what I'm learning

This past year has made me conversant in a number of new subjects. Social welfare programs in the US. Things tourists do that annoy New Yorkers. Taxes. Taxes in Spanish. The subway system.

One thing I got an education in that I wasn't expecting: criminal justice in the US.

A year ago, I couldn't have told you with certainty which was more serious, a felony or a misdemeanor. I didn't know the difference between jail and prison. I'd never seen a stop-and-frisk. I wouldn't have believed that a person's right to vote could be taken away for life if they were convicted of a crime. I couldn't have distinguished parole from probation. I wouldn't have understood the signficance of "felony-friendly" employers.

I've learned all this on the job, from men who launch into a speeches trying to minimize their felonies as soon as they sit down to be screened for our services. From calling clients to follow up on their benefits applications only to be told that they are federal inmates and can't receive personal communication. From mothers, wives, grandmothers, aunts, girlfriends who can't include everyone in their household on their food stamps cases because felons and the families that take them in can be kicked out of public housing.

But I hadn't put the dots together until a sermon I heard a few months ago. The pastor used evidence from Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness to talk about the unjust laws, practices and attitudes that have brought us to the point where one in three black men in the US is under the control of the criminal justice system. Alexander argues that changes in the criminal justice system in the last thirty years, particularly the War on Drugs have created a caste system in the mold of slavery and Jim Crow. Black men are no more likely to break drug laws than their white counterparts, yet they are stopped, searched, charged, and convicted at exponentially higher rates and their sentences are usually much harsher.


She describes not only the criminal justice system, but also what happens to those released from prison with felonies. The can be denied housing, jobs, public benefits, and the right to vote (among other things). I'd estimate that more than half of my male clients check "yes" next to the question "Have you been convicted of a crime". This is fair game on any job application, and for many of them it makes finding employment nearly impossible. Indeed, some of the only "felony-friendly" employment options are also some of the most dangerous jobs available - work in construction, commercial driving (with a focus on transporting hazardous materials) and environmental clean-up (involving removal of toxic materials like asbestos). It's no coincidence that these careers are a focus for my organization. But all the job placement in the world doesn't touch the injustice of the system.

The pastor ended that sermon with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr, and with the spiritual "Let My People Go".

Go down, Moses
Way down in Egypt's land
Tell old Pharaoh
Let my people go!

Read the book if you can. If you can't, at least read the sermon.

taken care of

A couple months ago I started to notice sensitivity on one side of my mouth to hot, cold and crunchy things. After pretending for several weeks that nothing was going on, I couldn't ignore it anymore. And I found myself in a situation I'd never been in before. I had to decide whether or not to get medical care based not on whether or not I needed it, but if I could afford it.

Growing up, this scenario would never have crossed my mind. As the child of a doctor and a nurse, my every pain and complaint was looked up in the Merck Manual and sent to a local specialist. The resulting diagnosis was then run by various medical acquaintances around the globe, just to be sure nothing was missed. Occasional sharp pains in my right knee? X-rays, orthopedists, and physical therapy. A day of vertigo? CT scan, MRI, and a visit to a neurologist and an ENT specialist. A nasty but routine case of a tropical illness? Med-evacc'ed to Singapore accompanied by an American EMT within hours of diagnosis. No potential problem was every left unaddressed, and cost was never an issue.

But here I am in the real world, with an annoying-but-not-debilitating sensitivity in my teeth that might (or might not) be an indicator of a cavity (or something even more unpleasant), which will almost certainly get worse (in terms of both pain and cost of treatment) the longer I let it go. And as for paying for it? I'm on my own.

And here again I'm getting just a little taste of the uncertainties and ugly trade-offs my clients face. It is absurd that dental and vision care are not included in regular medical insurance (as if the ability to eat and see were somehow non-essential). It is sick that people with incomes over $707 per month are expected to be able to pay for their own healthcare in New York City. (For a point of reference, that's a little bit less than what I pay for rent, utilities, and a monthly subway pass each month, and I'm not exactly living large).

As strange as it feels to consider forgoing a needed dental examination because of the cost, my situation is pretty tame. A few months ago one of my clients told me he had a growth on his neck that was getting bigger, but he couldn't find out if it was malignant or benign because while his unemployment benefits put him above the income range for Medicaid, they also didn't come close to covering the cost of a consultation or insurance.

My story doesn't turn out too badly. I figured out how to afford a dental check-up the same way I afford to get my hair cut in the city (letting a student do it). Turns out there was no cavity, so I'm probably off the hook.

