The nation's poor

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/02/3496773/the-story-you-wont-hear-this-week.html#storylink=misearch

By Leonard Pitts
National columnist
Posted: Sunday, Sep. 02, 2012

Whatever your preferred euphemism, know this: They are an army and they are growing. The poverty rate stands at 15.1 percent as of 2010, the last year for which statistics are available. In North Carolina, the rate is even higher at 17.5 percent. In absolute numbers, the national rate translates to 46.2 million Americans, the most ever recorded in the 53 years America has been calculating poverty.

The federal government defines poverty as a person under 65 living alone on less than $11,344 a year or a family of four scraping by on less than $22,113. But the folks who live there know that poverty is more than just a number. It is the job you don’t get because the bus doesn’t go there. It is shorting the gas bill in order to pay the rent. It is “miss-meal cramps” and going to the mall for the air conditioning. It is a gnawing insufficiency that never goes away, having not enough in a land of plenty. It is walking life like a tightrope because the hit that might only wobble someone else – illness, loss of hours, an unexpected bill – will knock you clean off.

And, it is an invisibility so complete as to deny your very existence, the experience of having people look right at you and never see you.

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When President Barack Obama is renominated this week, you can expect much to be said about what he will do for the middle class, much more to be said about the obligations of the upper class. You can expect silence about the needs of the underclass. This from the former community organizer who once described urban poverty as “the cause that led me to a life of public service.”

Obama’s silence is hardly unique. With the singular exception of the unfortunate former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, it is difficult, if not impossible, to name a politician who has made poverty a cornerstone issue since Lyndon Johnson spoke out for the Americans who “live on the outskirts of hope.”

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And in the face of this silence, it has become increasingly fashionable in some corners to bash the poor in language that is literally inhuman. For instance, former South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer likened poor people to stray animals one ought not feed at the back door, Ann Coulter said welfare creates “irresponsible animals” and Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning compared the poor to scavenging “raccoons.”

George Farmer is not a scavenging raccoon. He used to drive trucks for a living. Then he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He tried to go on working, but couldn’t. Then his car broke down.

“Just a lot of things,” he says. “Went from a house to an apartment to a room situation and really couldn’t afford that. So the shelter was my option.”

The experience, he says, has taught him to appreciate the tiny graces he once took for granted. “Just everyday life,” he says, “working and coming home to a place where you can select clothes from a rack as opposed to digging in a bag trying to find something to put on. To be in line to take a shower, to be in line to eat, soup kitchens and stuff … that was not really common to me. This was not something that I could’ve seen myself (experiencing) at this point in my life.”

It troubles him that people think homeless is something he decided to be, some bad choice he made or moral defect he carries. “I mean, kids on buses come by and blurt out things and look at it as like, a life you’ve chosen, as opposed to, these are the turn of events that took place that brought you here.”

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Come now and sit with Michelle – she doesn’t want her last name used – for a moment. She is a single mother of four girls, two of them in college on scholarships. She is meeting with Kyle Walker, a woman who works as a counselor for Crisis Assistance Ministry. As the name implies, it exists to help people who have hit some unforeseen emergency that throws them off the tightrope. Michelle’s rent is overdue and her lights are about to be shut off.

“We’re just barely makin’ it,” she says. “That’s why I’m down here because, after awhile, things are catchin’ a domino effect. I’m robbin’ Peter to pay Paul. Now I’m here. Hopefully, I can catch up when I leave here and then I’ll start the process all over again until something else comes along.

“I’ve worked,” she says. “I’ve owned my own businesses. But it got to the point where people can’t afford to have what I used to provide for them.” Michelle, who was a self-employed appliance repair technician, says, “that’s kind of dried up and basically gone. It’s not even cost-effective for me to have inventory because the inventory isn’t moving. I’m not lazy at all. Right now, my goal is to keep a roof over my daughters’ heads.”

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Carson Dean, executive director of the Men’s Shelter of Charlotte, tells this story of a veteran who had driven heavy trucks in the military. He had to apply to the N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles to have his military credentials transferred into something he could use to get a job in civilian life. He was $2 short on the fee. This veteran stood in the DMV parking lot for 45 minutes, begging for $2 – without success. So he didn’t get the license, and he didn’t get the job.

“Two dollars,” says Dean. “The guy could have had the license and been able to get a job driving a truck because of his military experience. Two dollars. And instead, he’s living in a homeless shelter. That’s an extreme case, but we’re often talking a matter of a few hundred bucks.”

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/02/3496773/the-story-you-wont-hear-this-week.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

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Darren Ash of Charlotte Family Housing says the key to fixing entrenched poverty requires that the dignity of the person in poverty be respected. He has little patience with those on the extreme left who believe the government should do everything for you except tuck you in at night and those on the extreme right who think poverty is best handled by leaving the poor to the tender mercies of the all-knowing free market.

He prefers to steer a middle path. He describes it as teaching a person to fish – but also making sure the pond is stocked. “We believe you’re a strong person, we believe you’re not a charity case. Because of that strong belief, we are not going to do for you what you’re capable of doing for yourself.” But stock the pond, he says, first with shelters so that the homeless can be rescued from the immediate crisis of living in the streets. “We have to build a platform from there for you to move back into housing, to be advocated for, for there to be a short-term rental subsidy, for there to be interest-free micro loans, for there to be interest-free car purchase plans, for us to combat some of the predatory lending practices that happen to the underclass.”

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Ash is not surprised. “You don’t target the invisible people in your country,” he says. “They’re truly invisible. I mean, I’ve watched upper middle-class people go to restaurants … and they look at who’s waiting on them almost like they’re invisible. They’re looking through them.”

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Forty-six million Americans live in poverty. And while there are some who are there because they made – and make – self-destructive choices, some who are there because of addiction to drugs or alcohol or because they are mentally ill, most of those who are there are not terribly different from anyone else, not terribly different from the delegates who will throng the Democratic convention this week.

Granted, it is comforting to believe otherwise, comforting to believe the line separating them from you is Hulk-strong and neon bright, that their situation reflects some failing – moral, spiritual, intellectual – that you, righteous soul, do not suffer. Comforting. But then, self-delusion often is.

Life happened to them, same as it happens to anyone. And they deserve what anyone would want. Not a handout nor even just help, but first, an acknowledgement that they are there.

See me. Speak my name. Make me real.

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