Ain't I a Person?

Summary

In the film "Ain't I a Person?" by Keith Kilty, the harsh realities and the often misunderstood elements of poverty in America are vividly illustrated. Through various stories and expert insights, the documentary sheds light on the systemic issues contributing to poverty, such as unemployment, inadequate public support, and the stigma attached to using welfare. It challenges the notion that the poor are responsible for their circumstances and critiques the policies and societal attitudes that perpetuate economic disparity. The film ultimately calls for compassion, understanding, and action to address and eradicate poverty.

Highlights

• The poverty rate in the USA has increased over the years, affecting millions. 📈
• Children and families are among the most impacted by poverty. 👪
• Health care costs and housing are major issues for impoverished families. 🏥
• The film criticizes inadequate welfare systems and societal perceptions. 🏦
• There's a call to action for more empathy and systemic change. 🌟

Key Takeaways

• Poverty is a systemic issue, not just a personal failure. 🤔
• Many Americans face poverty despite the country’s overall wealth. 🇺🇸
• Public benefits and policies often fall short of addressing real needs. 📉
• The stigma of poverty can be more damaging than the actual experience. 📛
• We need societal compassion and structural change to fight poverty. ❤️

Overview

In "Ain't I a Person?", Keith Kilty takes us on an eye-opening journey through the depths of poverty in modern America. The film provides a raw portrayal of the daily struggles faced by impoverished individuals and families. Kilty challenges viewers to reconsider the stereotypes associated with poverty, emphasizing that many who are poor work hard and deserve better opportunities.

Through interviews and personal stories, the documentary captures the voices of those experiencing poverty firsthand. It tackles topics such as the lack of access to quality healthcare, the inadequacy of public support programs, and the societal blame placed on the poor. These narratives highlight the resilience and dignity of people managing under dire conditions.

The film urges viewers to recognize poverty as a structural issue, not just a personal one. By addressing faulty policies and promoting a greater public understanding, it advocates for comprehensive reforms and a shift in societal attitudes. With compassion and collective action, Kilty suggests, real progress can be made toward alleviating poverty and improving lives.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Context The chapter titled 'Introduction and Context' likely sets the stage for the content that follows. It might provide background information, establish the theme, and introduce key concepts or characters that are essential for understanding the rest of the material. The mention of 'Music' could indicate an audio component or thematic element related to the chapter's content. Further details would be needed to provide a more precise summary.
• 01:00 - 59:50: Living in Poverty The chapter titled 'Living in Poverty' begins with a musical introduction, setting an emotionally resonant tone for the subject matter that follows.
• 59:50 - 93:00: Official Measures of Poverty The chapter discusses the rise in poverty in the United States, noting that nearly 40 million people are currently living in poverty according to the latest government figures. The official poverty rate has increased to 13.2% from 12.5% the previous year, indicating that an additional two and a half million Americans have fallen below the poverty line. This reflects a steady increase in poverty rates over the past year.
• 93:00 - 170:00: Personal Stories of Poverty This chapter delves into the personal experiences and stories of individuals living in poverty or just above the poverty line. It asks critical questions about who these people are, pointing out that they could be just like anyone we pass by on a street, see on a park bench, or encounter in everyday life. This chapter aims to humanize the statistics by focusing on personal narratives that highlight the struggles and challenges faced by those in or near poverty.
• 170:00 - 189:00: Systemic Inequality This chapter, titled 'Systemic Inequality,' discusses the pervasive issue of poverty and its impact on children. It highlights the startling statistic of over 14 million children living in families that are below the poverty line. The chapter aims to shed light on the silent suffering and stigmatization of poverty-stricken families, questioning societal perceptions and biases towards the poor.
• 189:00 - 211:00: Political and Social Barriers In this chapter titled 'Political and Social Barriers,' the author explores the personal struggles faced by individuals dealing with illness, job loss, and homelessness. The narrative emphasizes the impact of societal attitudes and the crucial role that kindness and empathy from even a single person can play in overcoming hardships. It highlights the vulnerability and resilience of individuals navigating these challenges, stressing that compassion can be a powerful tool for positive change.
• 211:00 - 255:00: Call to Action and Conclusion The chapter discusses the challenges faced by a person whose husband has left, leaving them with two small children in a home infested with rats. The person describes the difficulties encountered, particularly the lack of help available to deal with the rat infestation. The narrative conveys feelings of frustration and helplessness as they navigate these tough circumstances on their own.
• 255:00 - 270:00: Credits and Music Outro The chapter discusses the hardworking nature of people in poverty, highlighting their dedication to providing for their families, including spouses, children, and other relatives. It emphasizes the universal value of family love and care shared among the poor, similar to most people.

