Insurrection
3rd November 2002, 05:30
I got this article off of a feminist website.
Poverty: The Only War George W. Won't Fight
by Regina Petry, social worker
Every culture has its myths and the biggest one of all in the U.S. is that if you work hard, you can make it. However, a real life story of one of the women I work with blows that myth to smithereens.
Tammy is a working class single mom with two young children living in Seattle, the country's "most livable city" according to its many business boosters.
After 15 years of working for one company, Tammy was laid off her job. She immediately signed up for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Eventually she took a low-paying bank job, but couldn't make enough money to sustain her family or pay for a small apartment. When she found a better job, with a hope of self-sufficiency, she immediately lost subsidized child care, housing and other services. She no longer "qualified" for assistance, but without it, all her money went into child care rather than better housing.
Tammy is one of tens of thousands affected by the slashing of social services. California hasn't passed its budget, but a $1 billion cut in human services is proposed and other equally mammoth cuts are expected in Washington state as well. Nationally, proposed changes to TANF would increase the number of parents obligated to work by 70 percent, without providing additional support services such as child care and transportation. States will be financially sanctioned if they do not enforce the job requirement.
How are the poor supposed to survive under these conditions? "Get a job" doesn't cut it during an economic recession. Since Sept. 11th, over half a million people have been laid off bringing the total number unemployed to eight million! Instead of increasing human services, the president and congress are a heartbeat away from launching a full scale military assault on Iraq that will cost $200 billion! Working people's taxes are simply being used to feed the U.S. war machine and make the weapons contractors rich.
Meanwhile what can Tammy do? George W. thinks she should get married and the quicker the better. According to the president, once a woman secures a husband, poverty magically disappears. He conveniently sidesteps the issue of high male unemployment and falling wages, as well as the fact that some folks aren't allowed to marry--same-sex couples and the very young for instance-- and others have been victimized by their partners in abusive domestic violence situations and should get rid of them as soon as possible.
To add injury to insult, the moral character of single mothers and the working poor are also under attack from both political parties. Heritage Foundation analyst Robert Rector, who helped formulate the welfare reform legislation pushed by the Clinton and Bush administrations, claims "behavioral problems and moral failings lie at the heart of the underclass." Rector claims that widespread poverty in America is a fantasy and categorizes women on welfare as "criminal, oversexed and lazy."
Why are these men so blind to the suffering and daily struggles of poor women in this country? Why are they intent on keeping an underclass? Beside their obvious sexism, there is another, more profound reason. Capitalism must have cheap labor in the market place and free domestic labor at home or it will fall apart.
Just as undocumented workers are critical to the U.S. economy because they work at or below minimum wage, women too are used as low wage workers. In 2000, 60 percent of U.S. minimum wage workers were women. Inescapable need creates this pool of female labor which works hard to make ends meet every month. Denied health benefits and access to birth control and abortion services, they are often forced into unwanted childbearing. Now the same rightwing fanatics who have historically opposed affirmative action, birth control and abortion are out to demolish welfare.
The federal welfare reforms made several years ago have often been a fast track to nowhere for women looking for gainful employment. Instead of getting training for good jobs, women have been coerced into dead end employment at substandard wages. And where are the childcare programs that should be in place if we expect women to work full time?
It's time to revive the movement for free, 24-hour, quality child care with free transportation and take home meal service for every working mother and her children. The government paid for such programs in the shipbuilding industry during World War II because weapons contractors needed women's labor. Well, employers still need women so they should provide the services that will make employment for the female sex possible. We also must demand that the privatization of low-income housing cease and that government-subsidized, quality housing programs for the poor be re-instituted. Also working class women need affirmative action in employment and low cost education if we are ever going to get ahead.
How can the government fund these programs? By making big business and the wealthy pay taxes—lots of them. Why should the most famous Seattleites in the world--Bill and Melinda Gates--have billions while Tammy is forced to live hand to mouth? It is time to redefine "public safety" to include human services, so people will not be forced to resort to desperate measures to survive. Or how about abolishing the $393 billion U.S. military budget, bringing all our soldiers home and beginning to take care of those in need in this country?
If we want something better than this corrupt system--run by the fat cats, for the fat cats and of the fat cats—we're going to have to create a socialist feminist movement to throw the rascals out! Only fundamental social change can make a difference for Tammy's children and her children's children.
>END<
TWO HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS that could house every homeless/poverty stricken person in America. Oh well, once they have that oil, that problem will be fixed anyways, right? WRONG! That money will go to the same people all of the money has always gone to: the wealthy politicians with their size 65 slacks.