But I wonder what happens to everyone else.

follow up

A couple months ago I would, with some regularity, interrupt unrelated conversations with Mark by bursting into tears over the situations some of my clients were facing. I was taking in enough of the pain and difficulty people told me about that it started overflowing into other parts of my life. I knew it wasn’t healthy or sustainable, but as the pace and volume of my work began to escalate with tax season I found myself absorbing less and less. A few weeks ago I even caught myself being short with my blind or illiterate tax clients who hadn’t filled out their intake forms while waiting to be seen.

But apparently my capacity for compassion is back, and with an unlikely object.

I have sustained, long-term contact with only a few of my clients. Most of them I see once, call to follow up with, and that’s it. But there are a few. One guy in particular came in several months ago looking for a job and was immediately “one of those”. Sarcastic, self-deprecating, and disagreeable, I didn’t expect him to stick with our organizations’ program, but he did. He had gotten fired a few years away from retirement, was behind on his rent, and really needed a job. I kept badgering him over the course of several weeks to sign up for a free cellphone, and at some point he decided I wasn’t all that bad. He started stopping by my desk every time he came back to the office for a job interview. Over the course of the last few months he hasn’t found a job, has had to go on welfare (which means he has to spend 5 days a week at a dead-end city “job center”), and got evicted from his apartment. Worst of all was how I could see all of it in the new lines and hollows in his face when he stopped in a few days ago.

My teary outbursts are less frequent now, but I’ll admit I still don’t know what to do with the stories.

washing feet

I spent a good part of my afternoon yesterday in a meeting listening to higher-up administrators of some of the city's social services agencies give glowing accounts (accompanied by colorful charts and optimistic statistics) of the programs they operate for the city's poor. It was hard to believe these efficient, responsive, generous programs are the same ones my clients tell me about.

Yesterday was also Maundy Thursday, and I read these words from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams on the blog for the NPR radio show On Being. He was speaking in reference to a medieval tradition in which monarchs washed the feet of the poor in commemoration of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples at the Last Supper:

What about having a new law that made all Cabinet members and leaders of political parties, editors of national papers and the hundred most successful financiers in the UK spent a couple hours every year serving dinners in a primary school on a council estate, or cleaning bathrooms in a residential home?

What if those administrators, the mayor, and the Wall Street bankers spent a few hours doing some of the assignments in the Work Experience Program, like picking up trash on the sidewalks and cleaning public restrooms without pay?

fasting

I'll admit, I'd been a little disappointed by Mark Bittman lately. The NY Times food writer used to provide simple, easy recipes as The Minimalist. The only reference source I use more often than his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is Wikipedia. His recent promotion to weekly Opinion columnist writing about a range of food and food system topics has, however, been less pleasant. He now bites off huge (and important) issues, dispatching problems like US agricultural subsidies them with simplistic solutions (subsidize veggies instead of corn!) in under 1,000 words. (Of course, I make the same complaint about Times columnist Nick Kristoff, who covers international politics and development, so perhaps my issue is with the column format in general.)

Nevertheless, Bittman just about restored himself in my mind with his most recent column, "Why We're Fasting". Earlier this week he joined activist and religious leaders around the country who are giving up food for a period of time in response to the current federal budget negotiations. Under serious consideration are huge cuts to anti-poverty programs like WIC (nutritional support for pregnant women and those with young children), Head Start (free preschool for kids from low-income families), food stamps, and international food and health aid.

I first heard about the fast through Bread for the World. I'll admit I dragged my feet on joining in, but Bittman's piece was a helpful reminder. I know from my clients how essential these services are for poor people here. In the case of food stamps, I know from my own experience how important they are. I believe these cuts are wrong. Today, I fasted.

nightmares

In high school, I used to have math nightmares. I'd wake up anxiously trying to figure out a difficult trig problem, and it would take me awhile to realize I was in bed and relax enough to fall asleep again.

I had my first tax nightmares last night - same format, but with a filing statuses and 1099-Rs where quadratic equations and matrices used to be. They're the product of very full work days, of learning a different language (tax law) and trying to explain it in another foreign language (Spanish).

Nightmares notwithstanding, it's great work. After months where the best I could offer my clients was a list of documents they'd need for appointments at yet another office, it feels good to be able to actually provide a service. And to know it does something.