Ain't I a Person? Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] to
• 00:30 - 01:00 [Music] right [Music]
• 01:00 - 01:30 according to the latest US Government figures there are now nearly 40 million people in this country living in poverty that's an official poverty rate of 13.2% up from 12.5% in the previous year that means that in just one year another two and a half million Americans were below the official poverty line we have seen a steady increase in the number of people in poverty for the past
• 01:30 - 02:00 decade how many millions more are living just above the poverty line who are these people when we look at other people walking down the street sitting on a park bench sitting in a restaurant serving a cup of
• 02:00 - 02:30 coffee do we have any idea what their situation might be do we see a scarlet letter P on their [Music] foreheads millions of the poor and near poor are children over 14 million children are in families that fall under the poverty line
• 02:30 - 03:00 what do you do when you become sick can't work lose your paycheck and you and your two teenage children become homeless it allow me to know once I got down to the core of things just that one person to be kind to you makes all the difference
• 03:00 - 03:30 would you please stop it for a [Music] second what do you do when your husband leaves you with two small children and your home becomes rat and Fest I had a lot of rats coming into my house and there was nobody to to help me and um
• 03:30 - 04:00 [Music] like most people the poor work hard to provide for themselves for their spouses for their children and for other family members like most people the poor care deeply about their families they love
• 04:00 - 04:30 their children just as much as anyone else does like most people the poor want Better Lives not just for themselves but especially for their families for their children why do we have such a negative image of the poor especially when we don't even know who they are or how they became poor
• 04:30 - 05:00 my my own parents divorced when I was 11 years old and suddenly my mother and her two children fell into poverty uh for some period of time and you it's not only that you find yourself living in a in a little apartment but uh there's no water and the bathroom is outside the
• 05:00 - 05:30 house and the shower is down the street and because this was a kind of a kind of a cottage in a trailer park kind of situation and and so suddenly it's not only that you're poor it's that the life you're living is one that doesn't have dignity and people don't respect you and uh we have this expression that grew up and I grew up part of my life in a trailer park we have this expression now people talk about trailer trash and it shows the the way that the society uh views people who uh it feels are poor that they're trash human trash it's a
• 05:30 - 06:00 very nasty expression I yeah poverty has changed America has changed the world has changed I think what we see now is a sense of hopelessness uh that you didn't see um in the 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s especially in the African-American Community um and that sense of hopelessness is probably the most devastating thing that that that there that there is I mean even in the midst of poverty people in
• 06:00 - 06:30 the past believed in themselves and believed that they could do better and that things would change for them poverty is like scraping the bottom bottom of the barrel you're trying to uh see your way out of a situation as far as not being able to pay your bills not being able to buy furniture and not being able to eat especially when you're a diabetic it's it's like being being smacked in the face and
• 06:30 - 07:00 kicked because you can't find and you have to deal with um hand outs you're alone you know it's it's like being alone in the world like somebody is kicking you in your teeth when you're doing the best you can to survive that's what I feel that poverty is it's degrading I'm in poty right now you know and I don't show it because I don't show my feelings you you know but I'm in
• 07:00 - 07:30 property right now cuz I can't get my babies them what they want you know sometimes I can't pay my bills on T you know they might need something for school and I have to tell them hold up be patient it come you know they they been patient enough for me but it's now it's my turn quit saying be patient and when they ask for it and I can I can have it right there on the spot for them before they can be happy that then always looking clean and be like why we go through the struggle that's part of life everybody has has their hard times
• 07:30 - 08:00 and you know the higher class can go to the middle class and think that's poverty but until you've lived through a week where you couldn't look at another ramen noodle um I think that you don't really know what poverty is when you cry when you leave the store during Christmas time because you can't even afford to wrap them easly packages that you have for your kids or you can't even afford to buy them a pair of shoes or pay their school clothes staying alive staying healthy staying fed keeping a roof over your head holding the family
• 08:00 - 08:30 together into one unit that's the struggle in America and that's poverty in America you asked me how would I describe it there it is right there you're Born to Struggle and you struggle all your life there is no easy time every minute of the day you're thinking of every other minute of the day and how you going to get through
• 08:30 - 09:00 that and then every other minute after that low income no Health Care hold your family together and peace of mind you know little sanity you know you know sometimes you really have to check your medication poverty to me is you have to worry where your next meal is coming from uh whether you can pay
• 09:00 - 09:30 the electric bill or whether you're maybe getting your medicine or paying the light bill or whether you're paying the light bill and not the phone bill this month then next month then you got to figure out what else so being worried on how you're going to pay your bills uh if your child gets sick at school how you going to get to school to get your child because you may not have bus Fair because it's in that or the end of the month and to me that's what poverty
• 09:30 - 10:00 is you know you may have to eat macaroni and cheese every day for a week or you know well I think that it's useful to distinguish between uh the material conditions that we Define as poor somebody is poor if they don't have enough to eat or enough cash to purchase enough to eat to pay for a shelter uh to
• 10:00 - 10:30 uh pay the fees that their children have to pay to go to school or to buy the books or the uniforms to go to school uh or to see a doctor or to see a medicine man uh to see whoever it is in their society that is authorized to treat people when they are ill and Afraid uh that's one one kind of poverty material
• 10:30 - 11:00 poverty but there's another dimension to Poverty that is just as important and that is that if people live in such a way that they cannot participate in the mainstream culture in the activities in the consumption that most people in the society think everybody should do should have uh it this so marginalizes them that that is a very
• 11:00 - 11:30 another very important dimension of poverty especially in a consumer Society like the United States there are two basic ways of determining who is and who is not in poverty absolute and relative an absolute measure of poverty sets a threshold or a line often that line is based on income typically annual income if a person or a group of people a
• 11:30 - 12:00 family or a household has an annual income at the line or below it they are identified as being in poverty if their income is greater than the line even by $1 then they are identified as not being in poverty the line is arbitrary but set by policy makers to help guide them and developing programs for the poor or in evaluating the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs
• 12:00 - 12:30 the lines are also used to decide who is eligible for some Services a relative measure of poverty Works a little differently here a person or groups of people are looked at relative to the rest of their Community or country or Society how does some people compare to others in their society are they far below or well above relative to others in terms of income quality of housing educational levels or
