Too Poor to Make the News

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/14ehrenreich.html?pagewanted=all

THE human side of the recession, in the new media genre that's been called "recession porn," is the story of an incremental descent from excess to frugality, from ease to austerity. The super-rich give up their personal jets; the upper middle class cut back on private Pilates classes; the merely middle class forgo vacations and evenings at Applebee's. In some accounts, the recession is even described as the "great leveler," smudging the dizzying levels of inequality that characterized the last couple of decades and squeezing everyone into a single great class, the Nouveau Poor, in which we will all drive tiny fuel-efficient cars and grow tomatoes on our porches.

But the outlook is not so cozy when we look at the effects of the recession on a group generally omitted from all the vivid narratives of downward mobility - the already poor, the estimated 20 percent to 30 percent of the population who struggle to get by in the best of times. This demographic, the working poor, have already been living in an economic depression of their own. From their point of view "the economy," as a shared condition, is a fiction.

This spring, I tracked down a couple of the people I had met while working on my 2001 book, "Nickel and Dimed," in which I worked in low-wage jobs like waitressing and housecleaning, and I found them no more gripped by the recession than by "American Idol"; things were pretty much "same old." The woman I called Melissa in the book was still working at Wal-Mart, though in nine years, her wages had risen to $10 an hour from $7. "Caroline," who is increasingly disabled by diabetes and heart disease, now lives with a grown son and subsists on occasional cleaning and catering jobs. We chatted about grandchildren and church, without any mention of exceptional hardship.

As with Denise Smith, whom I recently met through the Virginia Organizing Project and whose bachelor's degree in history qualifies her for seasonal $10-an-hour work at a tourist site, the recession is largely an abstraction. "We were poor," Ms. Smith told me cheerfully, "and we're still poor."

But then, at least if you inhabit a large, multiclass extended family like my own, there comes that e-mail message with the subject line "Need your help," and you realize that bad is often just the stage before worse. The note was from one of my nephews, and it reported that his mother-in-law, Peg, was, like several million other Americans, about to lose her home to foreclosure.

It was the back story that got to me: Peg, who is 55 and lives in rural Missouri, had been working three part-time jobs to support her disabled daughter and two grandchildren, who had moved in with her. Then, last winter, she had a heart attack, missed work and fell behind in her mortgage payments. If I couldn't help, all four would have to move into the cramped apartment in Minneapolis already occupied by my nephew and his wife.

Only after I'd sent the money did I learn that the mortgage was not a subprime one and the home was not a house but a dilapidated single-wide trailer that, as a "used vehicle," commands a 12-percent mortgage interest rate. You could argue, without any shortage of compassion, that "Low-Wage Worker Loses Job, Home" is nobody's idea of news.

In late May I traveled to Los Angeles - where the real unemployment rate, including underemployed people and those who have given up on looking for a job, is estimated at 20 percent - to meet with a half-dozen community organizers. They are members of a profession, derided last summer by Sarah Palin, that helps low-income people renegotiate mortgages, deal with eviction when their landlords are foreclosed and, when necessary, organize to confront landlords and bosses.
The question I put to this rainbow group was: "Has the recession made a significant difference in the low-income communities where you work, or are things pretty much the same?" My informants - from Koreatown, South Central, Maywood, Artesia and the area around Skid Row - took pains to explain that things were already bad before the recession, and in ways that are disconnected from the larger economy. One of them told me, for example, that the boom of the '90s and early 2000s had been "basically devastating" for the urban poor. Rents skyrocketed; public housing disappeared to make way for gentrification.

But yes, the recession has made things palpably worse, largely because of job losses. With no paychecks coming in, people fall behind on their rent and, since there can be as long as a six-year wait for federal housing subsidies, they often have no alternative but to move in with relatives. "People are calling me all the time," said Preeti Sharma of the South Asian Network, "They think I have some sort of magic."

The organizers even expressed a certain impatience with the Nouveau Poor, once I introduced the phrase. If there's a symbol for the recession in Los Angeles, Davin Corona of Strategic Actions for a Just Economy said, it's "the policeman facing foreclosure in the suburbs." The already poor, he said - the undocumented immigrants, the sweatshop workers, the janitors, maids and security guards - had all but "disappeared" from both the news media and public policy discussions.

Disappearing with them is what may be the most distinctive and compelling story of this recession. When I got back home, I started calling up experts, like Sharon Parrott, a policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who told me, "There's rising unemployment among all demographic groups, but vastly more among the so-called unskilled."

How much more? Larry Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, offers data showing that blue-collar unemployment is increasing three times as fast as white-collar unemployment. The last two recessions - in the early '90s and in 2001 - produced mass white-collar layoffs, and while the current one has seen plenty of downsized real-estate agents and financial analysts, the brunt is being borne by the blue-collar working class, which has been sliding downward since deindustrialization began in the '80s.
When I called food banks and homeless shelters around the country, most staff members and directors seemed poised to offer press-pleasing tales of formerly middle-class families brought low. But some, like Toni Muhammad at Gateway Homeless Services in St. Louis, admitted that mostly they see "the long-term poor," who become even poorer when they lose the kind of low-wage jobs that had been so easy for me to find from 1998 to 2000. As Candy Hill, a vice president of Catholic Charities U.S.A., put it, "All the focus is on the middle class - on Wall Street and Main Street - but it's the people on the back streets who are really suffering."

