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Sep. 13th, 2005 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaYou. Yes, you, reading my blog.
If you found yourself utterly penniless and without resources, would you be able to survive? I know some of you have already been there and survived it, or are surviving it now. Myself, i've never been quite penniless; i have been through times where i had $10 to last me a week, and i've been through extended rough periods of extreme bill-juggling, and still live basically paycheck to paycheck, but i've never been without resources. I've never been homeless.
I've been close enough to destitute, though, at times that i feel i have some idea how rough it would be to face life with no resources and no prospects.
So, picture this. You have no money. You own maybe a few changes of worn-out clothes and a few other personal effects. You have no training and no education. You were malnourished as a child (which is known to cause lifelong neurological problems) and were probably exposed to pollutants spewed out by some nearby factory. You have a kid who's starving. What would you do?
Start your own business? For that you need money. But who is going to give you money? Maybe someone in your family. But everyone in your family is as dirt-poor as you, or they are just scraping by in their own way. Maybe you could scrape together enough money to buy a mop and a bucket and a uniform and farm yourself out as an enterprising entrepreneur. That is, if you can find someplace which doesn't already have its janitorial needs covered.
Get a job, so that you can save up the money to start a business? People who have been homeless or destitute have told me of the immense hurdles they have to jump just to be able to find work. You have to have decent clothes. You have to have a permanent address. You have to have ID. You have to have people skills. You have to find an employer who is relatively unprejudiced against you. You have to be willing to suffer all kinds of indignities at the hands of supervisors who know you are entirely replaceable.
This scenario, of course, has left out the kind of misfortune that strikes worst against those who are the most resourceless. If you get sick, or your kid gets sick, you lose your job (you are that replaceable) and go back to square one. You can have your money planned out perfectly, only to have your secondhand car break down or your glasses break or your kid's school uniform prices go up. You can lose your job at any time. In my own experience, these unplanned calamities are what primarily makes it difficult to make lasting improvement in your life when you're down.
Those who have never faced that kind of adversity have no idea how challenging it is just to get by, much less to make improvements in one's life. They can't imagine being without backup resources like school or family. School? That has to be paid for somehow. Government assistance? Incredibly bureaucratic (you have all your papers, don't you?), undignified, and disempowering -- and frequently taken away from you at random even once you've been approved for it. Family? Having no family to call on for help is a huge factor -- which is why a disproportionate number of homeless people are queer.
It can take sustained assistance from a friend or family member for over a year to be able to climb out of the pit once you're completely down.
It is true that some people "climb out" of destitution and make a decent life for themselves. But in the United States there is a total lack of appreciation for the obstacles people face when they are truly destitute. It is acceptable and even traditional to blame those who don't have the luck to avoid calamity, who don't have family to call for help, when they are unable to weather severe adversity. (Never mind that in fact poverty in this country is expanding, not contracting; more and more of us are buckling under to the shocks of adversity.)
One in four Americans blame the poor of New Orleans for their predicament after Hurricane Katrina. One in four.
So, still imagining that you are destitute? Perhaps you've managed to get a roof over your head and have a little cash for food every week. Now imagine that you live in New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina is coming your way. You have $10 in your pocket, and no car. One of your friends has a car, but wants you to help pay for gas. Okay, great. Where are you going to go? You don't have the money for a hotel. So you're going to leave behind what little you've scraped together to go sleep in a ditch in North Louisiana? You go to your friend's house to find they've taken the car and left.
Fast forward two weeks. You don't know where your kid is, the two of you were separated during the evacuation. You waded through flood water for two hours, past floating corpses, and are now severely dehydrated. Some of your friends didn't make it; they're dead. You were shot at by Jefferson Parish deputies trying to walk out of the hellhole your city had become. Then you hear that one in four of your "fellow" American citizens think you are responsible for your own predicament.
If you lived in Cuba instead, there would have been provisions to get you and your kid safely out of the lowlands. You would not have been told by people around you that adversity is your own fault. So, alright, living in Communist Cuba you'd have other problems, but at least your society cares about you enough to get you out of the way of a frickin' hurricane.
Not so in the "land of the free," where it's perfectly okay to leave poor people to die.
If you found yourself utterly penniless and without resources, would you be able to survive? I know some of you have already been there and survived it, or are surviving it now. Myself, i've never been quite penniless; i have been through times where i had $10 to last me a week, and i've been through extended rough periods of extreme bill-juggling, and still live basically paycheck to paycheck, but i've never been without resources. I've never been homeless.
I've been close enough to destitute, though, at times that i feel i have some idea how rough it would be to face life with no resources and no prospects.
So, picture this. You have no money. You own maybe a few changes of worn-out clothes and a few other personal effects. You have no training and no education. You were malnourished as a child (which is known to cause lifelong neurological problems) and were probably exposed to pollutants spewed out by some nearby factory. You have a kid who's starving. What would you do?