• 12:30 - 13:00 opportunities household possessions and so on one common relative measure is Define the median household income for a nation the median is the point where half the households are below and half are above a relative measure might then be defined as an income at half of the median to give an idea how some families compare to what is typical in their society with a relative measure there is no hard and fast line and it will change depending on conditions in the society
• 13:00 - 13:30 as a whole I don't think in this country at this
• 13:30 - 14:00 age in time should be so much poverty in here and I know a lot of people don't think that this country H has any poverty you know I actually heard that comment from several people and I just couldn't believe my eyes on my ears maybe that's a that's a wish in a lot of people Minds you know that the the American doesn't
• 14:00 - 14:30 have poverty but there's a lot of poverty around they just have to look a little bit harder or look CU I don't think some of them are looking at all well it's you know conservatives often say well we don't really have poverty in the United States compared to poverty in Niger for example or compared to poverty in the Congo uh that there people are starving today death and nobody in the United States is starving
• 14:30 - 15:00 indeed the poor are fat proving that we indulge them well uh that critic might very well also look at poverty in the Netherlands or poverty in Belgium or poverty in Italy or France or Canada and uh what would immediately strike any Observer is that there are
• 15:00 - 15:30 far fewer people in those countries who fall below either a material definition of poverty or a cultural definition of poverty we are the most unequal country among industrial countries we are at the head of the pack even though we are also the richest country isn't that amazing
• 15:30 - 16:00 some people find it hard to believe that poverty exists in America as Pat kamacho one of our interviewees said and I know a lot of people don't think that this country has any poverty but there's a lot of poverty around they just have to look a little harder or look because I don't think some of them are looking at all others insist that while there may be some poverty in this country it does really compare to what can be found in
• 16:00 - 16:30 other parts of the world especially underdeveloped countries in Africa Latin America and Asia perceptions like these might not be so surprising among the general public but they can be found among academics journalist and policy makers as well in fact there are individuals particularly among political conservatives who have made it their life work to downplay the scope and impact of poverty in America one of the leading figures is
• 16:30 - 17:00 Robert Rector a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation a conservative think tank in Washington DC on their website he is identified as a leading National figure on poverty they go on to say that Mr Rector directly influenced the 1996 welfare reform legislation as well as the more recent healthy marriage initiative which has as a goal forcing women on welfare to remain in abusive marriages as a way out of
• 17:00 - 17:30 poverty on August 27th 2007 director published an article on the Heritage Foundation website titled how poor are America's poor examining the plague of poverty in America Rector is not alone in the June 7th 2010 issue of Newsweek columnist Robert J Samuelson draws on rector's work to argue that the Obama Administration which has actually had little to say on the issue of poverty in
• 17:30 - 18:00 America is trying to Define poverty in a way that makes it appear worse what he calls a propaganda device to promote income redistribution let's look at some of rector's and his supporters claims first 43% of all poor households actually own their own homes the average home consists of three bedrooms one and a half bathrooms a garage and a porch or patio according to record with the housing crisis that has
• 18:00 - 18:30 overwhelmed this country in the past three years Mr recor might want to reconsider his stance according to the Los Angeles Times one in seven homes was pass due or in foreclosure as of September 30th 2009 also owning a home does not speak to the quality of the structure to the surrounding neighborhood or to one's ability to maintain the home and so on
• 18:30 - 19:00 in a Cleveland Plain Dealer article about poor homeowners information collected by the US Census Bureau showed that the most common problems they experience are water leaks Roofing problems damaged walls and signs of rodents in addition water and roof problems contribute to dampness which has been linked to asthma and other respiratory problems damaged walls can also lead to lead poisoning in some homes out of the 40 four cities included in the Census Bureau survey Cleveland
• 19:00 - 19:30 was second Nationwide for having the most housing with unhealthy conditions second Mr Rector claims that the poor are generally well-nourished and that poor children are super nourished and are 10 pounds heavier than the gis that stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II what do actual experts have to say about poor children and nutrition in January 2004 the American journal of clinical nutrition published a study that linked obesity
• 19:30 - 20:00 with poverty the study was co-authored by Dr Adam drowsky of the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community medicine and by Dr SE Spectre a research nutrition scientist at the US Department of Agriculture an article about this study on the Science Daily website noted that lowincome consumers are more likely to purchase high calorie energy dense foods that is foods that are higher in fat sugar or
• 20:00 - 20:30 salt such foods are more likely to contain empty calories nutrition poor elements that the body often converts directly to Fat the reason healthier diets are beyond the reach of many people is that such diets cost more Dr dunaski said in the Science Daily article on a per calorie basis diets composed of whole grains fish and fresh vegetables and fruit are far more expensive than refined grains added sugars and added
• 20:30 - 21:00 fats researchers with the University of Pennsylvania John Hopkins University and other institutions have found that poor teenagers ages 15 to 17 are 50% more likely to be overweight than nonpor teens in the same age range a higher percentage of overweight teens being poor was also found among males and females as well as among Wier African American
• 21:00 - 21:30 adolescence it is important to recognize that the poverty threshold is based on the cost of the cheapest diet not on a more expensive but more nutritionally sound diet third according to Mr Rector nearly 75% of poor households own a car 31% own two or more the simple fact of car ownership begs a lot of questions do those cars work how old are they how safe are these vehicles did they come off Big Lots in Suburban
• 21:30 - 22:00 locations with a fair price for the buyer according to Professor Howard carer of the University of Houston poor people pay more for Transit than the nonpoor because of credit problems many poor people go to buy here pay here car lots where down payments are large payments are made weekly and where late payments can result in the car being repossessed in times like these where credit is tight the situation for the is even worse since their options are more
• 22:00 - 22:30 limited than ever these Fringe car lots are more profitable than conventional dealerships because their captive audiences have a lack of buying options research published in Social indicators research challenges the conventional wisdom that not having a car is an indicator of hardship in other words car ownership can distort the real picture of disadvantage the evidence shows that zero car ownership can actually be a
• 22:30 - 23:00 positive feature for low-income households conversely High car ownership can put serious Financial strain on households with low incomes why do we hear these ideas since the Nixon Administration and then accelerating during the Reagan Era there has been a war on the poor scapegoating blaming the victim cries that welfare is draining the national budget yet the reality of life in America is far different it is the rich not the poor who have
• 23:00 - 23:30 sucked up the wealth and resources of our country for several decades we have seen tax cut after tax cut that mainly benefits the rich subsidies for the wealthy such as home mortgage interest tax deductions that go mainly to the affluent corporate welfare so-called authorities like Rector and Samuelson are nothing but lackies for the powerful the wealthy how are they any different than the Limas and the Becks and the
