37 Million Poor Hidden in the Land of Plenty

[Guest guest]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006T.shtml

 

 

 

 

37 Million Poor Hidden in the Land of Plenty

By Paul Harris

The Observer UK

 

Sunday 19 February 2006

 

Americans have always believed that hard work will bring rewards,

but vast numbers now can not meet their bills even with two or three

jobs. More than one in ten citizens live below the poverty line, and

the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening.

 

The flickering television in Candy Lumpkins's trailer blared out

The Bold and the Beautiful. It was a fantasy daytime soap vision of

American life with little relevance to the reality of this

impoverished corner of Kentucky.

 

The Lumpkins live at the definition of the back of beyond, in a

hollow at the top of a valley at the end of a long and muddy dirt

road. It is strewn with litter. Packs of stray dogs prowl around,

barking at strangers. There is no telephone and since their pump broke

two weeks ago Candy has collected water from nearby springs. Oblivious

to it all, her five-year-old daughter Amy runs barefoot on a wooden

porch frozen by a midwinter chill.

 

It is a vision of deep and abiding poverty. Yet the Lumpkins are

not alone in their plight. They are just the negative side of the

American equation. America does have vast, wealthy suburbs, huge

shopping malls and a busy middle class, but it also has vast numbers

of poor, struggling to make it in a low-wage economy with minimal

government help.

 

A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per

cent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed

world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit's streets,

from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each

year since 2001 their number has grown.

 

Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped

below the poverty line. Yet they are not a story of the unemployed or

the destitute. Most have jobs. Many have two. Amos Lumpkins has work

and his children go to school. But the economy, stripped of worker

benefits like healthcare, is having trouble providing good wages.

 

Even families with two working parents are often one slice of bad

luck - a medical bill or factory closure - away from disaster. The

minimum wage of $5.15 (£2.95) an hour has not risen since 1997 and,

adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956. The gap between

the haves and the have-nots looms wider than ever. Faced with rising

poverty rates, Bush's trillion-dollar federal budget recently raised

massive amounts of defence spending for the war in Iraq and slashed

billions from welfare programmes.

 

For a brief moment last year in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina

brought America's poor into the spotlight. Poverty seemed on the

government's agenda. That spotlight has now been turned off. 'I had

hoped Katrina would have changed things more. It hasn't,' says Cynthia

Duncan, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire.

 

Oklahoma is in America's heartland. Tulsa looks like picture-book

Middle America. Yet there is hunger here. When it comes to the most

malnourished poor in America, Oklahoma is ahead of any other state. It

should be impossible to go hungry here. But it is not. Just ask those

gathered at a food handout last week. They are a cross section of

society: black, white, young couples, pensioners and the middle-aged.

A few are out of work or retired, everyone else has jobs.

 

They are people like Freda Lee, 33, who has two jobs, as a

marketer and a cashier. She has come to the nondescript Loaves and

Fishes building - flanked ironically by a Burger King and a McDonald's

- to collect food for herself and three sons. 'America is meant to be

free. What's free?' she laughs. 'All we can do is pay off the basics.'

 

Or they are people like Tammy Reinbold, 37. She works part-time

and her husband works full-time. They have two children yet rely on

the food handouts. 'The church is all we have to fall back on,' she

says. She is right. When government help is being cut and wages are

insufficient, churches often fill the gap. The needy gather to receive

food boxes. They listen to a preacher for half an hour on the literal

truth of the Bible. Then he asks them if they want to be born again.

Three women put up their hands.

 

But Why Are Some Tulsans Hungry?

 

Many believe it is the changing face of the US economy. Tulsa has

been devastated by job losses. Big-name firms like WorldCom, Williams

Energy and CitGo have closed or moved, costing the city about 24,000

jobs. Now Wal-Mart embodies the new American job market: low wages,

few benefits.

 

Well-paid work only goes to the university-educated. Many others

who just complete high school face a bleak future. In Texas more than

a third of students entering public high schools now drop out. These

people are entering the fragile world of the working poor, where each

day is a mere step away from tragedy. Some of those tragedies in Tulsa

end up in the care of Steve Whitaker, a pastor who runs a homeless

mission in the shadow of a freeway overpass.

 

Each day the homeless and the drug addicted gather here, looking

for a bed for the night. Some also want a fresh chance. They are men

like Mark Schloss whose disaster was being left by his first wife. The

former Wal-Mart manager entered a world of drug addiction and

alcoholism until he wound up with Whitaker. Now he is back on track,

sporting a silver ring that says Faith, Hope, Love. 'Without this

place I would be in prison or dead,' he says. But Whitaker equates

saving lives with saving souls. Those entering the mission's

rehabilitation programme are drilled in Bible studies and

Christianity. At 6ft 5in and with a black belt in karate, Whitaker's

Christianity is muscular both literally and figuratively. 'People need

God in their lives,' he says.

 

These are mean streets. Tulsa is a city divided like the country.

Inside a building run by Whitaker's staff in northern Tulsa a group of

'latch-key kids' are taking Bible classes after school while they wait

for parents to pick them up. One of them is Taylor Finley, aged nine.

Wearing a T-shirt with an American flag on the front, she dreams of

travel. 'I want to have fun in a new place, a new country,' she says.

Taylor wants to see the world outside Oklahoma. But at the moment she

cannot even see her own neighbourhood. The centre in which she waits

for mom was built without windows on its ground floor. It was the only

way to keep out bullets from the gangs outside.

 

During the 2004 election the only politician to address poverty

directly was John Edwards, whose campaign theme was 'Two Americas'. He

was derided by Republicans for doing down the country and - after John

Kerry picked him as his Democratic running mate - the rhetoric

softened in the heat of the campaign.

