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Well hello there

kactus

Hello to everybody at Feministe, and thanks Jill for this chance to guest-blog. This is a much bigger gig than the one I usually do over at my place, so I’m understandably a bit nervous. So I’m going to calm my nerves by telling you a little about myself before I go to my first post.

Over at my place I focus mostly on poverty issues at the micro-personal level: this is what poverty looks like for my family and me, this is how we cope, and in the meantime, life still goes on. I started out wanting to make the lives of women and families in poverty more visible on the net, especially since it seemed to me when I began blogging that most of the blogs I was familiar with were mind-numbingly middle-class. Where were the voices that sounded like mine? Where were the families and issues like mine? So I started my little experiment in saying, without apology, that I am poor, I’ve been on welfare, I don’t regret it, and that I believe our society has a moral obligation to take care of each of its members. From healthcare to guaranteed income, from food to shelter, we are connected and our survival depends upon recognizing that connection.

I also believed it was necessary to combat some of the stereotypes of what a person in poverty looks like and sounds like. If I can make myself real to you, perhaps I can make poverty real, and not something that happens to some vague Other; perhaps I can make our common humanity more recognizable.

So those are my lofty goals; but a lot of the time I just get lazy and talk about my kids and my life and stuff like disability and losing my car and how shitty it is when the electric company comes to shut your power off. I talk about the things that impact me, my kids, my neighbors, the inner city of Milwaukee, and always make the political very, very personal.

So this little introduction seems to be turning into a post of its own! With that, I’ll be back in a short with something of real substance. And I look forward to being in the guest-room this week!

32 thoughts on Well hello there

  1. This is not a loaded question, so please don’t take it the wrong way, but why are you poor? I’m as curious about how you would answer that question as I am about how I (or any other observer) might answer that question about you.

    Is it how you speak, what you look like, discrimination that you face? Lack of resources like transportation or money to buy interview clothes? Decisions you’ve made?

    Just curious…NOT trying to prove anything in asking 🙂

  2. I’ve thought from time to time of moving to Milwaukee if I had to move from where I am now. Would you recommend that?

    (silly question, perhaps, but you know the city well…)

  3. Hmm, I don’t know, Linnaeus. I’m actually trying to leave Milwaukee myself, if I can get the housing. There’s good and bad, but crime has gotten to be somewhat of an issue.

  4. anon: it might not be a loaded question, but it’s too complicated to address succinctly. Probably like just about everybody’s life stories. Suffice it to say that one reason I am currently poor is because of disability.

  5. Hmm, I don’t know, Linnaeus. I’m actually trying to leave Milwaukee myself, if I can get the housing. There’s good and bad, but crime has gotten to be somewhat of an issue.

    I can understand that, and I’m sure that has a lot to do with your current situation.

    Milwaukee looks like it could be a desireable option under certain circumstances; the location is decent, the city looks manageable, and the cost of living is certainly lower than where I am now.

  6. “anon: it might not be a loaded question, but it’s too complicated to address succinctly.”

    Fair enough…but I’m still curious. I’m very supportive of providing appropriate services for the poor, but I also hope (and expect!) that state and federal governments do more to eliminate the cirumstances that cause poverty. To that end, I still wonder how you became poor. I also wonder (I guess more personally) because according to my own academic understanding of poverty, I could have wound up as a poor adult, too, and I’m not. So I guess I always wonder where, in that very precarious time in a person’s life where you ascend a class or fall or stay static, that some people make it and some don’t…

    Ridiculously giant questions, I know. Maybe you can do a post on the topic?!

  7. Kactus, I understand so much of what you’re saying already, having been there. My husband was disabled with a broken neck/ cervical fusion over 12 years ago, diagnosed when I was pregnant with our first child. It was years before he could work again and even now, arthritis has taken hold to some degree.

    We ended up losing our car, our home, and had to save up to eventually go through bankruptcy. While food stamps did help, my family also donated food and whatever they could. I saved up redeemable cans from the side of the road to cash. We relied on our local food banks, too. We pawned everything we could to survive. Eventually, our situation improved, but it was the scariest decade of my life.