• 23:30 - 24:00 O'Reilly what is the purpose behind what they say other than the propaganda they produce based on shoddy research and misleading conclusions justifying the comfortable lives of those at the top build off the exploitation and degradation of the poor and the near poor they may be less strident than their mercenary counterparts on the cable news networks and talk radio they may wrap what they say in the trappings of academes but the rectors and the Samuelson and
• 24:00 - 24:30 the Pauls are no less delivering a message of hate and anger and fear all drawn from their own greed which seems to have convinced them that everyone else is the same as them and only wants to take away what they have why have so many people in this country never learned to share how sad [Music]
• 24:30 - 25:00 better in my [Music] kit the uh the federal guideline which has actually been in place since about 1963 it was set up so that when they started the war on poverty they would be able to show success by showing that fewer and fewer people live below this line that's that's what the line is is a measure of mostly it's also sometimes used to for income eligibility for
• 25:00 - 25:30 access to programs um I asked my students just to help them learn about this issue uh to go out and interview people who just someone who isn't informed about social welfare issues social work issues to ask them what they think a family of three or a family of four needs to live on today and they'll ask a relative a friend um parent and they say somewhere between 35 and $50,000 and then they're shocked when they see what the actual Federal uh poverty line is we have a kind of
• 25:30 - 26:00 mean-spirited measure of poverty but even so we have a lot of poor people we uh use a measure that's based on a Market Basket of subsistence foods and then we multiply that by three and we say anybody who is below that number in income is poor so I mean the number includes the cheapest foods and so forth and it isn't enough really to pay for
• 26:00 - 26:30 actual housing costs which have inflated much more rapidly uh than food costs how do we Define poverty officially in the United States we use an absolute measure it was first developed by Economist Molly oransky in 1963 when she was working for the Social Security Administration in the 1950s the
• 26:30 - 27:00 Department of Agriculture completed a survey on household food consumption this led to a series of estimates of how much households spent on food each month one of which was the Thrifty food plan at the time economists estimated that the typical family of three or more spent about onethird of their disposable after tax income on food so by multiplying the amount of money spent on food by three Molly oransky arrived at what came came to be the poverty
• 27:00 - 27:30 threshold she then adjusted it for different sizes of families for both one adult and two adult families as well as the number of children in the family that is the poverty threshold it is still used in the United States although it is adjusted annually for inflation so that comparisons can be made over time the political problem is the how you raise that poverty line the more people are defined as poor because more
• 27:30 - 28:00 people fall under it so the politicians are not eager to uh have a more robust poverty line because it makes their efforts to it makes it brings poverty into the national tension makes it much more of a a Troublesome issue for politicians so um so we really don't have an accurate number of it's a ve we have a very low number in terms of the people who are actually poor so anytime you hear you know 12% of families of or people are poor double it
• 28:00 - 28:30 and you'll have a better sense of what the real figure is most policy makers and social scientists now acknowledge that the official poverty line is far from adequate and that it underestimates the actual extent of poverty in this country most low-income families do not spend a third of their income any longer on food in fact rent has become the biggest household expense consuming about half of the typical low-income families
• 28:30 - 29:00 budget so most could not afford to spend a third of their after tax income on food even if they need to many services now use a guideline that is greater than the actual poverty guideline food stamps and free school lunches for example use 130% of the federal guideline s chips the state children's health insurance program is authorized to go even higher to at least 200% or double the actual
• 29:00 - 29:30 guideline according to many experts for example the national Center for Children in poverty a family needs an income of at least twice the poverty guideline in order to get by so the term low income has come into common use and it is defined as twice the official poverty guideline [Music]
• 29:30 - 30:00 we have about I think uh something like 25% of our children are being raised in poverty in the United States here in Cincinnati we have a figure like that um and not only do we have that but we also have one of the highest infant mortality rates uh in in the in the state in the country we have a very high infant
• 30:00 - 30:30 mortality rate here in the city of Cincinnati and that's a an indicator of poverty well I think uh poverty has to entail how people live and perhaps how they're not able to live and a lot of people are struggling I think um I think probably whatever the whatever the poverty rate number is it's probably worse than that I've been amazed at some of the kinds of uh reports and studies that have come out around not in Cincinnati but some of the Suburban
• 30:30 - 31:00 counties that um that takes a look at what it might actually require as a minimum wage for people to live at a at a basic sort of middle class lifestyle for a family of four with a kid in school and kid out one of the neighboring you know counties to he it's like $56,000 a year um I know that the poverty rate is somewhere around 20,000 for a family of four or somewhere in that area um so I mean that's a huge
• 31:00 - 31:30 disparity as to you know what poverty actually means as an illegal official definition and and how people can actually live and grow and flourish and you know take advantage of the American dream or what have you well Cincinnati I think as I say like most other cities has been dominated by a handful of big uh multinational corporations and banks in this city the most important of those is Proctor and Gamble which has dominated the city for many years other um other corporations would uh be the
• 31:30 - 32:00 Federated Department Stores now called Macy's uh the Fifth Third Bank has been an important bank here Kroger which has its national headquarters here uh and so on there there's seven of these corporations the executives of those corporations make uh salaries in some cases in the several millions of dollars uh per year and uh and they are the they
• 32:00 - 32:30 are the ones who tend to dominate local politics how do they do that they provide tens of thousands of dollars for candidates for office they play a big role in the Republican and the Democratic parties they they are everpresent in every organization of the city and I would argue that even when they're in a minority everyone knows that they are the powerful wealthy men usually men Sometimes women in the city to whom one must differ so when somebody
• 32:30 - 33:00 from Proctor and Gamble comes into the board meeting and sits down and says we're prepared to do this or not to do this that will tend to determine what happens in the board meeting that's what it means to have run a city for 100 or 150 years and to have always sat on those boards and have always had the initiative this is not only a question of money and power but also of the confidence of that ruling Elite that they're the ones in charge [Music]
• 33:00 - 33:30 when I first got sick I thought that was my biggest problem when I first got sick in 2001 I thought that was my biggest problem and but then I had hope that I was going to
• 33:30 - 34:00 get better and um I didn't like I say in 2001 I had cancer small cell lymphoma and I had a lump in my chest and then in 2002 um no and also in 2001 I found too
• 34:00 - 34:30 that I had a lump in my left breast and U then 2002 I found that I had a big knot on my neck and a big thing on on my right eye and they they were both cancerous and I went in and they removed the not on my neck but they Shrunk the