 

But, in fact, Edwards was right. While 45.8 million Americans lack

any health insurance, the top 20 per cent of earners take over half

the national income. At the same time the bottom 20 per cent took home

just 3.4 per cent. Whitaker put the figures into simple English. 'The

poor have got poorer and the rich have got richer,' he said.

 

Dealing with poverty is not a viable political issue in America.

It jars with a cultural sense that the poor bring things upon

themselves and that every American is born with the same chances in

life. It also runs counter to the strong anti-government current in

modern American politics. Yet the problem will not disappear. 'There

is a real sense of impending crisis, but political leaders have little

motivation to address this growing divide,' Cynthia Duncan says.

 

There is little doubt which side of America's divide the hills of

east Kentucky fall on. Driving through the wooded Appalachian valleys

is a lesson in poverty. The mountains have never been rich. Times now

are as tough as they have ever been. Trailer homes are the norm. Every

so often a lofty mansion looms into view, a sign of prosperity linked

to the coal mines or the logging firms that are the only industries in

the region. Everyone else lives on the margins, grabbing work where

they can. The biggest cash crop is illicitly grown marijuana.

 

Save The Children works here. Though the charity is usually

associated with earthquakes in Pakistan or famine in Africa, it runs

an extensive programme in east Kentucky. It includes a novel scheme

enlisting teams of 'foster grandparents' to tackle the shocking child

illiteracy rates and thus eventually hit poverty itself.

 

The problem is acute. At Jone's Fork school, a team of indomitable

grannies arrive each day to read with the children. The scheme has two

benefits: it helps the children struggle out of poverty and pays the

pensioners a small wage. 'This has been a lifesaver for me and I feel

as if the children would just fall through the cracks without us,'

says Erma Owens. It has offered dramatic help to some. One group of

children are doing so well in the scheme that their teacher, Loretta

Shepherd, has postponed retirement in order to stand by them. 'It

renewed me to have these kids,' she said.

 

Certainly Renae Sturgill sees the changes in her children. She too

lives in deep poverty. Though she attends college and her husband has

a job, the Sturgill trailer sits amid a clutter of abandoned cars.

Money is scarce. But now her kids are in the reading scheme and she

has seen how they have changed. Especially eight-year-old Zach. He's

hard to control at times, but he has come to love school. 'Zach likes

reading now. I know it's going to be real important for him,' Renae

says. Zach is shy and won't speak much about his achievements. But

Genny Waddell, who co-ordinates family welfare at Jone's Fork, is

immensely proud. 'Now Zach reads because he wants to. He really fought

to get where he is,' she says.

 

In America, to be poor is a stigma. In a country which celebrates

individuality and the goal of giving everyone an equal opportunity to

make it big, those in poverty are often blamed for their own

situation. Experience on the ground does little to bear that out. When

people are working two jobs at a time and still failing to earn enough

to feed their families, it seems impossible to call them lazy or

selfish. There seems to be a failure in the system, not the poor

themselves.

 

It is an impression backed up by many of those mired in poverty in

Oklahoma and Kentucky. Few asked for handouts. Many asked for decent

wages. 'It is unfair. I am working all the time and so what have I

done wrong?' says Freda Lee. But the economy does not seem to be

allowing people to make a decent living. It condemns the poor to stay

put, fighting against seemingly impossible odds or to pull up sticks

and try somewhere else.

 

In Tulsa, Tammy Reinbold and her family are moving to Texas as

soon as they save the money for enough petrol. It could take several

months. 'I've been in Tulsa 12 years and I just gotta try somewhere

else,' she says.

 

Savethechildren.org

 

From Tom Joad to Roseanne

 

In a country that prides itself on a culture of rugged

individualism, hard work and self-sufficiency, it is no surprise that

poverty and the poor do not have a central place in America's cultural

psyche.

 

But in art, films and books American poverty has sometimes been

portrayed with searing honesty. John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of

Wrath, which was made into a John Ford movie, is the most famous

example. It was an unflinching account of the travails of a poor

Oklahoma family forced to flee the Dust Bowl during the 1930s

Depression. Its portrait of Tom Joad and his family's life on the road

as they sought work was a nod to wider issues of social justice in

America.

 

Another ground-breaking work of that time was John Agee's Let Us

Now Praise Famous Men, a non-fiction book about time spent among poor

white farmers in the Deep South. It practically disappeared upon its

first publication in 1940 but in the Sixties was hailed as a

masterpiece. In mainstream American culture, poverty often lurks in

the background. Or it is portrayed - as in Sergio Leone's crime epic

Once Upon A Time In America - as the basis for a tale of rags to riches.

 

One notable, yet often overlooked, exception was the great success

of the sitcom Roseanne. The show depicted the realities of

working-class Middle American life with a grit and humour that is a

world away from the usual sitcom settings in a sunlit suburbia, most

often in New York or California. The biggest sitcoms of the past

decade - Friends, Frasier or Will and Grace - all deal with

aspirational middle-class foibles that have little relevance to

America's millions of working poor.

 

An America Divided

 

* There are 37 million Americans living below the poverty line.

That figure has increased by five million since President George W.

Bush came to power.

 

* The United States has 269 billionaires, the highest number in

the world.

 

* Almost a quarter of all black Americans live below the poverty

line; 22 per cent of Hispanics fall below it. But for whites the

figure is just 8.6 per cent.

 

* There are 46 million Americans without health insurance.

 

* There are 82,000 homeless people in Los Angeles alone.

 

* In 2004 the poorest community in America was Pine Ridge Indian

reservation. Unemployment is over 80 per cent, 69 per cent of people

live in poverty and male life expectancy is 57 years. In the Western

hemisphere only Haiti has a lower number.

 

* The richest town in America is Rancho Santa Fe in California.

Average incomes are more than $100,000 a year; the average house price

is $1.7m.

 

-------