This video highlights the economic impact of the most significant tax credit we help folks claim - the Earned Income Tax Credit. Watch out for Yanira Rodriguez -- she's interviewed here as an EITC recipient, and she's another one of the tax preparers at my site!

esperando

As we're beginning to prepare tax returns at my VITA site, we see a lot of a certain type of client. While the employed are still waiting for the W-2s to arrive, our tax clients are primarily folks with no taxable income - those receiving disability insurance, social security, or public assistance. Viuda. Ciego. Discapacitada. Retirado. New York City provides a small school tax refund to all its' residents (although why we're giving back money set aside for an under-funded school system remains a mystery), and these folks are the first to file.

Unlike our general clientele, they're rarely missing any documents. Each carries a fraying, overstuffed envelope or a faded plastic bag filled with various ID cards, official letters, bills, divorce papers and receipts. These scraps of paper and bits of plastic, written in bureaucratic language incomprehensible to even those who are literate and do speak English, are their only source of security. One missed appointment, one misunderstood letter, and their only income could be cut off for months. They rattle off their birthdates, medical conditions and financial situations with ease after years of waiting in offices and being asked to prove they have nothing. For many of them, la vida es esperar. Life is waiting.

Their waiting heightens my awareness of my own. I'm having trouble moving on from Advent, trouble following the church calendar past Christmas and through Epiphany. I resonate with Heidi Neumark when she says

Probably the reason I love Advent so much is that it is a reflection of how I feel most of the time. I might not feel sorry during Lent, when the liturgical calendar begs repentance. I might not feel victorious, even though it is Easter morning. I might not feel full of the Holy Spirit, even though it is Pentecost and the liturgy spins out fiery gusts of ecstasy. But during Advent I am always in sync with the season. Advent unfailing embraces and comprehends my reality. And what is that? I think of the Spanish word anhelo, or longing. Advent is when the church can no longer contain its' unbearable, unfulfilled desire and the cry of anhelo bursts forth.

As my clients wait for me in the reception area, as I wait for them to sift through their papers to find the ones I need, as we wait together on the slow tax program to tell us what their refund will be, I am aware of my waiting, of my anhelo.

Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.

I'm waiting for that.

food stamps...I forget what numeral comes next

After reading my hungry season post, my most frequent and most staunchly anonymous commenter (my mom, of course), asked how I was doing on food stamps.

The answer: just great.

But as I merrily swipe my EBT card for fruits, veggies, staples and the occasional indulgence (olives! cheese!), I'm more aware than ever that I'm pretty much the most ideally-situated food stamps recipient ever, and that my experience is worlds different from the average. Why?

I'm white, educated, and speak English. The worst I encountered at the food stamps office was ignorance and disorganization. I wish I could say the same for some of my clients at work, whose experiences have been so bad that no matter how dire their situation, they refuse to return. Also, when my case was originally declined I was able to follow up with my caseworker and get the decision changed. Most recipients consider a rejection notice final and don't ever contest it.

I have the time and skills to cook from scratch, and I enjoy it. Cooking from scratch is cheaper. It's also not an option for folks who are juggling multiple jobs and family obligations.

I'm single. I'm able to receive the maximum individual allotment of food stamps - $200 a month. If there was anyone else in my food stamps household, our per capita allotment would be decreased (for example, 2 people = $367)

I'm a vegetarian. Meat's expensive. Beans, lentils and eggs...not so much.

Most of my income doesn't count towards my food stamp eligibility. Due to a special legal provision, my stipend does not count towards my income. What I take home each month would make me completely ineligible for food stamps if it were all included. And did I mention neither the benefits allotments nor the qualification criteria have anything to do with where you live? So the fact that food is more expensive in NYC than most places and that it's impossible to rent a room for less than $500 a month here does nothing to change what people are entitled to.

I have farmer/vendor friends. Even though my market is closed until April, several of my farmer/vendor friends have moved to a year-round market in Brooklyn and still insist on giving me free bread and produce.

I'm a US citizen. Undocumented and over 18? No food stamps. Got your green card? Well, you're eligible, but only if you've had it for at least 5 years.

I live in NYC. Although the city is more expensive than most places, almost all the farmers markets take EBT. That's unheard of most other places.

And this is by no means an exhaustive list. Mentioning that I'm on food stamps gives me a bit of rapport with some of my clients when I'm recommending they apply, but in reality my situation couldn't be more different from theirs.