• 34:30 - 35:00 thing and lanced it on my eye and then they gave me that aggressive chemo and all of my hair came out and then uh uh and when all of my hair came out that was depressing and so then 2003 I thought maybe I would be
• 35:00 - 35:30 getting a little better and uh uh my teeth start crumbling and they start falling out and so the expenses of trying to maintain a secondhand body is like a secondhand car and between the secondhand body and I have a secondhand
• 35:30 - 36:00 car I stay broke or stay begging all the time so it's a financial struggle you mentioned about your home you've had some problems here in taking care of it and problems that have happened you said something about a water leak yeah it's first started when the the the the building right next door on this side they had
• 36:00 - 36:30 had leaks for years and then uh 2003 uh uh I was here and I was ill and when I came back on Memorial Day from the cemetery and I went in my kitchen and the drywall and the cabinets and all fell off the wall in the kitchen on the
• 36:30 - 37:00 floor and uh I couldn't tell where the water was coming from and I went up to the second floor and the water was up there and then and and then when I went to the third floor the third floor was totally dry and that really baffled me where is this water coming from we kept trying to figure out what was going going on and
• 37:00 - 37:30 so my insurance company didn't cover it and so then I was really stuck and then uh I didn't have money to fight it and then I finally discovered that it was coming from the roof uh on next door and so uh the president of the community council he came over and he looked at it
• 37:30 - 38:00 and he went up on the roof and then we went down and talked to the man and it's the man that owns this Jack store down there he owns that building also and he said he was going to fix it and he keeps saying he's going to fix it and he still hasn't fixed it what I experienced because it was not my fault I worked you know I'm a single parent and I feel like I made it you know I allow myself in this situation
• 38:00 - 38:30 fine you know it's not going to be easy but I'll do the best that I can you know and I fell into a hardship what happened was the apartment where I lived at had gotten infested with bed bugs I was not familiar with bed bugs at all so I end up throwing away all my furniture and everything and because I
• 38:30 - 39:00 had to take me and my children back and forth to the doctor because I was allergic to the bites this was I mean at the time they didn't realize it was an epidemic well at least that's what they were saying he's scratching now it's long gone I'm not there anymore anyway and then I threw everything that I had it was just like and I couldn't believe I did that but it was like man this has been a terrible year things that I've had since my children were born I took and we cleaned the place real good we
• 39:00 - 39:30 started getting rid of certain items of furniture articles of furniture and belongings that we had only to find out that you have to like get rid of anything that's like cloth such as a couch or anything any Fabrics mattresses anything like that carpet you know then my child had my daughter start breaking out in like wing worm type rashes because they can't diagnose you for having bed bug bites so I had to take
• 39:30 - 40:00 her and we then received some cream the cream they gave me irritated my skin even more so I had to go then go to a dermatologist so um they really didn't know how to classify it or even what to suggest because you can't diagnose anyone once again with bed bugs and that hasn't been a common thing in years you know
• 40:00 - 40:30 so how do you diagnose someone or even give them a prescription to try and better them you know so that went out the window as well as my job because by then between me my son and daughter they all went to the hospital I had to take them to the hospital only to go back to be given more and other medications then we all had to go to a dermatologist so my job wasn't have happy with that so I then lost my job and um so in that once I lost my job how
• 40:30 - 41:00 do I pay the rent and then for me to become into a homeless situation to that's the most isolated desol feeling a person can experience that's the closest feeling to death you can ever have cuz you just a step away from saying it let me be done with it this is an ongoing situation I never thought I would become homeless you know I never Phantom or even fancied the idea I that never went
• 41:00 - 41:30 past my head you know so I can only imagine how many other people that experienced that and then never went past theirs but yet we still look down upon them who am I to judge them I don't know where they came from I was more or less by myself on my own with my two children with a house full of rats and that was the the worst um poverty that I've ever uh lived there
• 41:30 - 42:00 was no food in my house I couldn't have any food because of the rats there were destroing the house they they were making holes all over the place um we used to sleep in one room and I used to put a towel on the bottom of the door I learned that I can do things by myself because I couldn't wait for somebody to come and rescue me so um I remember getting up in the morning like like 4: 5:00 in the morning to pick up the rats that were in the floor so my
• 42:00 - 42:30 daughters wouldn't see it and um but I did it I did it and uh so that's what I mean by learning I learn how to deal with that situation then I started doing the same thing with the rest of my house I started little by little buying things and batching up the holes that the rats had made and um then I waited after a while and I got a a loan to fix some of the things my
• 42:30 - 43:00 mother and father had we had there were five children uhhuh and my mother and father separated my father left us my mother had five children to raise with no money she worked uh part-time job at night um and she had three girls and two boys uh we lived in um uh a one bedom I mean a two-bedroom house a kitchen and a
• 43:00 - 43:30 bedroom you know five children and my mother would not eat until all of us had ate and then a lot of times there was no food left we slept on a mattress on the floor five children she slept on a chair or couch if we were fortunate enough to have one and we didn't have a whole lot of food to go around you know but um if it was nothing but a loaf of bread you know we could eat as much as we
• 43:30 - 44:00 could you know we went to school we I wore outfit one day my sister wor the next day and the other sister wor you know because we you know we had to wash our clothes out on our hands in cold water it sounds horrible but children do not really know property until they get grown if they're hungry and you give them a piece P of bread and it helps them they are happy so uh yeah
• 44:00 - 44:30 and then we moved into a a three room apartment and we thought we were Rich well I was I was raised in a children's home from the time I was 6 and a half months old I had a twin sister and we were both in the CH taken to the children's home at 6 and A2 months and I was there off and on till I was 17 till I got married but uh someone came and
• 44:30 - 45:00 got my sister and kept her they didn't want they got paid for keeping people from the home but when they found out I had dramatic fever nobody wanted the expense you know to take care of me they wouldn't get the money that it would cost for my medical care so I spent most of the time in the children's home well my father was a policeman and my
• 45:00 - 45:30 mother was just a housewife and um I don't know they just had a disagreement one time and and and uh he just left and he I had uh five brothers and he took the boys and he didn't want the girls he said the girls weren't his so Mom just took us to the children's home so they just separated and got divorced and he married again and she married
• 45:30 - 46:00 again and he went to Phoenix Arizona I was like nine years old nine or 10 right right after I found out I had dramatic fever and uh I went to this place and it was called mcquarters mcquarters in Hamilton Ohio and was on stall Habra road I'll never forget it and um they had a TW they had twins a boy and a girl named Linda and Leonard and um on Saturday I used to
• 46:00 - 46:30 have to cook breakfast for 8 people I mean I'm 9 years old and I would fix pork chops and fried potatoes and we had this butter it was white butter that had a yellow dot in it and used to squeeze it you had to squeeze it to make it yellow have you ever seen it well that's country butter that's how they had it and but I used to cook cook breakfasts on the weekends for for a family of