What are the stations between poverty and destitution? Like the Nouveau Poor, the already poor descend through a series of deprivations, though these are less likely to involve forgone vacations than missed meals and medications. The Times reported earlier this month that one-third of Americans can no longer afford to comply with their prescriptions.

There are other, less life-threatening, ways to try to make ends meet. The Associated Press has reported that more women from all social classes are resorting to stripping, although "gentlemen's clubs," too, have been hard-hit by the recession. The rural poor are turning increasingly to "food auctions," which offer items that may be past their sell-by dates.

And for those who like their meat fresh, there's the option of urban hunting. In Racine, Wis., a 51-year-old laid-off mechanic told me he's supplementing his diet by "shooting squirrels and rabbits and eating them stewed, baked and grilled." In Detroit, where the wildlife population has mounted as the human population ebbs, a retired truck driver is doing a brisk business in raccoon carcasses, which he recommends marinating with vinegar and spices.

The most common coping strategy, though, is simply to increase the number of paying people per square foot of dwelling space - by doubling up or renting to couch-surfers. It's hard to get firm numbers on overcrowding, because no one likes to acknowledge it to census-takers, journalists or anyone else who might be remotely connected to the authorities. At the legal level, this includes Peg taking in her daughter and two grandchildren in a trailer with barely room for two, or my nephew and his wife preparing to squeeze all four of them into what is essentially a one-bedroom apartment. But stories of Dickensian living arrangements abound.

In Los Angeles, Prof. Peter Dreier, a housing policy expert at Occidental College, says that "people who've lost their jobs, or at least their second jobs, cope by doubling or tripling up in overcrowded apartments, or by paying 50 or 60 or even 70 percent of their incomes in rent." Thelmy Perez, an organizer with Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, is trying to help an elderly couple who could no longer afford the $600 a month rent on their two-bedroom apartment, so they took in six unrelated subtenants and are now facing eviction. According to a community organizer in my own city, Alexandria, Va., the standard apartment in a complex occupied largely by day laborers contains two bedrooms, each housing a family of up to five people, plus an additional person laying claim to the couch.

Overcrowding - rural, suburban and urban - renders the mounting numbers of the poor invisible, especially when the perpetrators have no telltale cars to park on the street. But if this is sometimes a crime against zoning laws, it's not exactly a victimless one. At best, it leads to interrupted sleep and long waits for the bathroom; at worst, to explosions of violence. Catholic Charities is reporting a spike in domestic violence in many parts of the country, which Candy Hill attributes to the combination of unemployment and overcrowding.

And doubling up is seldom a stable solution. According to Toni Muhammad, about 70 percent of the people seeking emergency shelter in St. Louis report they had been living with relatives "but the place was too small." When I asked Peg what it was like to share her trailer with her daughter's family, she said bleakly, "I just stay in my bedroom."

The deprivations of the formerly affluent Nouveau Poor are real enough, but the situation of the already poor suggests that they do not necessarily presage a greener, more harmonious future with a flatter distribution of wealth. There are no data yet on the effects of the recession on measures of inequality, but historically the effect of downturns is to increase, not decrease, class polarization.

The recession of the '80s transformed the working class into the working poor, as manufacturing jobs fled to the third world, forcing American workers into the low-paying service and retail sector. The current recession is knocking the working poor down another notch - from low-wage employment and inadequate housing toward erratic employment and no housing at all. Comfortable people have long imagined that American poverty is far more luxurious than the third world variety, but the difference is rapidly narrowing.

Maybe "the economy," as depicted on CNBC, will revive again, restoring the kinds of jobs that sustained the working poor, however inadequately, before the recession. Chances are, though, that they still won't pay enough to live on, at least not at any level of safety and dignity. In fact, hourly wage growth, which had been running at about 4 percent a year, has undergone what the Economic Policy Institute calls a "dramatic collapse" in the last six months alone. In good times and grim ones, the misery at the bottom just keeps piling up, like a bad debt that will eventually come due.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author, most recently, of "This Land Is Their Land: Reports From a Divided Nation."

Comments

[MomTFH]

Thank you.

[Boguslaw Zientek]

Here in Poland we have simple saying about the attempt to shift crisis created by the bankers :

- Hey, we refuse to pay and finance for your crisis!

[JJS]

Once again, thank you for confronting and challenging the sudden discovery of poverty by the popular press, and the utter failure to actually understand what it is: the insult to injury added by every one of these 'staycation!' or 'had to give up our second home!' stories is nauseating.

I so appreciate what you do.

[Larry In Lethbridge]

That was a pretty accurate summation of the situation.

[Karl Wenclas]

Keep in mind that the poor are never allowed to speak for themselves; to have their OWN voice. Not even good underground writers are. Ms. Ehrenreich has made a fortune speaking FOR the lower classes. But we're also capable of speaking for ourselves.
I challenge Ms. Ehrenreich (if she reads this) and her readers to join a pettition to begin to give outsiders a real voice, at
www.penpetition.blogspot.com. Let's see who's for real. Thank you.

[Neil deMause]

So is this really "First of a series" for the Times? If so, maybe there's hope that the media will start paying attention to poor people who don't have a Wall Street pedigree. You'll forgive me for believing it when I see it, though - they claimed to have rediscovered poverty after Katrina, too, and look how that turned out.

[BethB]

Thank you for always being the conscience of our nation!

I was inspired by an article you wrote for The Progressive a while back on truck drivers who were trying to fight back and decided to cover a local rally of Stella D'Oro workers who are trying to fight back and stay out of poverty. It's been tough for them and they could use support, but they remain united and strong.