"grayed in, and gray"

One of the biggest changes I've noticed as I adjust to city life (particularly city life in the middle of winter in the neighborhood with the second least amount of park space of any in NYC) is how my poetry appetite has changed. Old friends like Wendell Berry, Jane Kenyon, and Mary Oliver don't awaken appreciation or love for a cold, half-industrial landscape and its (human) nature. They don't make much sense of prison or public assistance. So I was thankful to stumble across this Gwendolyn Brooks poem:

Kitchenette Building

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
Grayed in, and gray. "Dream" makes a giddy sound, not strong
Like "rent," "feeding a wife", "satisfying a man."

But could a dream send up through onion fumes
Its' white and violet, fight with fried potatoes
And yesterday's garbage ripening in the hall,
Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms

Even if we were willing to let it in,
Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,
Anticipate a message, let it begin?

We wonder. But not well! Not for a minute!
Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now,
We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.

My first client today was a (40 year-old? 50 year-old? what's that in street years?) army veteran, obviously mentally ill, upset and complaining vaguely about one part of the so-called social safety net after another. Grayed in, and gray.

the hungry season

When I first moved back to the US it was hard for me to hear the difficulties low-income folks face described using the same word, "poverty", whether we were talking about people in suburban Chicago or in the slums of Nairobi. Could the same term used for a family living in a one-room, dirt-floor shack in Kibera be applied to a family who might be struggling to make ends meet but owned a car and a television in the US? Were the predicaments of people whose annual per capita incomes measured in thousands of dollars really in the same category of those whose annual incomes were only in the hundreds? Could circumstances marked by the swollen guts of obesity be compared to those resulting in the distended bellies of kwashiorkor?

So I've been surprised, living and working in north/central Brooklyn, to find a lot of similarities between the smells, the stories, the situations of poverty here and there. I'm familiar with the "hungry season" experienced in poor rural communities in the global South, the lean months when the stores from the last harvest dwindle but the current crop is not ready. And I'm learning about a similar cycle of plenty and hunger in the US.

Walmart, Costco, and other grocery outlets throughout the country brace for the first of each month a bit like retail stores do for Black Friday: they stock up, hire extra staff, extend their hours, and prepare for crowds. Like on Black Friday, the shopping frenzy often begins at midnight.

Except rather than discounted clothing and gift items, these shoppers are buying bread and baby formula. The first-of-the-month sales bump, well-documented over the past couple of years, occurs when each months' food stamps benefits are deposited at 12am on the 1st. The purchases reflect that fact that many families' food stamps allocations are insufficient, leading to a monthly cycle of plenty and want. A study of family eating patterns in my neighborhood showed that most families make one big trip to the grocery store at the beginning of the month with their food stamps, and tend to rely on family members, taking out credit at bodegas (corner stores), and food pantries when they've exhausted their benefits at the end of the month.

While this cycle is only one element in the complicated set of factors that allows many of the US's most food insecure people to also be its' heaviest, it certainly contributes. The report showed that many families tend to overeat at the beginning of the month when food is plentiful. As stocks dwindle weeks later, parents will often give their kids cheap junk foods that can make them happy in the hungry times. Once-a-month grocery trips also promote consumption of processed foods, since most fresh items wouldn't last the whole month. And the majority of the bodegas where people shop most frequently don't stock fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods. It may not be famine in the Sahel, but the hungry season is here, too.

And while poverty looks different in a Maasai village in Kenya, an informal settlement in Phnom Penh, the factory-fields of southern California, and the streets of north Brooklyn, the prayer is the same.

Utupe leo riziki yetu

Danos hoy el pan de este dia

Give us this day our daily bread

food stamps IV

So, where we last left my food stamps case my confused caseworker had called the wrong person to check up on my salary and decided that I was ineligible. I convinced him to talk to my AmeriCorps supervisor, and apparently the fact that she used "director" in her job title did the trick. I called him again the following day (so this is somewhere around Nov. 20) and he said I had been approved, but reminded me that the HRA (Human Resources Administration) had a full 30 days to formally respond to my application. Accordingly, my award letter didn't come until the 30th day, with my benefit card and PIN arriving days after that.

But it did come, and given the stories I hear every week about ineptitude and downright obstructionist behavior in that office, I don't take the relative ease of my application process for granted.

Now to get used to pulling out that light blue card when I shop for groceries. At the market on Sunday, showing up at the produce stand with the market's EBT dollars prompted the vendor to tell me how angry it made him that "other people" ("not you, of course - you look like you work your ass off") were using his tax dollars to buy food while wearing expensive North Face jackets and genuine Yankees jerseys.

Oh, where to begin with that one...