• 46:30 - 47:00 eight pork I mean big breakfasts biscuits all kinds of stuff and uh then I had to housework to do and the Leonard Linda and Leonard wouldn't do nothing after they ate they got to watch cartoons and I used to have to ask them to pick up their feet so I could sweep you know and they used to kick at the sweeper and stuff like that I used to I used to try to hit them but I always got caught they never caught them but they always catch
• 47:00 - 47:30 me but I met this little boy at church and he used to throw paper WS at me and I I just ate that up you know I thought he likes me you know so but we were he was 16 and I was 15 so I knew I was smart enough to know I'd never get out of the children's home to get out of the children's home to be a girl you had to be 21 a boy could get out at 18 and in order for a girl to get out you know she had to get pregnant or something you
• 47:30 - 48:00 know something had to happen so I got pregnant and they made him marry me you know and uh that's how I got out that's terrible way to have to get out but that's what I did it for and that's a shame to say but that's why I did it there were no benefits when I started where I was working and uh but we may do because in
• 48:00 - 48:30 America lowincome family you know how to make do so we made do wife's a diabetic minor kids no Health Care on my job her job didn't have enough health care for her the kids and it and me too and then she's been diabetic all all her life she's
• 48:30 - 49:00 deteriorating doctor put her on disability and in order to have the health care necessary for a diabetic wife and it's a lot of money a month with all the complications and other medications she has to have besides the insulin two three times a day we split the family I moved out got a place of my own kids wife and kids are in another
• 49:00 - 49:30 household so they she can get State assistance for the healthc care and it's been like that for a while it shouldn't be like that it shouldn't have never happened in America like that but that's what America has brought us to so it's cheaper to pay two
• 49:30 - 50:00 households than one one insurance policy it's cheaper you know our uh our medical expenses would be five at least $500 a month keep my wife alive and keep my bir pressure down you know well our my family well we we come from the country and back then people kind of just that they got by you know I
• 50:00 - 50:30 don't think people were Rich back then a lot of people own their land and they um they got by they farmed their own food and they just barely got back by when um when they got to the city a lot of Appalachian people especially back in the 50s and 60s came up here in Cincinnati looking for jobs and uh they couldn't find jobs ran out after lots of people came because there was a big migration from the Appalachian region and then um my dad kind of came up to the City for that reason and I think they had had three or four kids by the
• 50:30 - 51:00 time they came to Cincinnati and um they they got they got here and they ended up in a poverty situation he had a few jobs and I think my dad kind of just gave up I they ended up with nine kids by the time they were in Cincinnati they they end up having nine kids and it was really hard to make it welfare was a different system back then and um my dad got real frustrated and um different reasons he went actually went back to Kentucky left my mom here in Cincinnati so my mom raised nine kids on basically
• 51:00 - 51:30 nothing whatever she could get and um she ended up being on welfare and just kind of struggling by so as a kid I mean we didn't think of oursel in poverty but we knew there was a lot of things that we didn't have that we wanted you know and she did the best that she could over the years and then um I mean growing up I um you know by the time I was 15 I got out and tried to find myself a job and we we try to make money however we could that's kind of what I think about poverty and now you know as growing up we we were kind of in poverty and and
• 51:30 - 52:00 you know it's really hard to get out of poverty and move on and um we have a lot of kids that a lot of people in my family didn't make it through uh their education to get their high school diploma and go on to college so it's really hard to be about a poverty uh my dad married a babysitter and um that is where my troubles began uh after he married the babysitter and moved across the street and totally denied us I believe I was at
• 52:00 - 52:30 the age of 13 14 years old when this happened um I um instead of uh adopting alcoholism I uh use drugs and I wanted him to hate me the way I was hating him at that particular moment because of the drug I mean because you know he was an alcoholic he married the babysitter and then he had had a daughter with her before we even knew that uh this child
• 52:30 - 53:00 was my father's baby so that is where my you know um beginning of my drug use I stayed clean for 10 years and then I relapsed after I completed the program that's when my mother also my daughter my 16-year-old was diagnosed with kidney and lung cancer at the same time my mother's uh in the same year 98 Fe AR my daughter was diagnosed with um the U uh
• 53:00 - 53:30 kidney whims tumor is what they call it and then September of 98 my mother's car wrecked and in December 98 is when she had her first stroke so I was very overwhelmed with responsibilities and then the my little brother little cousin um was attention deficit disorder having to take off work to you know come to his needs and things I was really really stressed out but those are the things that drove me back
• 53:30 - 54:00 to using um I went from as some people call them abandom minum when I went out this last time uh using I lived um in empty Apartments I lived with anybody that would allow me to live I lived under conditions that only way I could stay the night is to bring drugs in uh for the person who allowed me to stay there that was that that was their way
• 54:00 - 54:30 of making me pay to spend the night there um so it was a constant hustle on the streets and and maybe someone would come through and and offer you a night out to get high with them and that's where you'll end up spending the night at that day but there was consequences behind it the things you had to do for it you know um stuff like that you know some sometimes you had to fight because you didn't want you don't want to do what they want to do or uh you get put
• 54:30 - 55:00 out and have to walk back you know to you know or sometimes some guys just felt like they could take it and in the hell with you you know um it was all kind of this different situations that that we put oursel in a lot of danger so I know what it is I know what it's like out there to be hungry to be lost to be homeless and and and they always say that lonely hungry and uh bored it is
• 55:00 - 55:30 really the things that that cause people to go back out and do the things and and to get into the situations I keep PL as you might see I have two refrigerat I have two refrigerators full of food I never today allow myself to be hungry as you see I have animals I have my daughters I have my my neighbors I have my job I have friends they don't allow me to be bored or lonely because
• 55:30 - 56:00 they're always at my door uh I mean you know they don't run in and out but they're always what are you doing today how are you feeling you're doing okay and and uh it used to get on my nerves but today it's a blessing for go from God because if I did need them I know that they're there [Music]
• 56:00 - 56:30 the situation is such that you're going to begin to see um a real gap between the rich and the poor and and all all indication is is clearly that um and but this is happening not just in a Cincinnati or or this nation it's happening worldwide this is being exacerbated globalization has produced
• 56:30 - 57:00 massive massive inequality and and no one's really talking about that so we have a society that produces on the one hand uh enormous accumulation of wealth for one social group the people who own businesses Industries Banks insurance companies and so on and uh and in order to do that it all they also have to carry out uh the systematic atic exploitation of their Workforce in order to grind that poverty out of them and uh