    I try to be as generous as I can since we got back on our feet, to individuals, shelters, food banks, and any other group that can help a family. Our children know why this is; I want them to know there is no shame in poverty whatsoever. And that it happens to REAL PEOPLE, not faceless individuals.

    I hope all works out for you and you can find housing in a safer enviroment…

  8. anonplease, the “circumstances that cause poverty” are attached to the circumstances that cause not-poverty, as i see it. so i guess we could all write about it. if we see it, that is. the connection.

    Kactus! great intro. good to see you here!

  9. I was going to ask the same question as anonplease. You’re literate, well-spoken-I can only assume it’s bias against your colour and disability.

    Which, if you lived in Ontario, would actually get you a job with the government! (We take our diversity seriously, here).

    One of the great things about this site is that it introduces me to people I wouldn’t otherwise meet, so hello! And congratulations on your lift-thingy.

  10. I was going to ask the same question as anonplease. You’re literate, well-spoken-I can only assume it’s bias against your colour and disability.

    Actually, I’m white, JPlum. I do have a mixed-race daughter, whose picture I plaster all over my blog, and I live in a mostly-black community, but no, actually being white has helped me navigate the welfare system much more than my sisters in poverty who are struggling against the racism in the system.

    Look, being well-spoken and educated is no fail-safe protection against poverty. Neither is being white. Although those things help, they are not a guarantee of a middle-class life. I was raised working class, which used to mean something. Now it means almost nothing, except that you still have illusions about what used to be called upward mobility.

    I have a quote on my blog from Johnnie Tillmon, a great early welfare rights activist. She says that welfare is like a traffic accident: it can happen to anybody. But especially it happens to women, which is why welfare is a women’s issue.

    Women go from middle class comfort to unpredictable poverty all the time, just from something so simple as losing their partners, either to death or divorce or other calamity. As long as the wage gap between women and men is so huge this will continue to be an issue. Women raise children alone all the time, without the benefit of child support. Women often end up working low-wage, dead-end jobs. Women lose jobs because of their children.

    Poverty is absolutely a women’s issue. That is why it is a feminist issue, and a human rights issue. And in the end it really doesn’t matter why somebody is poor, or what brought them there. What matters is that it could happen to every single one of us. One slip and bam–we’re in that traffic accident called welfare.

  11. Ooh, if we’re doing loaded questions, may I ask how you get internet access? It would really help me, I think, since the hardest part for people in the middle-class section like me to understand best- when poverty doesn’t look like we expect it to.

    (Also note, I read your other post and it’s really fabulous. Thanks too, for the link to Our Words.)

  12. i don’t think i’ve ever commented on your blog, but i’ve always really enjoyed your posts. i’m excited to read some more of your stuff here.

  13. I also haven’t commented on your blog, but I’ve been reading it for a while and I’m glad to see you posting on Feministe!

  14. yay kactus! I read your blog although I never comment, looking forward to reading your Feministe posts. 🙂

  15. Er, ah, I was reading through the comments on your other posts, and I am embarrassed to note that you wrote

    cuz you know, there are people who will wonder about stuff like that. They’ll wonder why you’ve got a computer if you’re so poor, or why you’ve got internet, or jesus, I suppose why you’ve got breath in your lungs. And they’re not really curious, they just want to say to the world that there are degrees of poverty, and there is a stereotype of what poverty is supposed to look like, and if you don’t fit that, you’re just a whiny complainer.

    and I just want to make absolutely clear that I asked because I want to break my own mental image of what poverty is like, not in order to start divvying up poverty into “poor” and “really poor.”

    But now that I think about it, the answer to my question is sorta self-evident.

  16. Look, being well-spoken and educated is no fail-safe protection against poverty.

    What matters is that it could happen to every single one of us. One slip and bam–we’re in that traffic accident called welfare.

    Crap. Makes me glad I live in Canada. Okay, pretty much all the news from the USA makes me glad I live in Canada. Or am I being naive, since poverty isn’t something I have a great deal of contact with? Is it worse here in Canada than I imagine? Barring an accident that would make it impossible for me to work, or the complete collapse of the world’s economy, I will always be comfortably middle-class.