Start your own business? For that you need money. But who is going to give you money? Maybe someone in your family. But everyone in your family is as dirt-poor as you, or they are just scraping by in their own way. Maybe you could scrape together enough money to buy a mop and a bucket and a uniform and farm yourself out as an enterprising entrepreneur. That is, if you can find someplace which doesn't already have its janitorial needs covered.
Get a job, so that you can save up the money to start a business? People who have been homeless or destitute have told me of the immense hurdles they have to jump just to be able to find work. You have to have decent clothes. You have to have a permanent address. You have to have ID. You have to have people skills. You have to find an employer who is relatively unprejudiced against you. You have to be willing to suffer all kinds of indignities at the hands of supervisors who know you are entirely replaceable.
This scenario, of course, has left out the kind of misfortune that strikes worst against those who are the most resourceless. If you get sick, or your kid gets sick, you lose your job (you are that replaceable) and go back to square one. You can have your money planned out perfectly, only to have your secondhand car break down or your glasses break or your kid's school uniform prices go up. You can lose your job at any time. In my own experience, these unplanned calamities are what primarily makes it difficult to make lasting improvement in your life when you're down.
Those who have never faced that kind of adversity have no idea how challenging it is just to get by, much less to make improvements in one's life. They can't imagine being without backup resources like school or family. School? That has to be paid for somehow. Government assistance? Incredibly bureaucratic (you have all your papers, don't you?), undignified, and disempowering -- and frequently taken away from you at random even once you've been approved for it. Family? Having no family to call on for help is a huge factor -- which is why a disproportionate number of homeless people are queer.
It can take sustained assistance from a friend or family member for over a year to be able to climb out of the pit once you're completely down.
It is true that some people "climb out" of destitution and make a decent life for themselves. But in the United States there is a total lack of appreciation for the obstacles people face when they are truly destitute. It is acceptable and even traditional to blame those who don't have the luck to avoid calamity, who don't have family to call for help, when they are unable to weather severe adversity. (Never mind that in fact poverty in this country is expanding, not contracting; more and more of us are buckling under to the shocks of adversity.)
One in four Americans blame the poor of New Orleans for their predicament after Hurricane Katrina. One in four.
So, still imagining that you are destitute? Perhaps you've managed to get a roof over your head and have a little cash for food every week. Now imagine that you live in New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina is coming your way. You have $10 in your pocket, and no car. One of your friends has a car, but wants you to help pay for gas. Okay, great. Where are you going to go? You don't have the money for a hotel. So you're going to leave behind what little you've scraped together to go sleep in a ditch in North Louisiana? You go to your friend's house to find they've taken the car and left.
Fast forward two weeks. You don't know where your kid is, the two of you were separated during the evacuation. You waded through flood water for two hours, past floating corpses, and are now severely dehydrated. Some of your friends didn't make it; they're dead. You were shot at by Jefferson Parish deputies trying to walk out of the hellhole your city had become. Then you hear that one in four of your "fellow" American citizens think you are responsible for your own predicament.
If you lived in Cuba instead, there would have been provisions to get you and your kid safely out of the lowlands. You would not have been told by people around you that adversity is your own fault. So, alright, living in Communist Cuba you'd have other problems, but at least your society cares about you enough to get you out of the way of a frickin' hurricane.
Not so in the "land of the free," where it's perfectly okay to leave poor people to die.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 02:35 pm (UTC)The whole FEMA director fiasco clearly illustrates that Bush has been putting his old buddies in place of power...buddies that were never qualified on any plane to do the job.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 02:54 pm (UTC)BTW, it's been four years since 9/11. The War on Terror has now been going on longer than World War Two. It took less time to take Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito out of power than we have spent looking for Osama Bin Laden.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 03:02 pm (UTC)But that Bogusness goes back to Ye Olde Harrison Narcotics act, of 1932 I think. Class war in AmeriKa...while the Pharm Companies and Doctors drug AmeriKans with the Med D'jour.
A Zanny friend just got a new shrink. They reviewed his case records and wondered WTF he was doing on Paxil so long (like 7-10 years). So they are finally trying to wean him off it and on to a less harsh anti-depressant anti-psychotic drug. This friend is on full diasblity and Medical.
As I sit her at my desk at work I've been contemplating writing up a Tsunami Story for Southern California...unfortunately our beaches and waterfronts face the wrong way down here for the closest major Tsunami source (the plate subduction zone off of the Oregon/Washington Coast and/or the entire Alaska Complex) so I may have to fudge on the Geology.
Now...if Mona Loa on the Big Island did a Krakatoa number on us (highly unlikely, wrong kind of Volcano) It might work...taking out the 50th State and SoCal (not to forget Baja California)
.................