If you are interested, you can read about their situation and their hopes for a new workers movement in America.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beth-borzone/we-wont-work-for-crumbs-s_b_216587.html

[Karl Wenclas]

CAN there be a new workers movement controlled by rich people like Huffington and Ehrenreich? (Or sponsored by them?) I'm reminded of when Kane in "Citizen Kane" who responds to a fellow plutocrat, who criticizes kane for speaking up for workers-- "If I don't, someone else will!"
New movements should be from the ground up-- run by the workers and poor themselves. (Like the underground literary rebellion.)
Will Barbara sign the Petition to PEN? That's the test of how real she is-- or if she's merely co-opting authentic dissent.
www.penpetition.blogspot.com

[Diane Niece]

Mr. Wenclas: I've followed Ms. Ehrenreich when I could find her for more than six years and she's is the only writer/activist out there who authentically speaks to my life experience. Whatever success she may have from her books, et al, she most definitely earned. If you've folllowed her at all you should know she comes from a humble background and does not appear to have forgotten that. I am personally very grateful she is out there speaking with eloquence and humor for me and mine who are in a economic death spiral. I don't know what cause you represent but I can assure you I won't pursue finding out because of your disparaging tone. Fighting against poverty requires all of us getting along and you are not facilitating that process.

[Barbara]

Thanks, Diane! Karl -- I tried to sign the petition but couldn't figure out how.

[Shay]

I agree with Diane. Ehrenreich while financially comfortable now seems to hail from humble roots with direct connections to the working class.

By the way, I read this piece in the NY Times and really enjoyed it. It does seem that while everyone is focused on the formerly middle class and how they are faring little attention has been paid to those who were already on the edge.

[gaby]

It seems that one of the obstacles for the poor is perception. For example, a 21 year old high school grad who works at a low pay service job because she can't afford college is different from a 21 year old high school drop out who already has four children. But because they are both poor and from a "bad" neighborhood they are perceived to be the same. I sometimes hear the term "deserving poor" and I think it is a shame one can't easily differentiate between people making poor choices and people who want and strive for a better life but are being railroaded by an unfair system.

[Chickensh*tEagle]

You seem to have forgotten the strivers for a better life who chose as well as they were able and whose choices turned out wrong in spite of their intentions. With due respect, perhaps you shouldn't try so hard to differentiate.

[barbsright]

Chickensh*Eagle, one has to differentiate because different 'problems' have different solutions. For example, moving people out of the ghetto just spread crime elsewhere. I think you can read the article (titled: American Murder Mystery) about this reality in the July/August 2008 issue of The Atlantic Monthly online.

[metrognome]

Chickensh*tEagle (posted June 23, 2009 at 10:35 am) is quite right. Efforts to differentiate between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" or between those who made "poor choices" and those who "did everything they could" are highly suspect. Such statements flow so easily from so many people, but what this kind of talk reveals is the speaker’s unflagging sense of superiority to whomever or whatever the speaker is implicitly disparaging. Even worse, these statements set up the speaker as the judge and arbiter of what is "deserving" and what is a "good choice." Why go there? Such talk is a waste of time if the objective is to produce a better system.

If the issue is jobs and employment, don’t forget that we are *all* being affected by systemic assaults on our ability to get and keep a good job. And especially in the U.S., we are assaulted by the systemic lack of an adequate safety net against unemployment/under-employment. If the issue is health care, then we are *all* being injured by the current systemic arrangements that permit enormous and ever-escalating healthcare costs on the one hand, and lack of universal access to health care on the other.

[roger]

gaby: “ I sometimes hear the term "deserving poor" and I think it is a shame one can't easily differentiate between people making poor choices and people who want and strive for a better life but are being railroaded by an unfair system.

metro: “ Efforts to differentiate between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" or between those who made "poor choices" and those who "did everything they could" are highly suspect. …… Such talk is a waste of time if the objective is to produce a better system. “

The circumstances in which a person becomes impoverished are not static nor severely defined. If a Wall Street trader were paid off and then turns to alcohol and becomes unemployable, how can you say that it was not both their poor choice and also the intentionally bloated financial market which rendered the result?

I would say that I personally would hesitate to deem a person of being “deserving” or not of their financial circumstance. This would seem entirely too subjective to me.

When you speak of a better system are you assuming that you can simply impose a better system on a population which makes poor choices and that all of their financial fortunes will rise, poor choices notwithstanding?

[metrognome]

Per Roger's post (June 24, 2009 t 03:23 PM): I'm not a social worker, so I wasn't really considering "a population which makes poor choices." I don't want to use the phrase "poor choices" at all. The notion that someone without a lot of personal, in-depth, and intimate knowledge can even begin to venture an opinion that another person has made "poor choices" is extremely condescending. Perhaps the "poor choices" phrase has become so popular because it makes it easier for us to "pass the buck" and ignore systemic problems, especially when those systemic problems--at least for the moment--are not directly affecting us.

For example, if a person's credit score results in his or her being automatically dropped from consideration for a job, is this failure the result of "poor choices"--whatever that may mean, because there are a thousand ways to get a lower credit score--or is this failure the result of the recent systemic development in the human resources field that allows employers to use bogus criteria such as credit scores to weed out applicants?

I did not suggest we "impose a better system" on anyone--although that doesn't mean that improvements never have to be "imposed." What I meant was that if you improve a bad system, everyone benefits, including those who are alleged to have made "poor choices." For example, if we institute universal, single-payer health care, both the "working poor" who are ineligible for Medicaid and the laid off professional workers who can't afford the COBRA insurance extension should benefit, regardless of their class and their "choices."

