical expenses.

I’d say over the past four years I probably have $200,000 in healthcare bills since I lost my leg. I haven’t been paying on them. I have no credit. I don’t borrow money. You do without. I skip at least one meal a day. I usually don’t eat breakfast, which, for me, is very important. That’s probably the most important meal of the day for a diabetic. When I don’t eat breakfast I eat more for lunch; it messes with my sugar levels. That’s probably part of the reason why I am in the hospital right now. I’m in the hospital because I hadn’t been eating properly. I don’t eat the right kinds of food, because I can’t afford the right kinds. I eat pasta, things that are cheap, things that are easy for my wife to make, that are cheap and easy to buy, and it’s not the best food for you. If I had more money I’d eat the right kind of diet, more meat, more protein, cut out some of the foods that I shouldn’t be eating. If I had money to buy better foods I would.

Girshriela Green was another person who in no way, shape, or form could be considered a member of the struggling middle class whose collective plight has been the focus of so much political rhetoric in recent years. A onetime Walmart worker from South Central Los Angeles, Green injured her shoulder on the job and ended up on disability, struggling to house and feed herself and the three of her six children who still lived with her, on approximately $1,000 a month in disability and a few hundred dollars worth of food stamps.

Green got her job in 2009 after spending time in California’s welfare-to-work program, CalWORKs. She earned slightly over the minimum wage and never managed to build up any savings. Once she had to go on disability, her life became a constant struggle, not to get ahead but simply to avoid falling too far behind on her monthly financial obligations.

“I am surviving, from check to check. I make ends meet. And I substitute or take away what’s not necessary. All I can afford are the necessities of taking care of my children and having a roof over their head,” explained Girshriela, sitting on a bench outside a small bookstore in her neighborhood as she talked. When she first got the job, she recollected, she earned $8.20 an hour.

I was a sales-floor associate, I mixed paint in hardware, was in the sporting goods department, cut fabrics, was a cashier in electronics, and I took care of our customers. After tax, I was bringing home $400-and-something every two weeks, barely enough to get by. I had to stay on county healthcare and dental, because in my first six months I was not eligible to get benefits. Walmart would not allow benefits if you’re a part-time associate. So I took the initiative to earn more so I would be able to climb that ladder. My first six-month evaluation, I did get a twenty-cent raise. I tried harder. I was promoted to photo technician, got a raise as a photo specialist. It gave me a forty-cent raise. So now I operated in maybe eight different jobs. I got promoted to health and beauty manager. I started supervising other associates, actually running a store within a store.

Overworked, the Walmart employee’s health started to decline. She damaged her shoulder, tried to work around the pain, and ended up with a serious injury. “One day, I picked up something and my whole left side just paralyzed, it just froze. They rushed me to the company doctor. I was asked if I had reported it. Well, I did. I had several witnesses that I’d reported it for three months straight and they didn’t give me the help I needed. I had an MRI; they found out that with me compensating with the rest of my body that I was injuring other parts of my body. I had to have surgery on a bone in my neck.”

Unable to work, Girshriela went onto workers’ comp. “Five hundred and eleven dollars every two weeks. God only knows how I survive with three girls. Sometimes I go without eating just to feed them. Probably drink a cup of coffee and some chips, when I go to visit friends. I often sacrifice to take care of my girls, to where they don’t have to suffer. My church often helps a lot; I haven’t been to a food pantry before, but I can see that coming with my bills accumulating. I had to drop our life insurance, so we’re not covered. If something happened to my children today, would I be able to bury them? I don’t know. A whole bunch of cutbacks. Life insurance. Healthy food versus noodles. I’m about to cry.” She stopped and started to snuffle.

My family just got together and actually bought me the outfit I have on, because I was accepting an award and they wanted me to look nice. I only own two pair of tennis shoes, a couple of pair of pants and a few T-shirts. We don’t watch TV often because I can’t afford electricity to run like that. I don’t have a bank account. I live from check to check. I don’t do luxury. I just do what is absolutely necessary. I don’t take rides around in my car, take my kid to school, go to movies, eat romaine lettuce, have chicken versus noodles. Once a month I get $6 from WIC for fresh fruit and vegetables.

WANTON LITTLE WAIFS AND SERFS

But for Green and others like her, as conditions grew worse—as the numbers of those out of work or in work that paid so little that it couldn’t bring families out of poverty increased—so the dominant political narrative when it came to the poor became increasingly harsh. Many states reduced the number of months a woman could access welfare over the course of a lifetime. In California the limit was reduced from sixty to forty-eight months, with some budget proposals calling for that number to be cut in half again, to a mere twenty-four months, Arizona cut its limit to twenty-four months; politicians in Oregon proposed reducing their state limit to a mere year and a half.
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States that provided general assistance to childless adults began rolling back these mandates, and counties in states that continued to mandate such assistance began reducing the number of months out of the year that they would give aid to these individuals. In many locations, childless adults could now only receive aid, amounting to a couple hundred dollars per month, for three months out of the year.