But, on a more positive note, since my previous food stamps post lamenting the lack of conversation between the foodie and anti-hunger movements I've come across two quality recent examples to the contrary: Divided We Eat, an article by Newsweek's Lisa Miller on food and class in the US., and an interview with anti-hunger advocate Joel Berg in the very foodie Edible Brooklyn.

stamps III

This afternoon while I was at work I got a slightly panicky voicemail from my supervisor at the Market. Apparently my food stamps caseworker had just called asking her all kinds of questions about my eligibility for food stamps in relation to my AmeriCorps job (which is completely unrelated to my market job, which I explained to my caseworker in the interview). So... it might be awhile.

In the meantime, as I cringe at my budget spreadsheet and tap my foot in impatience, I've been pondering two apparently contradictory messages of the (admittedly fragmented) US "food movement".

A. Americans spend, on average, less than 10% of their money on food. This is very low, both historically and in comparison to other countries. And it does not reflect the true costs of growing food because cheap food does not guarantee a decent living for those who work in our food chain, address the environmental impact of agriculture, or accurately reflect the costs of growing food (since we subsidize oil and certain commodity crops). Therefore, food is not expensive enough.

B. One in 8 Americans (and 1 in 4 American children) is on food stamps. And there are millions more who qualify but aren't, for a variety of reasons, receiving food stamps or other nutritional assistance. Recently released USDA food security numbers for 2009 show that 1 in 4 US children live in a house that sometimes runs out of food. Therefore, for many, food is too expensive.

So within the "food movement" we have the locavores and proponents of sustainable ag saying we should pay more for our food, and the anti-hunger folks saying, essentially, that we are paying more than we can afford already.

I've been wondering why no one was talking about this contradiction, until today I found them...well...talking about it.

In the locavore corner we have Michael Pollan who says in a New York Review of Books essay:

Hunger activists like Joel Berg, in All You Can Eat: How hungry is America? criticize supporters of "sustainable" agriculture...for advocating reforms that threaten to raise the cost of food to the poor.

...the "hunger" lobby has traditionally supported farm subsidies in exchange for the farm lobby's support of nutrition programs, a marriage of convenience that vastly complicates reform of the farm bill - a top priority for the food movement.

In his reply, Joel Berg (anti-hunger advocate with NYC Coalition Against Hunger) points out that his book does include serious criticism of current US farm policy, and that what he'd like from the locavores is proposals to help those who are already food insecure handle the costs of higher prices for food that more accurately reflect the costs of production.

As I run in both the local/sustainable and anti-hunger crowds, I'm trying to find a way to reconcile the two, something better than the anemic conclusions Berg and Pollan come to - that we can all agree that the food system is broken and we need to work together to fix it.

It seems to me that a reasonable place to start is by making sure folks in the food chain are paid a living wage. Pollan does a good job in pointing out the perversity of this when he observes in the contemporary US food economy:

an upside-down version of the social compact sometimes referred to as "Fordism": instead of paying workers well enough to allow them to buy things like cars, as Henry Ford proposed to do, companies like Wal-Mart and McDonalds pay their workers so poorly they can afford only the cheap, low-quality food these companies sell, creating a kind of non-virtuous cycle driving down both wages and the quality of food.

Many of the folks I screen who qualify for nutritional assistance (food stamps, WIC, school lunches etc.) work minimum wage jobs in the food industry, and don't get me started on farmworkers.

And in my own life? I'm excited to spend my EBT dollars at the farmers' market.

If I ever get them, that is.

stamps II

This is a game of "spot who's missing". Here's an advertisement for an event I considered going to this evening (and did not because it would have taken me 3 hours to get there and back):

"Food Stamped" is an informative and humorous documentary film following a couple as they attempt to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet on a food stamp budget...The event will kick off with a light reception at 5:00 pm followed by the 60-minute documentary debut. Thereafter, a closing discussion amongst Co-star Shira Potash and Montefiore physician participants in the Food Stamps Challenge will close the evening.

So...what's missing in this picture? Ah yes, here we have another conversation about hunger and anti-poverty measures without actual hungry and poor people. Instead, we use the short-term, voluntary experiences of deprivation of some well-meaning folks of means to start the discussion. I don't deny the value of things like the Food Stamps Challenge in raising awareness, but I wonder what their ultimate impact is if these experiences of food insecurity don't lead directly to interaction with people who are actually food-insecure. I have much more respect for initiatives like Witnesses to Hunger (where my friend Kyle is currently working) that let folks in poverty tell their own stories rather than having them told through outsiders or, even more removed, through outsiders trying to temporarily experience a taste of what it's like to be poor.