In the case of universal health care, the groups that will most likely scream that they've had a system "imposed" on them will be groups of some health care professionals and most insurance companies. (Indeed, if the insurance companies *don't* feel they've been imposed upon, we probably haven't made the right improvements to the health care system.)

[roger]

“ Perhaps the "poor choices" phrase has become so popular because it makes it easier for us to "pass the buck" and ignore systemic problems, especially when those systemic problems--at least for the moment--are not directly affecting us. “

Or perhaps a vulnerable population which can in fact ill afford to make choices which prove to be disastrous to their financial well being and physical health do in fact choose a path which positions them poorly to compete in a capitalist economic model:

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=573

You will notice that I did not blame the poor for abuse by those in power. I do not blame the poor for Enron and the theft of worker pensions. The poor are not like students at Yale who will always get another chance:

“ An elite education not only ushers you into the upper classes; it trains you for the life you will lead once you get there. I didn’t understand this until I began comparing my experience, and even more, my students’ experience, with the experience of a friend of mine who went to Cleveland State. There are due dates and attendance requirements at places like Yale, but no one takes them very seriously. Extensions are available for the asking; threats to deduct credit for missed classes are rarely, if ever, carried out. In other words, students at places like Yale get an endless string of second chances. Not so at places like Cleveland State. My friend once got a D in a class in which she’d been running an A because she was coming off a waitressing shift and had to hand in her term paper an hour late.
That may be an extreme example, but it is unthinkable at an elite school. Just as unthinkably, she had no one to appeal to. Students at places like Cleveland State, unlike those at places like Yale, don’t have a platoon of advisers and tutors and deans to write out excuses for late work, give them extra help when they need it, pick them up when they fall down. “

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/

The poor can ill afford to make such decisions.

“ The notion that someone without a lot of personal, in-depth, and intimate knowledge can even begin to venture an opinion that another person has made "poor choices" is extremely condescending. “

If this is directed at me then I would ask how it is that you have come to the conclusion that I do not know the dynamics of poverty and do not have an in depth knowledge of those who compete poorly within a capitalist economic model.

[metrognome]

Roger wrote (posted June 25, 2009 at 04:09 PM): "If this is directed at me then I would ask how it is . . ."

No, this was not directed at you. Indeed, the paragraph you quote was my clumsy attempt to *agree* with your statement: "I would say that I personally would hesitate to deem a person of being 'deserving' or not of their financial circumstance. This would seem entirely too subjective to me." (roger, June 24, 2009 at 03:23 PM) By the same token, I do not question your understanding of the dynamics of poverty.

[Joni Podschun]

Thank you for this insightful piece. The disproportionate growth in unemployment for blue collar workers and those with lower education levels should give policymakers pause. We have to find a way to retool our anti-poverty initiatives to meet the growing need, and the challenges of the labor market.

[Anarcissie]

I wonder if the poor aren't better off if the bourgeois media lose interest in them. The few cases I know of where a poor person or group swam into their view generally began with exploitation as entertainment and ended with investigations and punishments. For instance, someone was running a community center and free store in Brooklyn, and a reporter from the New York Times, slumming, wrote them up as if they were a cute sort of Martian; before long the Buildings Department and Fire Department, smelling unorthodox behavior, showed up and issued a blizzard of violations, and the landlord naturally evicted them -- he didn't mind what they were doing but he couldn't afford the governmental harassment.

I do think those who are not quite poor yet have something to learn from the poor. The poor have been dealing with and adapting to bad conditions for a long time. For example, they know about social networking -- the real thing, not Facebook. I've read that many middle-class (that is, not quite poor yet) young people, once they leave college, have no friends and acquaintances besides those from the workplace. This can be a real problem when they lose their jobs, because the people who still have their jobs may regard job loss as contagious, and in any case they no longer have the workplace in common. (And some employers explicitly discourage contact between current employees and exes.) The poor, on the other hand -- at least, the ones I've lived around -- put up with their relatives and neighbors, however boring and stupid they may seem, and maintain non-workplace friendships because they know they may need them when the hammer is coming down (as it so often is).

In order to learn something from the poor, however, you can't go to the New York Times, because the New York Times's point of view is that of "policymakers" for whom the poor are a species of alien beings and a problem to be solved by increased regulation and repression (see above). It is better to actually get to know the poor. No matter where you live, they are not far away. See what they can teach you; and maybe, if you're not flat on your back already, you can do something for them.

This is only prudent behavior for middle- and working-class persons because it is almost certain that things are going to get worse than they are. For the last 20 or 30 years the U.S. economy has been based on imperialism, deficit, debt, and money-printing, and the government's response to the crisis naturally produced by these practices has been to double down -- to continue them in expanded form. It's only common sense, then, to expect the crisis to return, but now in larger and deeper form. Unless you're rich and have a private army, you need to know how the poor got by in days gone by when you, too, thought they were some sort of alien species.

