Editor’s Note: This is one in a series of stories produced and under development to demonstrate the truth about the growing divide between two America’s, one where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. If the American experience in Democracy is to lead to a true egalitarian state, this trend should not only be reported. It should be shouted from the roof-tops until a change is made in the political system that props up the divide and does nothing to bring about a swing in the pendulum back toward something resembling a balance.
by Glynn Wilson
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., July 7 – Ashley Reynolds is only hours away from boarding a van headed for Columbus, Ohio on Friday afternoon. Even though she really can’t afford the trip, she will take part in a convention and protest rally designed to put pressure on the political leadership in America to force businesses to pay workers a true living wage.
| Photo by Glynn Wilson |
| Some days, Ashley Reynolds has to fight feeling sad… |
With the full knowledge that the minimum wage has been stuck for the past decade at only $5.15 an hour – due to the nearly complete corporate takeover of the American government because of skewed political campaign financing – Ms. Reynolds wants to do her part to change things.
While she wants more than anything to feel like a bona fide citizen of the United States and to believe in the American dream of liberty and equality for all, when she picks up the local newspaper or watches the news on television, what she sees being reported is far removed from the reality she sees in front of her very own eyes every day of her life.
The news people and the politicians say over and over again that the unemployment rate is the lowest in history and the economy is booming.
But if that is true, she asks, then why does she and a lot of the people she sees visiting the local food kitchens and the welfare offices on a regular basis feel like American society treats them like nothing but yesterday’s refuse?
“I am nothing but garbage to them,” she says.
Ms. Reynolds of Decatur, Alabama, 28, is by every appearance as vibrant and normal as any young woman of her age. She should have a good life ahead of her.
But for reasons experts can’t seem to figure out, she has been diagnosed with a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. So she qualifies for Supplemental Security Income, or disability, through the federal Social Security office. She is also eligible for Welfare and Food Stamps – and for free groceries at the local food bank down the street from the Decatur Daily newspaper office.
It’s not that she wants to be “on welfare,” she says. It’s just that she feels the system as it exists is rigged against her.
With the minimum wage stuck at $5.15 an hour, to take any of the jobs available to her would not support her at the same level of the assistance she already receives.
“I can’t take any of these jobs, or my SSI, health insurance and Food Stamps would get docked,” she said. “I’m too sick to work.”
She says it would take a jump from welfare to a $36,000 a year white collar job with full health benefits to make her go back to work, since there appears to be nothing satisfactory in between those options.
“I have done the math,” she says. “There is a three-to-one incentive not to go back to work. That’s the reality.”
But she is not sitting around feeling sorry for herself and doing nothing.
While Alabama Gov. Bob Riley brags at every campaign stop on his way to reelection that the state’s unemployment rate is the “lowest in history,” she volunteered to help with the study of hunger in North Alabama conducted by the non-profit group America’s Second Harvest.
She talked to hundreds of people who were too afraid and proud to go through the bureaucracy of the local welfare and food stamp offices, but who were forced by their hunger to show up at one of the 134 food pantries, 67 emergency shelters and four soup kitchens feeding 86,000 people a year in the eleven county area.
About 82 percent of the clients seeking emergency food assistance from the agencies are living below the federal poverty line, and 37 percent have at least one adult working in their household, according to the Hunger in America study.
“It is tragic that so many people are relying on emergency food assistance in the United States, where we produce enough food to feed every hungry person in the world,” says Richard Hartz, the agency coordinator for the Food Bank of North Alabama.
Many clients who participated in face-to-face interviews for the study reported having to make choices between food and everyday necessities. Forty-eight percent said they have had to make the painful choice between paying medical bills and buying food. Forty-six percent said they had to choose between paying for utilities or heating fuel and food, while nearly 36 percent had to choose between paying rent or a house payment and eating on a daily basis.
And for those who may jump to the conclusion that the people on federal and state assistance are lazy minorities, that would be a wrong conclusion, according to the study. Seventy percent of those who receive assistance in North Alabama are white, 29 percent are black and only one percent are Hispanic.
Another study conducted by the state Department of Education showed almost 52 percent of K-12 students living in poverty in 2005, a one percent increase from the previous year. In 78 of Alabama’s 130 school districts, a majority of the students qualify to receive free or reduced-priced meals. Only the affluent city of Mountain Brook reported no poor students in its school district.