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 03:16 pm (UTC)That's probably because when we wanted to destroy Hitler we didn't try to do it by bombing his enemies.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 11:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-08 10:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 03:02 pm (UTC)We can use probablies all over the place to mean a lot of things that just aren't true.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 02:52 pm (UTC)Heh, you're writin' about me... I stayed in my house for Georges, as you know.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 04:45 pm (UTC)But I do think that she failed to really capture the realities of poverty in the working class. And I also think that it was glaringly clear that she had never truly experinced what it's like to be poor.
It's like those college kids who camp out in the street for a week to expierience homelessness. There's no way they can know what it's like because in the end, they still have a place to return to.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 05:11 pm (UTC)and that is sitting in their mind the entire time.... "just two more days... just one more day..."
a light at the end of their tunnel...
With Most of What Our Friend...
Date: 2005-09-13 08:42 pm (UTC)Re: With Most of What Our Friend...
Date: 2005-09-13 09:12 pm (UTC)i'm pretty sure this one guy everyone called "professor longhair" had a doctorate actually... and you're right he didn't starve, he was killed by a couple of the local thugs who figured they were doing society "a favor" (neo-nazis, those sort have a *big* problem with homeless)...
Jules.
Re: With Most of What Our Friend...
Date: 2005-09-14 01:09 pm (UTC)Re: With Most of What Our Friend...
Date: 2005-09-14 02:13 pm (UTC)As for losing a job "acrimoniously," what you're saying may be just as much of a generalization as what I said. I say this because I think it depends upon WHO loses his/her job "acrimoniously" and what the profession is. I myself have lost more than one job "acrimoniously," and, during my job searches and interviews, I've had very little trouble making a convincing case that I was in the right and my administrator was in the wrong (they usually were, actually: school administrators are generally unimaginative morons only concerned with "covering their asses" rather than finding creative solutions caused by lazy children or empowering parents or lazy employees).
Also, self-confidence is important, too, I think. I am a supremely self-confident individual.
Re: With Most of What Our Friend...
Date: 2005-09-14 03:20 pm (UTC)Re: With Most of What Our Friend...
Date: 2005-09-14 11:38 pm (UTC)Re: With Most of What Our Friend...
Date: 2005-09-14 11:35 pm (UTC)that's not true in the least, my husband used to live on the streets he has several degrees, and it's stil hard to find a job, pay the rent, buy food... and we are fearful of loosing our home.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 03:49 pm (UTC)Almost anybody can be poor at some time. I had to move back in with my parents for a year and a half since if I hadn't, I don't know what would have happened, but it wouldn't have been good for me and my kid - I probably would have lost custody of her because of the ex then having money, and me having none, and that would have been a tragedy. I have a lot to be thankful for, and I think people forget to be thankful, and to help others out. I think its hard when all that anybody seems to want is your money, and most people barely make it by - but even if you haven't thousands you can give to the Red Cross all the time or something, there's being kind and caring, and just not being a jerk. Almost obody even knows their right-next-door neighbors anymore or would be willing to eat dinner with them or share it if someone was lonely, or could comfort them or help them out if something should happen. Its a harsh place - one reason nobody is prepared for disaster - if something bad happens, there's no cooperation. Its a mess. Gretna's police just shot at people trying to come by their streets. The Feds were initially caring about who knows what, but it didn't look to be about people. It was a total breakdown.
Everybody in the US is going to have to give a little from the heart for people from the southern states affected by the storm - it doesn't matter if they have a lot of money or not, they got to share something. Its a karmic duty, and if they fail to give, it'll cost them. I don't know how I'll end up sharing most, I just know I'll have to share - me and other millions.
I think that's where people start getting angry, and why such bigotry and everything else petty comes out. They aren't used to being asked to share any longer. They had that "Share" thing used and misused and abused by folks trying to fool them so much they don't know when its really the time and its really the place, so they try to say "nah, they don't need it, they don't deserve it, that person's not my brother". But as I said, they'll pay some way, if they don't. Its the time, times are hard. Time to share.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 04:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 04:14 pm (UTC)I've linked to this. Hope you don't mind.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 05:46 pm (UTC)Fabulous essay
Date: 2005-09-13 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 05:47 pm (UTC)i remember the church giving us a check for 25$ and having to give it back to the elders in two weeks because we were unable to cash it.
i remember a McD's dumpster at 2 or 3 am with more than a dozen people waiting for the trash to be thrown out. carefully sorting the food scraps and giving the kids first choice.
no, if you haven't been there, you can not imagine how hard even simple things are.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 08:30 pm (UTC)My best friend from High School ended up homeless with her two sons. I helped her out, driving them from agencies offering assistance, to places where she could apply for work (she's a CNA, which appears to be "The Job That Kills You Slowly") and got them set up in ways where they had a chance to continue their uphill fight.