[KingWenclas]

It's the essence of the bourgeois personality to close your mind because of a "disparaging" tone. A tone! Well excuse me for being blunt. What are those opening lines to Gatsby about being careful not to quickly judge those who didn't have your advantages?
Eagle is completely right-- many in this society are given NO chance.
In 2005 I worked as an uncertified substitute teacher in Philly-- $40 a day-- and since I was on the bottom of the sub list I went into schools no one else would touch;many broken-down places; some with closed johns; many without textbooks.
A scant couple miles away from North Philly sits the U-Penn campus into which money continually flows; whose students are the most privileged from around the world. The contrast could not be more.
(I've written about this on my main blog, Spt 2005 in my "Zytron" series at
www.kingwenclas.blogspot.com)
I was given some advantages compared to North Philly-- but was still working a near full-time job in high school to help support the family because my father wasn't working. I can't say I went to Harvard.
It's fine that Ms. Ehrenreich writes about the working class-- but still doesn't know what it's like when you have no safety net, and work shitty jobs not for a few months, but forever.
This is the situation uncredentialed underground writers are in. Many good ones live in LESS than humble circumstances. Our push is to free up a closed literary world, the bulk of whose hyped writers come from worlds of privilege. The class of writers self-taught guys like Jack London came from are today completely shut out.
By the way, anyone can join the petition to change this by following the simple instructions on the site. It's really not difficult.
www.penpetition.blogspot.com
Thank you.
(I'm from Detroit, was there this past winter, and saw how the world I grew up in has been destroyed. I wrote about this way back in 1994 in the North American Review. Things were bad then. Now they're horrendous. I've witnessed firsthand how the working class over the last 30 years has been under assault. I've seen the lives of those I grew up with ruined, with little concern and no redress from the privileged, liberal and conservative alike. Usually my tone with the clueless is more than disparaging. . . .)

[King Wenclas]

p.s. Not to say that Ms. Ehrenreich or anyone here are among the clueless. Presumably they're not.
FYI: Other undergrounders and myself have been fighting a battle for access and/or recognition for much of this decade, notably through the noise of the Underground Literary Alliance, and have faced nothing but disparagment.
Yet established literature is dominated by Ivy Leaguers, and focused on the affluent; from "Gossip Girl" and its many knock-offs, to the celebration with lavish parties of 80's icon Jay McInerney; to the neocon apologias of popular authors like Vince Flynn. Scarcely does one see the antimonopoly novels prevalent 100 years ago, classics like The Octopus and the Iron Heel. It badly needs the other point-of-view.
The problem with the Ivy League crowd is by and large they HAVE NO anger, Dickens or Zola-like anger, which literature could use a little of right now.
Why is PEN American Center a target?
Because it's supposed to defend dissenting, outsider writers. It's not. Beyond this; beyond its hyperexpensive galas and Queen Mary parties, this "public charity" gives its monetary grants to authors like Philip Roth who hardly need the bucks! (A few weeks ago, mixed with grants to Cormac McCarthy and his like, they did give one to a working class guy-- because of the Petition's noise, I'd like to think.)
Outfits like PEN should be helping to level an extremely skewed playing field. It can be only healthy for literature, and for the society-at-large.
Recently, in their May issue, Z Magazine covered the Petition protest.
If Ms. Ehrenreich could get one of the publications she has influence with, such as The Nation or the Progressive, to cover the matter as well-- or if she would join the protest-- it would be for the underground cause a huge coup. Needless to say.
Does she have the courage to do so?
I'm vociferous because I have nothing to lose. NOTHING to lose-- I work those 7-to-10 dollar-an-hour jobs she speaks of. There's no more lower I can go.
But I realize not everyone is in my fortunate situation. (Fortunate in that I have absolute freedom in what I say to the world.)
Thanks for the time.

[Brian]

King Wenclas, did it ever occur to you that even in our adult world the politics are absolutely junior high school? Grander in scale, more money to blow, but no diff. So what you are experiencing is nothing new, it just never got better, ....as promised.

[Humble Observer]

I was assigned some of your articles by various Anthropology professors in college and have enjoyed following your ever since. It is very illuminating and thought provoking. I was wondering if you have written or looked into the various ways of socio-economic discrimination in the armed forces. An example would be how high school grads from middle class are recruited for ROTC and get their education before guaranteed employment for 5 years while the poor recruits enlist and after hopefully surviving 2-3 "tours" of Iraq may or may get a free education. If not do you of anyone who has done similar research?

[mtgspy]

The worst thing is, Barbara, that there is NO way to help the poors in your stories to receive fair treatment. Why? Because the organizations that is supposed to help/represent them have been hijacked by "Keep the illegals" or "You work, I get paid" type of people - yeah, you know who. How do you plan to distinguish the two?

[jimbo]

The matter of poor choices I find interesting. I was sponsored by our government to take a Forest Technology course. He assured me that the forest industry in Alberta was booming. One seasonal job after graduating, then I find the industry is sinking fast. Lately I took a CSR/ Call centre year long course. guess what! All the American customer service outsources moved your precious American, but Canadian held jobs to South East Asia. Solution to outsourcing: Higher corporate taxes to Outsource erers.

PS: I hated working for Cingular wireless. American companies suck, compared with some of our own.

[Chickensh*tEagle]

Well, you're safely across the border from most of us, so I guess I can't really call you unpatriotic for your remarks. ;-)

[stickslip]

"Comfortable people have long imagined that American poverty is far more luxurious than the third world variety, but the difference is rapidly narrowing."

Hardly! There is no real, abject poverty here in America, e.g., where a shantytown family of five share a bowl of ramen noodles as their only meal of the day. Under these subhuman conditions, missing out on prescription medication is the least of their worry. Such swift comparisons only serve to underline the parochialism of American news media.

[Karl "King" Wenclas]

How about socioeconomic discrimination in the literary world?
This is an issue Ms. Ehrenreich has yet to take a stand on.