Poverty: The Only War George W. Won't Fight
by Regina Petry, social worker
Every culture has its myths and the biggest one of all in the U.S. is that if you work hard, you can make it. However, a real life story of one of the women I work with blows that myth to smithereens.
Tammy is a working class single mom with two young children living in Seattle, the country's "most livable city" according to its many business boosters.
After 15 years of working for one company, Tammy was laid off her job. She immediately signed up for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Eventually she took a low-paying bank job, but couldn't make enough money to sustain her family or pay for a small apartment. When she found a better job, with a hope of self-sufficiency, she immediately lost subsidized child care, housing and other services. She no longer "qualified" for assistance, but without it, all her money went into child care rather than better housing.
Tammy is one of tens of thousands affected by the slashing of social services. California hasn't passed its budget, but a $1 billion cut in human services is proposed and other equally mammoth cuts are expected in Washington state as well. Nationally, proposed changes to TANF would increase the number of parents obligated to work by 70 percent, without providing additional support services such as child care and transportation. States will be financially sanctioned if they do not enforce the job requirement.
How are the poor supposed to survive under these conditions? "Get a job" doesn't cut it during an economic recession. Since Sept. 11th, over half a million people have been laid off bringing the total number unemployed to eight million! Instead of increasing human services, the president and congress are a heartbeat away from launching a full scale military assault on Iraq that will cost $200 billion! Working people's taxes are simply being used to feed the U.S. war machine and make the weapons contractors rich.
Meanwhile what can Tammy do? George W. thinks she should get married and the quicker the better. According to the president, once a woman secures a husband, poverty magically disappears. He conveniently sidesteps the issue of high male unemployment and falling wages, as well as the fact that some folks aren't allowed to marry--same-sex couples and the very young for instance-- and others have been victimized by their partners in abusive domestic violence situations and should get rid of them as soon as possible.
To add injury to insult, the moral character of single mothers and the working poor are also under attack from both political parties. Heritage Foundation analyst Robert Rector, who helped formulate the welfare reform legislation pushed by the Clinton and Bush administrations, claims "behavioral problems and moral failings lie at the heart of the underclass." Rector claims that widespread poverty in America is a fantasy and categorizes women on welfare as "criminal, oversexed and lazy."
Why are these men so blind to the suffering and daily struggles of poor women in this country? Why are they intent on keeping an underclass? Beside their obvious sexism, there is another, more profound reason. Capitalism must have cheap labor in the market place and free domestic labor at home or it will fall apart.
Just as undocumented workers are critical to the U.S. economy because they work at or below minimum wage, women too are used as low wage workers. In 2000, 60 percent of U.S. minimum wage workers were women. Inescapable need creates this pool of female labor which works hard to make ends meet every month. Denied health benefits and access to birth control and abortion services, they are often forced into unwanted childbearing. Now the same rightwing fanatics who have historically opposed affirmative action, birth control and abortion are out to demolish welfare.
The federal welfare reforms made several years ago have often been a fast track to nowhere for women looking for gainful employment. Instead of getting training for good jobs, women have been coerced into dead end employment at substandard wages. And where are the childcare programs that should be in place if we expect women to work full time?
It's time to revive the movement for free, 24-hour, quality child care with free transportation and take home meal service for every working mother and her children. The government paid for such programs in the shipbuilding industry during World War II because weapons contractors needed women's labor. Well, employers still need women so they should provide the services that will make employment for the female sex possible. We also must demand that the privatization of low-income housing cease and that government-subsidized, quality housing programs for the poor be re-instituted. Also working class women need affirmative action in employment and low cost education if we are ever going to get ahead.
How can the government fund these programs? By making big business and the wealthy pay taxes—lots of them. Why should the most famous Seattleites in the world--Bill and Melinda Gates--have billions while Tammy is forced to live hand to mouth? It is time to redefine "public safety" to include human services, so people will not be forced to resort to desperate measures to survive. Or how about abolishing the $393 billion U.S. military budget, bringing all our soldiers home and beginning to take care of those in need in this country?
If we want something better than this corrupt system--run by the fat cats, for the fat cats and of the fat cats—we're going to have to create a socialist feminist movement to throw the rascals out! Only fundamental social change can make a difference for Tammy's children and her children's children.
>END<
TWO HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS that could house every homeless/poverty stricken person in America. Oh well, once they have that oil, that problem will be fixed anyways, right? WRONG! That money will go to the same people all of the money has always gone to: the wealthy politicians with their size 65 slacks.