• 57:00 - 57:30 and so I think that's the the essence of this system this is a system meant to produce an accumulation of wealth on the one hand and on the other uh that produces poverty and and even from the point of view of the economists uh you don't you'll hear that we have an unemployment rate of 5% and The Economist will say well that's good or that's a normal rate of unemployment or that's a healthy rate of unemploy employment well it may be a normal healthy rate of unemployment for an
• 57:30 - 58:00 employed Economist but it is not a healthy rate of unemployment for the unemployed poverty it's you know it is really not a complicated problem you know they used to say well the solution to Poverty is to give people money and that is a good solution uh the other solution is to give them the kind of work to do with which will enable them not to be poor to get health care to overcome the traumas
• 58:00 - 58:30 that afflict all people in the course of their life uh people have to be sustained during those traumas otherwise they'll go down into the pit and not be able maybe not be able to climb out but you know these not complicated how to do that if it were complicated all affluent countries would have large numbers of poor people but they
• 58:30 - 59:00 don't the reason we have poverty is that there aren't enough jobs to go around for everybody who needs a job people don't have a way to earn a living uh so that they won't be poor so and in in most market economies there's uh it kind of helps to have some people poor kind help helps to have some people unemployed because that helps keep um allows employers to pay less pushes wages down if more people are looking for jobs so poverty is kind of functional in some ways for the powers that be not for the people who suffer it
• 59:00 - 59:30 it's exacerbated by low minimum wages it's exacerbated by inadequate public benefits which are meant to um cushion people against poverty in other words if you have a higher minimum wage you're going to have less poverty so um it's kind of a a structureal poverty is a is a structural uh fact of life [Music]
• 59:30 - 60:00 the American welfare system or afdc uh before it was uh transformed into tanif uh it it affects poverty in really two ways one is that gives people
• 60:00 - 60:30 women and children a little bit of assistance but the other way in which it also affects poverty is is that welfare as an institution helps to create the image of what it means to be poor so that if you needed that little bit of assistance uh you had to go through a welfare
• 60:30 - 61:00 application process which was a defining process it was a demeaning protest uh the interrogations the scrutiny uh the home investigations the constant surveillance uh helped to Define what it means to be poor in the United States it means that you don't have rights you know we don't we we give farmers subsid these and have for 70 or 80 years but we
• 61:00 - 61:30 don't investigate them we don't make them apply uh in by filling out lengthy forms and by subjecting them to interrogations uh so it wasn't the receipt of welfare which was so demeaning we could have if we had just given people a little check that would have been nice and would have been enough but it was the way we treated them in the welfare system you
• 61:30 - 62:00 are just there at the mercy of other people and sometimes they're kind and sometimes they're root and it's hard when they're root and like social workers and people constantly talk down to
• 62:00 - 62:30 you and you're angry but if you speak out or speak up you just make it worse for yourself so you just go along with things you definitely don't like tough feel to
• 62:30 - 63:00 swallow well I remember um I have worked at Hutch and I had got laid off um right before Christmas and um I didn't know if they were going to call me back or not and so I went down to apply for um some Services until I could get my unemployment and I went I went and like the fourth time I was down there I was um I was a little upset you know utterly I had no income coming in my rent was
• 63:00 - 63:30 due my kids need I needed groceries for my kids and the lady actually had me escorted out by a guard I hadn't even all I said was you know this has been like two months and what else do you need and so she had me escorted out and so I actually went to Santa Maria agency well my friend made me go and I told him what was going on and so the lady called down there they brought me in the next day we met with her supervisor and before I left
• 63:30 - 64:00 there I had food stamps in my hand but because I mean it was like a two Monon I couldn't understand you know what was going on and she kept saying I needed something and I couldn't understand what else I needed I just feel that sometimes they talk down to you and I didn't feel that she should be talking down to me you know I had worked wasn't that I wasn't working and I was at I just you know I was laid off and I needed some help at that time I you know being in an agency I
• 64:00 - 64:30 think most people start out being very good people and well intended and I think you know they get very overburden and they work you know they have very high case loads and stuff and sometimes you know they get really hardcore and they're not as nice to people as they should be you know there's some people that are very committed and they really are there to help people and I think they just kind of get over work you know I've heard of case loads that have like 50 67 people you know tons of people hundreds of people sometimes if it's a a Department of Human Services you know
• 64:30 - 65:00 and I think people kind of just get cold hard it after a while and um it gets really hard on them because they're being stressed to their levels too does anybody really want to be in the Human Services building I mean I don't see anybody jumping with Glee to get in there um and when you walk in there there is a degree of humiliation that you that you face it's it's like um um telling your parents that you're bad or something you know I need help I did
• 65:00 - 65:30 something wrong well the only thing that I did wrong was was leave a battering situation and to me that was the right thing to do for my children and and they questioned me on that you know how come you didn't stay with them Etc no one ever asked me if I was safe in my home no one ever screamed me for domestic violence and as such they still have not even though um certain things have been put into place where they should but always I have been made to feel like I
• 65:30 - 66:00 am lesser yeah I have experience with the food pantry you know and you know with them they are they nice you know they don't turn you away you know and I appreciate that cuz you know too many people don't want to give out nothing cuz they feel like you know you would take it and go out here sell it no I had babies to feed if I don't feed them babies something wrong with me the idea that we had any
• 66:00 - 66:30 responsibility for each other which there was some sense of in this country uh for many decades was very consciously destroyed uh and it was destroyed by um political conservatives or neoliberal liberals uh destroyed by by people who uh very consciously put an emphasis on the private accumulation of wealth uh the status of the elites all of our TV shows that that come to be about lawyers
• 66:30 - 67:00 and investors and uh Rich families and so on and the denigration of of people who uh making fun of and ridiculing people who work for a living so that the whole concept of the Dignity of Labor has been destroyed the whole concept that working people actually know how to do things which of course it's working people who know how to do all the things that happen in our society nothing would happen Happ uh without them has been a really systematic campaign to denigrate
• 67:00 - 67:30 workingclass people and to uh and to destroy the notion that workingclass people have something to contribute so I think part of such a uh a campaign to change social attitudes is to say that um working that that working for a living is a good thing [Music]
• 67:30 - 68:00 how would you like other people to treat them same way I treat them treat me with respect I'll treat you with respect I mean don't don't push my buttons too bad I won push your buttons too bad I just like like I said do to others as you want to be done to treat others the way you want to be treated that's the way I see it if you want to