[metrognome]

jimbo wrote (July 02, 209 at 04:46 PM): "Lately I took a CSR/Call centre year long course."

Here in the U.S., we are told over and over that education, training, and "new skills" are the panacea. Now you report that this hopeful notion has been expanded to the point of a *year-long* course in "call centre"?! What are the course titles in such a curriculum? (And BTW, what is "CSR"?)

As for here in the U.S., except for the trainers, the for-profit training companies, and the so-called "non-profit" training agencies, who could possibly be benefiting from all this?

[Larry In Lethbridge]

CSR= Customer Service Representative.

[Sandra]

Dear Barbara:

Thank you for opening the public’s eyes to the growing epidemic of domestic poverty and its many consequences.

We work with an organization called Palms for Life Fund, a global alliance to end poverty. Our current project, Faces of Hunger in America, a youth film competition, aims to raise awareness about hunger in the United States. We found your article to be highly relevant to the issues that will surely be highlighted in our participants’ films. In order to expose individuals to the impacts of hunger in their communities, we’re inviting the general public to view and cast their votes for the videos that best convey this reality.

We would love to pursue a conversation with you regarding this project. Our goal, as you can imagine, is to obtain national coverage of the terrible epidemic of hunger that affects more than 36 million people in the United States and we hope that you can support us in this initiative. You can email the project manager directly at: [email protected] or register on our website to join our cause.

If you’d like to learn more about Palms for Life Fund or Faces of Hunger in America, please visit:

http://www.facesofhunger.org

Thank you for your time and we look forward to hearing from you!

The Faces of Hunger in America Team

[barbsright]

It is 'over'! I was paid about $100.00 while I trained (20 hours over 5 days) for my CSR call center job in 1996. I worked part-time there for about one year and three months. The call center is no longer there. One side of the floor formally occupied by the center is now a physicians office, and the other is a computer training school. The computer training school teaches people how to network computers (no doubt at a ridiculous tuition). The jobs are not there for the number of grads of such schools. It is definitely 'over' when the only growth field in our economy is training people for jobs that are not there!!!

[Dana]

I graduated high school with a C average (could have done better, but had a lot of instability going on at home and I don't deal well with interpersonal fighting), went into the Army, got out early but honorably, got married to my son's dad BEFORE conceiving my son, had that child with my husband when we could afford him thanks to Mike's Army benefits, bought a house with Mike that was fixed-rate, 30-year-mortgaged and NOT subprime, and I thought we were set.

Whoops.

I had to turn him in for two felony crimes, get the hell away from him because the Army wouldn't lock him up even though they were crimes against the Army (not even confine him to barracks!), and then try to fall back on my family and friends. I would have been better off going on TANF had I thought it actually safe to stay in Fayetteville. Everyone failed me in some way or another. So much for personal safety nets. I hope I never have to turn to any of those people again. Well, when you come from a dysfunctional family and your friends in high school were the freaks and rejects...

And nobody told me how to improve my chances, that I should cultivate friendships with the successful (not necessarily popular) kids, that I should try to get a student loan for a community college and then study nursing, or anything like that. I was entirely on my own. My dad was career Navy and my stepmom was career Navy wife with a concentration in the hotel industry. They just sort of fell into it and had no experience to speak from for my sake.

I'm now a single mom living with my little girl's dad after four years apart from him because I need health insurance (his employer has domestic partner benefits), I can't keep doing the hand-to-mouth thing, he hasn't hit me nor harmed our child, and the last time I tried to rely on my family (again!) it was yet another exercise in futility. And the only way I'm going to get on my own feet is if I have as much wiggle room as possible. This opened up for me, so I took it.

But man I wish I could do something else. Thanks to my involvement with the "wrong" men, which in neither case did I have any idea they would turn out the way they did, and OMG, I totally forgot I'm supposed to MIStrust someone that I purportedly love... I've had severe setbacks in my life twice now. I can't afford a third. I already lost my son to his paternal grandparents, who hate me for what I did to their golden boy, and I won't lose my daughter. Period.

So... STFU about who's "deserving" and "undeserving" poor. You don't know diddly about someone even if they TELL you. There are all kinds of details and permutations to my story that I haven't shared here because there simply isn't room. It's like judging fat people. Everyone looks at a fat person and sees a lazy overeater. For all they know, that fat person is a triathlete who attends Weight Watchers meetings and has already lost fifty pounds. For all they know she suffered life-threatening pneumonia and the prednisone made her swell like a balloon. For all they know she's pregnant. I mean, it could be anything. You just never know. So stuff the judgment. If you're going to help, help. If not, go get a hobby. We don't need you.

[Dana]

That previous was aimed at the "deserving vs undeserving" comments, not at Barbara.

OK, I have to say something about the underground writers thing. Why are you trying to get in through the institutions you know are going to reject you? Forge new paths. Find another way to get your name out there. Then use your position to give others a hand up. That is how every major institution gets its start. Indymedia, for instance, might be huge and very well-known in the mainstream now if half the "underground" writers out there would quit trying to get into the New York Times. Let's face it, the NYT is out of touch anyway.

[ThatDeborahGril]

Actually, the idea that poor people don't deserve anything is becoming more and more mainstream. Especially with employers demanding to see applicant credit reports and refusing to hire people without stellar credit.

This is the final step to relegating people to a class and keeping them there. America is supposed to be a country where upward mobility is possible, but this is one practice that is bound to keep people in poverty and ill health if future employment is tied to past ability to pay bills and health insurance is tied to employers.