She blew it consistently. She would NOT make appropriate choices in spending money - dropping $100+ on overdue cable bill fines not once but TWICE (she got the premium package - "...for the kids" she said, and her kids were teenagers). She spent money on premium shampoos, expensive skin care products, potpourris and cans of spray-scent to hide the smell of rotting food that she'd buy or cook and would sit out without getting put away or thrown away, she lost TWO apartments because the clutter and detritus of leftover food and trash bags sitting around piled up to where the Board of Health would come by with the lovely orange sticker for the door...
The problem in her case was that she did NOT know how to think ahead. Nobody had ever taught her, she (like many others) was susceptible to advertising that bypassed her basic capacity for rational thought. For the multi-generational poor, who is there, what opportunities are there to give them chances to learn, what reason or point to thinking or planning ahead? For someone like her, nobody ever thought she'd need to learn how to avoid the wrong choices - and as a result I got to learn the consequences of being homeless, and what kind of vicious circle and trap it can be.
(And before anyone starts making assumptions about any subtle attitude of mine towards her racial or ethnic background, you should know that you can be a nice white Jewish girl in an affluent community and STILL make bad choices. She grew up in Margate NJ, of parents who were lawyers and such. My parents came to this country with $25 and the clothes on their backs, and in our current place of "poverty" we are making choices like selling and living smaller and more efficiently, instead of insisting on keeping or buying things because "we deserve them.")
I should probably sum up this ramble by saying "Being poor sucks - being poor and in a situation where nobody in my life taught me to make the right choices to begin with is a catastrophe."
In closing, in my opinion you are speaking truth.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 08:55 pm (UTC)early '70's grade-school included a module on how to write a check and balance the checkbook - it never bothered with how to earn the money to pay the rent, by the food, cloth you and the kids and keep the power on. we are a consumer society, not a thinking one.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 04:32 pm (UTC)Things like housekeeping and budgeting are skills that have to be taught, they're not things we know right from the womb. And this is something a lot of people have trouble appreciating.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 09:16 pm (UTC)During the Great Tsunami, I heard reports of people who were orphaned being taken up by surrounding families and made part of their families.
I think that mind-set is a big thing that is missing in 'Western Culture' generally. I was heartened by the images and reports of NOLA people getting together and helping each other out and the world helping those in NOLA out.
Family is indeed vital (the notion of youngsters 'having' to leave home should be questioned and actually thought over instead of just accepted). Cooperation. Hope.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 02:36 am (UTC)And I have to say that just as anyone with the most basic sense of decency opposes fascism, they must also oppose communism which has killed and tortured many more people. In sort, I despise your entire value system.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 03:19 am (UTC)Ah, the old, "I know better than you do what's good for you" mentality that many social workers bring to their job and which causes them to burn out in two years.
Your ideology necessarily presumes that sickness, hardship, prejudice, and exploitation never happen. So people on the libertarian side of the fence are locked into denying the existence of sexism, racism, or classism, in total denial of plain reality. Furthermore, they are locked into the insinuation that sickness and hardship are somehow the victim's fault. Victim-blaming permeates libertarian thought.
Sure, there are people who choose to be homeless, but i feel certain that any poll would show them to be a distinct minority. There are a thousand different reasons people wind up homeless, so people cannot be measured by the same yardstick.
And you clearly jumped to the conclusion that i'm a communist. I don't support communism, i just think they handle hurricanes much better than we do. Elsewhere in this journal you will find much opposition to authoritarian control societies.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 03:07 am (UTC)Peace
Too complex an issue.
Date: 2005-09-14 05:14 am (UTC)A bullet-list, then, of disjointed ideas and morsels of thought:
Re: Too complex an issue.
Date: 2005-09-14 05:10 pm (UTC)Good question. GOOD question. I think the answer is that we are actively encouraged by the status quo to accept and overlook these things. There's an unspoken agenda in our media and in our values training that encourages us to believe it's perfectly okay if people in our cities are starving to death. In fact, suggesting otherwise gets you accused of being a "commie," as if it is a BAD thing to care that people are starving.
I just want to shake people by the shoulders and ask them if they really think that poverty is an accident or something that "just happens."
What you call chamba is illegal in many places in the US, or is hampered by things like requiring a licence to beg or street-perform. There is just little tolerance in the US for that kind of enterprising survival.
That kind of poverty is actually very common in many parts of the world, and describes up to 45% of the population in some places. But you don't often find an all-out war against poor people in many places like you have in the United States. For example, the city of Atlanta just passed a ban on panhandling in tourist areas. It is flat-out illegal to be homeless in many places, and sometimes this is zealously enforced, as if people choose to be homeless as a way of scoffing at the law or something. As i mentioned in my post, the belief that people can just "snap out of it" and pull it together as easily as getting up in the morning is widespread, there is a total lack of appreciation for the difficulties of overcoming social prejudices and the like.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-15 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-15 03:11 pm (UTC)