Trying on poverty

AmeriCorps is the domestic version of Peace Corps, with the idea that you give a year of your life to the service of those in need in America. Corps members are placed in a variety of already existing agencies that are serving their communities, and AmeriCorps supports them by a) providing a worker b) giving that worker professional development c) forming and supporting a team of Corps members in clusters of related placements. It's very much designed to be a learning experience, and I sort of feel like I'm embarking into a 5th year of school -- a victory lap that takes me out of the classroom entirely and offers a small sample of what it is like to be a working woman earning working wages. A very small sample, mind you.

While a part of me is grumbling and griping about the unbalanced values that such a pay scale represents (my peers who graduated with engineering or business degrees can reasonably expect salaries at least 6x the amount of mine for this year), there is another part of me that recognizes the valuable learning experience written into such a system. I am working with people who are very poor, people for whom the question isn't whether they can afford to go on vacation this Christmas break, but rather whether they can afford to pay for rent and air conditioning this summer. This low pay puts me that much closer to understanding the position that these people with whom I will be working operate from daily.

I haven't written in this blog since I was out of the country (or rather, recently returned, I suppose), but I feel the need to make some sort of record of this experience, more so for myself to reflect on the experience and through the ghost of this text hold my future self accountable to the insight and growth that will come of this year. My previous entries were written with an audience in mind, and always with the compelling desire to elicit feedback from that audience. This is a bit different, although I certainly don't discourage feedback.


The plight of the poor today is a sneaky punishment; it is the curse of waiting. The residents at my job are all actively pursuing stability in those sacred realms of employment, housing, legal issues, and food security, but this activity doesn't quite look like you might expect. They have to wait on papers to arrive. They wait for the bus to arrive. They wait for a phone call. They wait their turn in line. They wait to save up enough money. They wait until they have someone to take care of their kids. They wait until they find work. They wait until the next paycheck. They wait for the benefits to arrive. The wait for data entry errors to be corrected in the system. They wait to be admitted into this place where I work where we help them with all this waiting.

I will be eligible for Food Stamps (or, as they're called these days, SNAP benefits) with this job, so today after work I drove to the library to print out an application -- because I'm lucky enough to have a car that takes me places when I want it to. I went inside and had to ask about seven dozen questions to figure out how to get on the electronic que for a computer. At home my wait is only as long as it takes for my laptop to start up once it's opened (a duration that has been known to draw curses from pursed lips on more than a few occasions), but at the library the four computers (which you're allowed to use for a whopping 15 minutes) cost a mere 15 or 20 minute wait while your fellow patrons watch and re-watch the "Sexy Abz Workout" video on YouTube. The internet is slow. The sign tells you you get 15 minutes, but by the time you're logged on the small yellow box in the bottom corner tells you you have 12 minutes remaining before you will be logged off and all your work erased. Sparing the rest of the details, it takes me almost an hour and $2.50 and then finally I'm on my way home with my 12 pages of printed SNAP application.

As if to drive home the point, I had to wait through 3 cycles at the traffic light just outside the library before I could turn left and be on my way home.

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard reference to the laziness of the poor, upon whose dimpled shoulders our country's wellbeing rests. They just sit around all day. What do people do when they don't have work? Their poor kids are just so bored. Couldn't they do something productive instead of just lounge around? They don't have a job because they're irresponsible and always late. If they're so poor then why are they so overweight?

The list goes on.

There's something that can't be understood about the experience of any person just by peering into their lives from one's own distant steeple. In the same way that it would be false to assume that the wealthy are happy because they can buy ease and comfort, it is false to assume that the poor are dysfunctional or lazy. (It is equally false to assume that they must either be fully broken or fully altruistic. It is often the most visibly unfortunate who are denied the right to make mistakes and to be flawed. But let's not get carried away on yet another rabbit chase.)

Actually, speaking of rabbit chases, I see one that looks especially worth following.

When strangers peer into my life, they seem to find a particular word tattoed across my existence, and its relentless repeition has started to make me nauseous. "You're so noble." Noble, really?

An excerpt from dictionary.com :
"of, belonging to, or constituting a hereditary class that has special social or political status in a country or state; of or pertaining to the aristocracy."

First of all, social workers are most certainly not members of a special social or political class within American aristocracy. Rather, we're called noble for our willingness to work low paying, thankless jobs and to advocate for the rights and wellbeing of the people we work with. Being a compassionate worker who cares more about people than about money makes us a special breed of humans -- or so I'm told. But noble? I'm just following the only thing that I know to be true and good and to which I can devote my time and efforts.

Enough on that. And enough for today. I'll ramble more another day.