All the more reason to move to a national healthcare system and end the practice of employers checking credit reports to determine whether you "deserve" a job.

[KingWenclas]

To Dana: We're not trying to get into the NY Times. We've been Do-It-Yourself. BUT, even when you go it alone-- especially when you do-- you require access to the organs of publicity for your products to sell. Right now we're completely shut out. PEN's grants go not to struggling writers, but mainly to hypersuccessful ones like Philip Roth. This, from an outfit which is SUPPOSED to represent dissenting writers. Instead it helps to keep non-affluent voices down.
What we want: a level playing field, that's all.
And, we ask of course for the NY Times to do its job and report on corruption in the literary world.
The mainstream media allows approved voices only-- like Ms. Ehrenreich.
Where is she in this fight?
Is there any conceivable reason for her to NOT sign our Petition??
The underground lit scene is a valid literary movement, which should not be blackballed.
Sad to see her on the other side. . . .

[barbsright]

King Wenclas, I read The Atlantic (I have a subscription) regularly, and I enjoy their book reviews. Do they ever review books from the 'underground lit scene'? Also I think you will not get an answer from Barb E. here, anymore. She appears to be too busy. I have read Barb's blog for a few years now, and she has really limited her entries. You may have to track her down in person to get an answer as to why she will not sign the petition. As for the 'Times', it is a 'piece of junk' newspaper. I cannot wait for it to go bankrupt. I tried to post a response to Dr. Paul Krugman on his economics blog. It was a relevant question concerning taxation theory (I have a BA in Economics, so taxation subject matter is interesting to me), but the 'Times' did not post my response. I did a Google search, and found that another person had the same experience on a different 'Times' blog. Instead of letting an organic discussion take place, the 'Times' acts like an 'elite' university and limits who can enter its confines. It is a sick paper, and deserves to go bankrupt. I hate it. Seems to me that 'conservatives' should be limiting free speech, not the 'liberal' Gray Lady. The 'Times' should be called the 'Old Gray Lady', and sent to the glue factory!!! Put your stuff in the 'Huff Post', and on Amazon's electronic book. Forget the 'Times'. Everyone will be forgetting them soon enough!; but not soon enough for me!!!

[Jacqueline Homan]

"Eagle is completely right-- many in this society are given NO chance.
In 2005 I worked as an uncertified substitute teacher in Philly-- $40 a day-- and since I was on the bottom of the sub list I went into schools no one else would touch;many broken-down places; some with closed johns; many without textbooks.
A scant couple miles away from North Philly sits the U-Penn campus into which money continually flows; whose students are the most privileged from around the world. The contrast could not be more.
(I've written about this on my main blog, Spt 2005 in my "Zytron" series at
www.kingwenclas.blogspot.com)
I was given some advantages compared to North Philly-- but was still working a near full-time job in high school to help support the family because my father wasn't working. I can't say I went to Harvard.
It's fine that Ms. Ehrenreich writes about the working class-- but still doesn't know what it's like when you have no safety net, and work shitty jobs not for a few months, but forever.
This is the situation uncredentialed underground writers are in. Many good ones live in LESS than humble circumstances. Our push is to free up a closed literary world, the bulk of whose hyped writers come from worlds of privilege. The class of writers self-taught guys like Jack London came from are today completely shut out.
By the way, anyone can join the petition to change this by following the simple instructions on the site. It's really not difficult.
www.penpetition.blogspot.com
Thank you."
=============

King Wenclas, what you say is absolutely correct. Coming from the underclass myself, I find it just a bit over-the-edge demeaning to hear middle class people talk about "what to do for/about The Poor" without a damn one of them ever bothering to take off their class-biased tinted lenses and give us a seat at the great table of diversity for a change.

The current healthcare reform debates are nauseating. Instead of being outraged that poor women from the underclass like me might want badly needed dental care and healthcare (the two really cannot be bifurcated since you need to be able to chew and look normal in order to participate in society); the opponents of HB 676 should be enraged that each year over THREE TIMES the number of their fellow Americans DIE from lack of access to healthcare than the number of people who died in teh WTC 9/11 attack.

The argument seems so goddamn petty and selfish. To hear the health and dental care "haves", you'd think poor women (like me) with NOTHING, who drew a blank in life's lottery, and who've been held back because of poverty and lack of access to health/dental care for our visibly decayed/missing/broken teeth are asking taxpayer-funded labiaplasty for f*ck's sake!

[Jacqueline Homan]

@ King Wenclas:

BTW, I am one of those "Jack London" writers whom you're referring to. If you ever get the chance, go to Amazon and check out the reviews and feel free to browse parts of my self-published book, "Classism For Dimwits."

[Chris S.]

I went broke in 2004 in the last recession and from that time to this it has been survival jobs with a survival income. People may recall that we had somthing called a "jobless recovery" when the last recession ended. Well at least I have nothing left to lose. All I can say to the newly impovershed is welcome to the bottom of the barrel. It doesn't get any easier, just more familiar.

[Jacqueline S. Homan]

I have a friend in the poverty movement named Larry Carter Center. He always had this saying, "scratch a liberal and you'll find a fascist." I believe he's got a valid point.

The limousine liberals who *are* in a position for lending a hand-up to those struggling with deep poverty are precisely the ones who chop us off at the knees.

They look down on us for our lack of opportunity, maybe for having a learning disability (like dyslexia), and for having to face people with visibly decayed/missing/broken teeth because of a real lack of access to health and dental care.