Another study reported by CareerBuilder.Com says veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are having a tough time finding work upon their return stateside. One in five say it took six months or longer to find a job. One in 10 reported it took more than a year. The study reported nothing about the kinds of jobs they were finding or how much they pay.
So what about the unemployment rate that seems to be the lynchpin of Riley’s campaign for governor, the number that has virtually every newspaper in the state endorsing his candidacy?
According to a report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a product of the Bush Labor Department, the unemployment rate in Alabama was historically low at 4 percent for 2005. But the annual number for 1998 was actually lower at 3.9 percent. And the numbers available online only go back to 1976, which is not exactly the year when Alabama history began.
That should blow out the “lowest in history” line from the campaign, if anyone else is checking the numbers.
So shouldn’t the state’s corporate, mainstream media give the credit to Fob James for the good economy, who was governor at that time, even though he lost the race that year to Don Siegelman? Maybe the economy was fine but he had taken to playing the religious boob, imitating Darwin’s monkey at every campaign stop.
Or maybe President Bill Clinton should get the credit, since with the help of Vice President Al Gore’s “reinventing government” program the federal government bureaucracy actually seemed to work efficiently for the only time in our lifetime.
Or, to be bright about it, why paint a picture of the economy based solely on the reported unemployment rate, since it is by its statistical nature a flawed, single measure of economic performance?
As even Ashley Reynolds knows, the unemployment numbers do not take into account all those poor school children who are not old enough to be counted. Nor does it take into account all the poor elderly people who are beyond retirement age living on limited, fixed incomes.
“It’s does not include underemployment,” Ms. Reynolds says. “It does not include people doing temp work and day labor, or those who have given up on looking for a job.”
It does not take into account world class musicians living on SSI in shotgun houses right here in Alabama helping to take care of sick and dying parents.
It does not take into account a host of artists and photographers who scratch by day by day, hand-to-mouth, in a state and country that does precious little to support the arts.
It does not take into account world class journalists from this state scratching by on meager free-lance incomes, since the world is just not that interested in what goes on in Alabama.
It does not take into account Marines who fought for their country in Iraq but are now forced to deliver pizzas to support their new families.
So Ms. Reynolds will take the long van ride to Ohio with the Alabama ACORN delegation and protest to raise the minimum wage.
| Photo by Glynn Wilson |
| Some days, Ms. Reynolds of Decatur, 28, holds her head up high in spite of her poverty… |
And if it takes going around the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress to do it, then that is what will have to be done.
Teneya Harrison-Searight, 26, a lead organizer for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, says the group has already successfully pressured several members of the Birmingham City Council to sign on to a local ordinance raising the minimum wage in the city. And she says the group will be going to the Alabama Legislature next year to do the same thing on the state level.
Democratic Party nominee for governor Lucy Baxley, Riley’s opponent in the upcoming race in November, was asked to comment for this article. But her campaign has not yet taken a position on raising the minimum wage statewide.
Ms. Harrison-Searight said a delegation from ACORN contacted a member of Ms. Baxley’s campaign staff during the primary, but have received no commitment from the Democrat in the race on the issue of the minimum wage.
One of the speakers at the convention in Ohio will be former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards, who has set up a non-profit foundation to work on solving the daunting poverty problem in America.
A group called Over the Mountain Democrats in Birmingham have also said they plan to make poverty an issue, although they have received very little if any press coverage for their efforts on the issue.
So it will up to poor but active citizens like Ashley Reynolds to bring this issue to the attention of the people of America and Alabama. And let’s be clear. She is no Cindy Sheehan.
Last year, when she was the only person in the state trying to get up the courage to simply carry a sign of protest to Priceville for a scheduled fund raising stop by Vice President Dick Cheney, she was scared away by the mayor of the town who would not give her official permission.
But deep down she believes if more people with more resources became aware of the extent of the poverty problem, she could get some help in her fight for liberty and equality for all.
Links
ACORN.ORG
Note: To find the data referenced in this arcticle, you have to create your own map of the unemployment rate for Alabama and take it back to 1976. For the novice Web user, this is not a practical way for the Bush Labor Department to display these numbers. But if you want to give a try, here’s the link to the U.S. Department of Labor Web page where you can find all kinds of information about the economics of the U.S. and the state and city you live in.
Unemployment Rates for States Back to 1976
© 2006 – 2016, Glynn Wilson. All rights reserved.
