o
o
o
I am one of the millions of Americans looking for a job in this economy. A daunting task, notwithstanding credentials under our belt. In the Internet economy, a new marketplace has been created for job seekers, only less than a decade old. Much of the conversation occurs online through social networking, Email, and career websites. It’s become more practical to have access to PDF conversion software than fancy resume paper. In real life, I have also mobilized my own network to alert me of job possibilities that come their way. Having worked in workforce education and development for years, I consider myself quite adept at the tricks of the trade. However, in this economy, where the competition for ONE job is prodigious, how we play the game, be it real or virtual, has become the function not only of know-how, but intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Support systems have become even more critical. “Don’t Quit” and “Just Do It” are mantras. It is truly the economy of survival of the fittest.

Survival is also the name of the game for many low-skilled, low-wage earners. The downturn economy has proven the disposability of the lowest rung. As I have plugged into news websites about poverty and the unemployed, I read about communities of fear while middle-class America slips down the economic ladder. They have every reason to be afraid. Generations removed from the Great Depression and World War 2, many of them have been so pampered by the American economy that they have very little idea about what long-term unemployment looks like at the end of the road: receiving public assistance (handouts, as they say), be on Medicaid, or be subjected to eviction; the daily realities of being poor in America. But lucky are they who have enough skills to stand up and walk out of scut work once the economy pumps enough financial blood. For many, when this crisis is over, it’s just another nightmare deserving of the yesteryear hall-of-shame. But for the long-term poor, it’s business as usual.

Imagine Maria

She doesn’t know what participatory democracy is. She will receive mail about the Census that will most likely end up at the bottom of a junk mail pile. She lives in public housing in the inner city of a throbbing American city, the magnificence of which she sees but doesn’t really understand. She is one of the 23 million Limited English Proficient Americans. She works in a Nursing Home, in the kitchen, two days a week, as required by public assistance. For three days, she is learning English in a Work-Study program, which unbeknowst to her, is about to fall victim to budget cuts in her city. In her program, she is learning to use the computers and the Internet. The word “Internet” is beginning to register in her mind, although she associates it more with Telemundo punto com, which she hears from TV every night.

Her three children are in public schools, which she has only visited when summoned by the principal’s office. They are all failing schools, another mammoth discussion over education in America, way too high above Maria’s radar. She does know they’re failing; all the parents are up and arms about the issue. She doesn’t know what it is she or they can do. If they closed, they move to another school. Simple.

She has worked, time and again. She has become a nanny, a housecleaner, an environmental service worker at a hospital, a maintenance worker at a subway station–mostly minimum wage jobs that can’t pay for her kids. None of her jobs lasted long enough for sustainability. It’s become a way of life: unemployment, welfare. She wants to work, and who doesn’t in America? She has dreams for her children. As a single mother, she has learned her mistakes, and wants the best for her three kids. Maybe they will all live in a big house someday. The dreams are there, like old engines that coughs smoke and works, if only for a few enchanted hours. She passes on her dreams and reminds her children to finish school so they don’t turn out like she did. But failing schools in America have another plan for them.

In fact, as she sits in her class learning about Civics and self-empowerment, federal and state decisions are being made for her and her children about their future. Unlike many of us who hear about them on CNN or the Newsfeeds online and thus react, Maria’s concerns are the basics of living and survival. There are multiple barriers between her and the system built around her. Tomorrow, she needs to get up early so she can wash dishes in the Nursing Home. The next day, she will find out, her program closed. The rest of us may hear about it in the news. Because we have our own worries in life, we don’t pay much attention. We keep other people’s lives at bay. This is America. The land of opportunities. What are the chances that Maria’s circumstances will come knocking at our doors?

Wake up Call for Compassion

What I hope the downturn economy teaches all of us is compassion.  I do hope that these “communities of fear” turn into “communities of awareness” about our highly neglected neighbors ten blocks down.    I believe in the resilience of the American people amid adversity. One day, soon enough, this economic crisis will be over.   There will be many learning curves for each one of us affected by the crisis.  Let one of them be that we don’t forget to lend a hand to the likes of Maria and others who are left behind. 

Be a Fan on Facebook! Click Here.


Related Reading: Why the 2010 Census Is So Important For Poor People, Domestic Poverty Controversies: Who is Poor and How We Treat Them,

o
o

o
o
o

These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power…that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid. – Franklyn D. Roosevelt

One of my favorite books of recent years is The Bottom Billion by the economist  Paul Collier.    In the book, Collier zeroes in on fifty failing states in the country and “analyzes the causes of failure, pointing to a set of traps that snare these countries, including civil war, a dependence on the extraction and export of natural resources, and bad governance.”  This may not sound familiar to this generation of middle class Americans.    Most of us are so far off from the greatest generation of World War II that we don’t understand any longer what economic strategies built this country that guaranteed our absence in the world’s failed states.  

Having worked in the lowest rung of the economic ladder in the U.S., I see a lot of the same problems operating in the inability of the American poor to improve their lot, and advance.   Unfortunately, many of these people caught in the poverty traps are the traditional marginalized populations: blacks, urban poor, single mothers, and immigrants.    When big government decides to cut costs, they target social services  for radical budgetary slashes.   Yet, at what cost?  Education is getting worse, and jails are getting bigger, homelessness is invading the clean suburbs.   And we don’t make the connections readily.   The disenfranchised remain disposable.   As long as they are kept there.  (There where?)

Poverty in Numbers

The Bottom is the biggest part of the pyramid.    If history fails to remind us, we simply have to look at its shape to understand how much power there is in numbers.   If that is not scary enough, the bottom is now becoming a big hole where many in the middle class are slowly slipping into.   The media is full of personal stories about people losing their homes and their jobs and now living in tent communities (see this recent New York Times article about recent evictions in poor communities).   There are lines to food drives of people who had never thought they would end up there.    Economic recovery gets extended every month.   The leaders of this country are in some battle over rhetoric on how to save the American dream.  

We are faced with a huge challenge in America as the numbers at the bottom of the pyramid grows.   The middle class is slipping into the cracks.  Government is scrambling for solutions.   Big businesses are big businesses as usual.   CEOs are giving themselves huge severance packages for failing to run their companies.   America is returning to its pre-World War II shape, excavating deep divisions similar to the civil war era’s.  In all these goings-on in politics and the economy, the poor suffer most. 

Hand-outs

What many of us learned about Haiti is the absence of infrastructure for international aid.   Public outcry generated an an influx of millions for recovery and aid, with no organized system to distribute it.   We found out later that Haiti was a home base for thousands of international aid agencies for years, yet there was no organized system of cooperation and collaboration.  This is hardly old news, as Collier’s in his book, The Bottom Billion would find the same oppressive song sung in the other failed states.  

For many of us, the idea of helping poor people is likened to giving a dollar to a beggar on the subway.  It is a random act of giving.  There is no introspection of where that money would go.  We hope that the beggar get to eat, that the dollar travels far.  I asked myself the same questions during the four years I worked in the welfare system.   Once I was sucked into the system, was I helping to eradicate poverty or was I promoting it?  Was I stuffing the cushion of those who are receiving hand-outs with feathers so they don’t hit the pavement as hard?   Where does generosity of spirit cross the line of true action?

o
o
o