When those of us struggling with deep poverty who never got a chance to make it even to the lowest rung of lower-middle class try to do anything, we get shut out and kept poor and f*cked over.

Karl "King" Wenclas made a VERY important point that others seemed to have missed here. I'll give an example and break it down real simple and basic, so pay attention:

I am dyslexic, living in near-3rd world poverty in the US with no dental or health care...and it shows.

I wrote a book with a very important message about the concept of classism and unearned privilege and the root of most injustices related to poverty.

However, being a poor "nobody" with a disability, unable to afford the "right image", etc; not one big name publishing company would even look at my manuscript for "Classism For Dimwits", not one!

"Classism For Dimwits" was also my very first book, BTW.

Now, having to go the self-pub route just to get a very important, albeit controversial, message out there; I had to rely on Word's grammar/spell check to catch typos (which dyslexics have SEVERE problems with because of the inherent nature of what dyslexia entails).

So I had to do the best I could with what I have. I also had to teach myself how to use Adobe to design my own book covers and convert the files for ISO format, too. I had no one I could go to who was tech savvy to help me or show me how to do it. You cannot imagine the struggle!

A fellow writer (Richard Goscicki) saw the typos but was more impressed with the message of the material than anything. He told a fellow writer, Barbara G. Walker about my book because he was impressed with the message. He felt she would appreciate it because she's an affluent liberal feminist and secular humanist, too.

Now, Barbara G. Walker is someone who enjoyed economic success; because of not having a disability and also because of the benefit of an Ivy League education (which I couldn't get).

She could have used her position of privilege to lend a helping hand to a disabled writer struggling in deep poverty (like me) who did not have all the advantages that she obviously had.

She could have promoted my book or bought a copy to support a fellow feminist writer who is extremely poor, disabled, and very, very disadvantaged. But she didn't.

She could have used her voice to give my message a shot, to give my book some exposure. But she didn't.

She merely dismissed the book and brushed off its very compelling message because of a few typos.

She could have offered to proof "Classism For Dimwits", or better yet, get her literary agent or publisher to give my work a shot and polish up any typos. I doubt that even Ivy League writers with PhD's are perfect (even if they're not dyslexic).

I have not had other reviewers mention anything about some miniscule typos.

So maybe it was really that this limousine liberal didn't like my message about the very real issue of classism.

Right-wing conservatives aren't the only ones who look down on the poor and the disabled because of deeply ingrained and systemic classism. Conservatives are just more upfront about it.

When you've suffered an inordinate amount of injustice and difficulty and others encourage you to write to tell your compelling story; all you get is shut out by the very same limousine liberals who claim to care about the disadvantaged and want to "speak for us."

You have to seriously question their sincerity because they don't seem to be very genuine. Because if they were genuine, they wouldn't have a problem letting the poor (whom they fetishize) be heard in our own voices.

It's all about protecting *their* privilege to make sure those of us at the bottom who have more than our fair share of obstacles to deal with never get a chance.

[Chris S.]

Facist is a term that is over used and often wrongly used by people that don't know what it means. Another word that has lost its meaning is racist so I stay away from both of those tired words to avoid sounding hackneyed.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1754630632]

Humble Observer: It was my impression that only the less privileged classes partake of ROTC training. My middle class high school was geared toward college prep, and there were no ROTC or "shop" or tech classes as they were then called.

So what are you talking about?

[poorandpositiveyeahbaby]

Good lord, Barbara, can you ever get to the point where you can actually suggest some SOLUTIONS to problems rather than constantly focus on the negative all the time? What a dog in the manger you are :(

[Silence Do Good Gauge]

The technology to provide a more democratic voice to the political argument exist. The motivation to create it does not.

The development of this new technology does not require corporate funding, it requires the desire and commitment of individual with a passion to push the thought forward.

The Do Good Gauge (httpd://www.dogoodgauge.org) describes a new forum for intelligent argument.

[ServiceDogPartner]

Thank you for this piece. Here's a story I haven't seen published anywhere: most of my friends and I are disabled, ranging from "low income" (me) to "very poor and just barely keeping alive for years" (most of my friends). The "bad economy" has actually benefited us in one way: we rely on personal care assistants (PCAs) for basic survival. It's always hard to find PCAs because the pay and benefits are lousy, and taking care of disabled people is not valued work. Now that more people have lost their jobs, we have WAY more applicants. I don't enjoy reading the applications where the reason for interest in the job is they just lost the job they really would rather do, but when you're desperate, like we are, you take what you can get, which is apparently other people who are newly desperate.

[Jay]

Well, what if I am too stupid to 'get a good education' and pass at University? Do I then 'deserve' to live under a bridge and eat out of garbage cans? I think it's a very odd, twisted society that has 'homeless' people who live outdoors in vast cities literally SURROUNDED by vacant buildings. Wealth is nothing more than hoarding, but somehow, we have created a society where such greed is admired, revered, aspired to - we long to be Paris Hilton's BFF, even if she is an utterly vacant airhead with no apparent redeeming qualities whatsoever.

[Louise]

The situation in the UK is exactly the same as described in the US. George Osborne, the shadow chancellor is continually telling us that we are 'all in it together', this is the 'age of austerity', etc, etc. Somebody worth an estimated £15 million is clearly not 'all in it together', nor living a frugal lifestyle. In the media here there has been very little mention of the poor, working or otherwise and the effect the recession is having on them.