Poor people: advocates on their own behalf:
Amidei, Nancy
Poor people: advocates on their own behalf Try to imagine that Congress is planning a major overhaul of the tax laws that will affect your income and the incomes of millions of people like you. They...
...Whatever the mechanism, what's at stake is a commitment to participation irrespective of income and to the results that flow from being in the game...
...Nurturing that potential requires time and deliberate steps, such as creating "scholarships" for low-income participants whenever "board training" is scheduled for local nonprofit agencies...
...As Jesse Jackson recently reminded an audience, * The other candidates are offering you a lot of goodies...
...The short answer: 'barely.'' One key committee aide (who knew of no congressperson who'd consulted directly with welfare recipients) conceded, "Poor people aren't consulted the way other interest groups are...
...Low-income people-articulate or not-have a right to represent themselves...
...It's as though in losing their incomes, poor people also lost their right to be treated like competent adults...
...NANCY AMIDEI Nancy Amidei has written frequently on poverty...
...But if the problem is obvious to anyone familiar with the policy process, oddly enough, the solution is not...
...That proved true for members of both parties, and both sexes...
...Staffs responsible for the major welfare reform proposals were asked by students from the Institute for Social Justice at The Catholic University's School of Social Service, whether poor people and welfare recipients were consulted...
...If they're so savvy, how can they be "typical...
...An aide to one congresswoman said her boss saw herself as "serving a parenting role...
...If corporate executives really want to help poor people, they should "tithe" their lobbyists' time to work on poor people's issues...
...just speaking out seems to invite repercussions (that's why low-income organizations are more likely to be outspoken than low-income individuals...
...Then try organizations whose members arc likely to be low-income: senior citizens, families with retarded or disabled family members, displaced homemakers, unions with many unemployed members, divorcees or single parents...
...If you are empowered, you can get your own goodies...
...It helps to remember that not every bishop who testifies at a hearing changes the course of legislative history: not every doctor on a health commission speaks for all doctors...
...They can't pay their own way (even small costs like transportation, and babysitters have to be picked up...
...How do you find "representative" poor people...
...plus churches in poor neighborhoods, and emergency food and shelter providers...
...hunger, and human services issues in these pages.in these pages...
...How do you find a poor person who knows how to testify (serve on a board, discuss policy changes...
...Among poverty's costs, the bishops wrote, are the "denial of full participation in the economic, social, and political life of society, and an inability to influence decisions that affect one's life...
...The obligation to do something about poverty and human dignity implies an obligation to make sure that poor people can act as advocates on their own behalf and that they participate in the deliberations that affect their lives...
...This scene is played out daily on issues important to ten million Americans who are poor...
...Access is part of the power that low-income people lack and so are advocates accountable to them...
...Even now with an extended debate on welfare reform underway in Congress, nobody seems to have asked poor people, or the organizations to which they belong, for advice, or invited them as witnesses, or given them opportunities to review various drafts...
...Otherwise smart, decent people-some of whom work on behalf of the poor-claim not to know whom to consult or what to do when it comes to including poor people...
...That recognizes that someone whose life is in chaos may not have the energy for a political fight, while recognizing the importance of spokespcople whose personal experience is still fresh...
...What about the effectiveness or representativeness of poor people as witnesses or consultants...
...Ask social agencies serving low-income people to recommend current or former clients...
...and not everyone who cares about an issue is articulate and politically savvy...
...Still, some things are different about including poor people...
...Perhaps the most useful service the nonpoor have to offer the poor is "access...
...Politicians and social agencies like poor people to be grateful-and docile...
...Start with organizations and groups mat have low-income people among their leadership, as a matter of policy or law: welfare rights organizations, tenants' councils, ACORN chapters, most Women's Economic Agenda Projects (WEAP), and the National Anti-Hunger Coalition (NAHC) are organizations with low-income leadership...
...If a wonderfully articulate homeless man seems a bit "unrepresentative," so docs an articulate athlete or a witty academic-we not only let them speak for their groups, we are happy to have found such effective representatives...
...In fact, getting poor people in-volved in decisions that affect them is no different from involving any other group, starting with the obvious...
...Legal services, community action, and Head Start programs, as well as grantees of the Campaign for Human Development, all have low-income people on their boards...
...The National Anti-Hunger Coalition defines "recipient" as anyone who is or has been in a means-tested social program in the past two years...
...Your interests will be represented by the IRS...
...And if they don't start out political, low-income people have as much potential for leadership and political involvement as any other inexperienced group, including young people, women, and much of the politically inactive public...
...The situation is somewhat better at state and local levels, where elected officials tend to be more accessible generally, including to poor people...
...that welfare mothers needed to be "guided," not consulted...
...Substitute the words "welfare reform" for "tax reform," "poor people" for "people like you," "welfare administrators" for "IRS," and you are face-to-face with means-tested democracy, American style...
...Those who can get calls returned (from journalists, legislative staff, the offices of elected officials): who can get on witness lists for state, local, or congressional hearings: who get copies of proposals while they are still in draft form (and get invited to comment on them), need to share that with low-income people...
...As me pastoral letter on the economy recognized, something very fundamental is at stake in this question of participation and consultation...
...They do so while making it clear that neither you nor anyone else likely to be affected will be included in the deliberations...
...They face risks that don't apply to others...
...Having both will spawn a pool of low-income political junkies willing and able to do battle in the political arena...
Vol. 115 • February 1988 • No. 3