    I’ve been reading stuff about marriage and motherhood, and how having kids is the single biggest predictor/risk factor for women being poor in later life. Which is really disgusting. And makes me never want to get married or procreate.

  20. It’s those little indignities I hate…like the one re Toys for Tots. I had no idea that was such a pain in the ass to access. And why? Are there really hordes of cheap-ass parents who would get their kids’ toys from there if it weren’t such a pain in the ass? Makes no sense to me whatsoever. I think most people have no idea how hard the simplest things can be when you’re poor.

    We’ve not been that far down yet, but yes, one traffic accident (and not a very big one) is all it would take, for many many Americans.

    There was a story in NY I think, not too long ago, about the mayor being upset that homeless families were camping out overnight in the offices to apply for housing assistance…because otherwise, they’d never get a place in line or be seen. The mayor’s answer wasn’t “change the process to be less of a pain” but “come down on the case workers who were letting this happen.” And it just struck me how much it showed that he was a rich white man who had never had to wait in line for help with a tired toddler and no where to sleep that night. And hell, he was generally considered fairly compassionate.

  21. And in the end it really doesn’t matter why somebody is poor, or what brought them there. What matters is that it could happen to every single one of us. One slip and bam–we’re in that traffic accident called welfare.

    This is so true. I’ve volunteered at shelters for the homeless here in Houston. The one thing I’ve learned from talking to these folks, is that poverty can happen to anyone. So many of these people were middle class, yet something happened, and suddenly they found themselves homeless and living in abject poverty.

    And often it was little things. An illness, or loss of a career orr a business. Divorce. One year you are on top of the heap, the next you are being smothered by it. The thing they all had in common, was that once you sank below a certain point, it was many times more difficult to pull yourself out of it. And many were just trapped there.

    The lower you sink into poverty the harder it is to rise out of it.

  22. It’s those little indignities I hate…like the one re Toys for Tots. I had no idea that was such a pain in the ass to access. And why? Are there really hordes of cheap-ass parents who would get their kids’ toys from there if it weren’t such a pain in the ass?

    I know!

    There’s a knee-jerk response in there somewhere…and perhaps we can hash it out together. If you want to give something to somebody needy, do you think you would trust the first person to come up to you and say “hey, I’m needy, can I have that?” Would you say “ok, here you go” and feel like you did a good deed? Or would you always wonder if somebody got over on you? If you wondered that, would it be because you’re cynical? And if so, how did you get that way?

    I think social service agencies are cynical like that. I know caseworkers are. And I think that when you get to that point you ought to go into another line of work. It’s a lack of trust that poor people can make the right decisions, or that they have a moral failing that caused them to be poor in the first place, so you think they’re always trying to get over.

    The problem, of course, is that sure, some poor people try to milk the system. So do some middle class people and so do some wealthy people. The difference is in degree and payoff. And in the moral judgement that follows when poor people are caught being shady is more severe when it’s the wealthy.

    Racism and classism, what a classic combination.

  23. And in the moral judgement that follows when poor people are caught being shady is more severe when it’s the wealthy.

    Should have said “the moral judgement that follows when poor people are caught being shady is more severe than when it’s the wealthy.”

  24. What we did, Kactus, was what has lived to be called “The Eight Dollar Christmas”.

    I managed to save $8 from cashing in redeemable cans I found on the side of the roads here in Maine (damned COLD in Nov/Dec!) and gave them to my husband the day before Christmas so he could buy presents. He went to Salvation Army, got a stuffed wind-up “Winnie the Pooh” that played the theme song, a stuffed white horse (both for our 2 1/2 yr old), a crossword puzzle book for me and a few other little things. I remember this ten years later because of the look on his face- I’ll never forget when he realized he COULD buy our little girl a gift!
    (Sorry, crying again)

    Every year since (and yes, we still have those gifts to never forget), we put $8 in dollar bills in each of our Christmas stockings. And always will.

    The kicker for me (having grown-up working lower/middle class) was that he grew up in a very affluent family, went to private schools in Boston as a boy, travelled Europe whenever his mother had a whim, had relatives worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet the second he turned 18, he was completely cut off from his father (who HATED his ex-wife, my husband’s mother) and to punish her, refused to pay a nickel towards his son’s education. He (my husband) earned 2 degrees and paid for every bit of it himself.

    My husband lived a lifestyle as a child I’ve only read about, then had life happen to him with his disability, lost everything he had earned and built up at that point, yet kept trying. I have so much respect for him and more disdain for all of his wealthy family. They could have helped- but we knew better than ask. My family just gave on their own because it was the right thing to do, and I’ve reciprocated whenever I could.

  25. For you, JPlum- because poverty is NOT just an American problem. Obviously you are young and for your sake, I do hope you are right and will never be poor.

    There’s no need to be condescending. I’m not young, I’m lucky-my parents paid for me to get a professional degree, so barring being unable to work, I will always be employable. And if the worst happens, those same parents will be there for me. I’ve made the decision not to have children until I’m absolutely certain that I, alone, will be able to provide a comfortable, middle-class life for them.

    I do think that the fall from middle-class to poor is more American. Medical bills will never wipe out my finances. Welfare is (slightly) better here than in the USA. Even my decision not to have children is made easier by living in Canada-my birth control pills cost a fraction of what they do in the USA, and because I’m in a big city in Ontario, I have easy access to abortion, should I need it. And no protesters.

    I’ve been through the indignity of applying for welfare, and no one should have to go through that on a regular basis. Keeping a few cheats out is not worth the way you end up treating the vast majority of other people.

  26. Funny that even on this progressive board, the immediate assumption was that kactus is black (as are all people on welfare, RIGHT?) and how could this happen when she is “so well spoken”! Uuggghh.

    Anyway, welcome kactus. I’m going through the archives on your blog right now. I feel close to you as the biracial daughter of a white mother who grew up with an absentee asshole of a father who never paid a dime in child support. My mother managed to put herself through nursing school with the help of my grandmother after I was born. We were on welfare while my mom went to school and she had my grandmother to provide daycare. She was also able to work a night shift for a lot more money because of my grandma as well. I grew up comfortably middle class, but I know it could’ve easily been a different scenario.

  27. My assumption was based on pictures of her daughter, actually. And being well-spoken generally goes along with being well-educated, which does help people get by in the world.

  28. Hey, Kactus! Good to see someone broke like me around. I have in the past been on FS and Medicaid, but we fall into the working poor–make too much to get any help, not enough to actually provide for all our needs but we spend so much time running as fast as we can to stay in the same place there is no time or energy to go back to school to “better ourselves”.

    Someone asked why you were poor. I can’t answer for you, but for me and mine, we grew up in this class and had a child young. That’s it. That’s the reason.

  29. rock on, Kactus! (((SO PROUD!))) way to make the bigs!

    re: being an impoverished smartypants – I guess it depends a lot on how far along you got in school (it’s possible to be quite bright but still for any reason not finish college), how many folks are depending on your paycheck, how healthy you are and how much health care you need to maintain that level, whether your job screws you for any reason or no reason, how badly you want to “climb up the ladder” and what you’ll sacrifice to keep up appearances, and how all those factors work together to influence how much month you have at the end of the money.

    you may be quite comfortably well-off today – but who knows where you’ll be if your partner has a car wreck the week your company goes out of business just after you got pregnant…

    god laughs when we plan.

  30. I am SO looking forward to all of your guest posts.

    If I may plug, there’s a good organization called Modest Needs out there. It’s quite small (although larger than the founder ever dreamed of), but if the people who are wondering “how this can happen” go to the website and read through it, they’ll see how small problems can quickly balloon. The basic idea of the foundation is that a lot of people are middle class by hanging on with white knuckles – they don’t have enough for savings, they don’t have the credit rating for large credit limits, they don’t have relatives with money to spare, so one bill can do them in entirely. Don’t have $400 or a credit card to get the car fixed, so can’t get to work, so get fired… etc.

  31. car, I’ve heard of modest needs–in fact I’ve referred a couple of moms to them. I’m glad to see they’re still around.

    And you’re so right about how quickly you can start that slide to the bottom. For me it was like one day I was on one rung of the ladder, but then that rung got sawed off. And I started bouncing, down, down, down.

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