• 68:00 - 68:30 be treated like treat me like I'll treat you like if you want to be a nice guy I'll be a nice guy that's how it is I I'll I'll walk up to a stranger I mean anywhere just talk about the weather something I see somebody walking out of work I don't even know one of the big high high dollar scientists told him when it was snowing real heavy be like be careful the roads are getting bad and they look at me like thank you and I mean some of them they they don't they won't want to give you a time of the day they'll put their head down they'll walk they'll look over here I mean they won't look at you they'd
• 68:30 - 69:00 rather stare at the ground than talk to you they're like they're afraid to talk to you or something I don't know like I have like middle class disease or something afraid they're going to catch [Laughter] it me you're you're like everybody else we're all human we're all Homo sapiens or some people just need to learn that not everything's not everything is based on what you have and what you do how do you think that people like
• 69:00 - 69:30 that people from these Offices here wearing suits and you know would they how would they react if they walk through there to what they see let's see they walk through Washington FL on a bright sunny day with the suits on and stuff first thing they think we we are nothing we're disgust but they don't realize cuz you got on a suit and a tie that don't mean a person out here your caliber ain't out here
• 69:30 - 70:00 with us you can have all the money in the world but if somebody out here with the same money you got is sitting out here and relaxing and chilling just like we are and you know they they judge you yeah look at them they dirty they don't want to do nothing but want to drink smoke you know do nothing just sit on they lazy but but if you change turn the T on and put them out there and put me in a suit and then you'll feel what I'm coming from but until then
• 70:00 - 70:30 and that you'll be like oh I got I don't need nothing they ain't nothing they below but you got some out there do care about us but come over here sit there talk to us play cards with us play chess you know just kicking a breeze out there having fun with us but the ones who think they stuff will Overlook just put their nose up in their ass and just walk past us you know say ignorant stuff out of their mouth well the way I see that
• 70:30 - 71:00 they view the poor is that they're low life they think they're criminals they think they're always looking for a handout they think they're they're not doing they're not trying to do everything they can get out of poverty they think that they're just in the way really because like for instance downtown all the people that they moving out they cannot afford those building so it's like they I guess they just to me I guess they view us as ants we're just
• 71:00 - 71:30 like ants army ants that's wanting stuff all the time it's like we're criminals all the time every poor person in poverty is out is out to get stuff for free things like that which is not true at all but if you watch the news how they um portray poor people as thieves and everything else you how they portray them as everybody is trying to um get get
• 71:30 - 72:00 things I think a lot of people think the poor are there because it's their fault that they've done something or won't do something and I think that's a very wrong impression because that's not true you know people you know when you lose your job you didn't lose your job because you weren't doing they moved it overseas or you know they downsized it's not because of something you done so I think the general belief is that poor people are poor because they want to be
• 72:00 - 72:30 poor they don't want to better their themselves they're not trying to do anything and that's not true that's not true at all notice that the political rhetoric attacking programs that help the poor almost always evokes images of black people and images of sexual promiscuity uh which you know creates a lot of trembling anxiety in a lot of Americans so that
• 72:30 - 73:00 part of our past uh helps I think to turn people's eyes away and their brains away from what is a much more important fact and that is that having a lot of poor in a society a lot of poor people and treating those poor people in a way that makes them miserable and demeans them is not only bad for the poor it's
• 73:00 - 73:30 also bad for the great mass of working people who are kept in line with by evoking the threat that you will become poor sustaining in a way a large what 37 million people are below our official poverty line and many more are what somebody from Belgium would consider poor sustaining this broad stratum of uh castigated
• 73:30 - 74:00 marginalized people is also a way of disciplining uh the great majority of people who we call the middle class [Music]
• 74:00 - 74:30 we need to really get together and quit being so selfish and self-centered and oh that's not my problem that's not my how why should I be concerned that's not my problem if you are in this Society or if you live in this country it is you know um that's everybody's problem it's everybody's concern and until we look at it like that is going to continue to be a growing problem you know and it'll spread like a bad cancer
• 74:30 - 75:00 until we stand up and say you know what we have these monies available this is what we need to be doing for this this is we need to open up this so these people can get these jobs you know open up the opportunities open up the possibilities don't be scared because if you be scared you take a chance of losing out and self-destruction shall conquer us all is that true with people too that we just throw we just thr from away and we need to stop every everyone is a valuable person
• 75:00 - 75:30 and everyone has something to contribute and maybe if someone shows them kindness and that they care about them that's going to change that person's life I firmly believe in that there's lowincome people and I'm at the very bottom of the Rong they are too desperate to be nice they're desperate for every waking hour of the day they want a cigarette they want a
• 75:30 - 76:00 drink of Pop they want a meal they want clean clothes they want to get off this street and stop this rain and snow from falling on their heads and can't get out of it I was taught a very long time ago by my uh saintly grandmother that um when times get tough and the chips are down pick up some chips if you only have two chips left and help someone else out and by helping other people out my God as as
• 76:00 - 76:30 much as I think it's it's really bad for me there's a lot of people that have a lot lot worse than I do so by helping to empower those people it it makes me feel like I'm still human like I'm just not another number that's been shuffled onto the rug and if I can still help people and Empower people then it gives me a sense of strength Within Myself that you know I I need to live what I'm teaching and if I'm telling this person you know that that they can get over and above this then I have to live it too because now we're in the 2009 and we
• 76:30 - 77:00 have to stimulate the economy and part of what they tell us about stimulating the economy is we we all need to go out here and spend we got to get you spending again we got to get you buying cars and houses and big screen TVs and we need America we're going to send you a stimulus check and you need to run right to Walmart and buy something it's like that stimulates the economy well when you were giving poor people welfare checks what do you think they did with it they spent it they poured it all right back in you know so
• 77:00 - 77:30 if giving people help giving people money to put in the economy stimulates the economy that's exactly what welfare did you know every person I knew on welfare or know on welfare when they get their check they spend it and it goes right back into the economy so if so if the government can print up money to give away with the expectation that people will then spend I know a way to do that
• 77:30 - 78:00 give it to the poor people who spend that's why in poor communities there are thriving stores poor communities have an economy all their own these little corner stores that sell beer and wine and cigarettes and pop and potato chips they're they're here for a reason these little stores that fry up chicken wings all day long they're here for a reason their businesses and poor communities because they're dollars that
• 78:00 - 78:30 [Music] circulate poverty can be virtually eradicated moreover it can be virtually eradicated at a fairly low cost it's not an expensive project give people decent training decent work subsidize their health care
• 78:30 - 79:00 because nobody can afford to buy Health Care on the market uh subsidize housing costs particularly in the big cities because we've allowed housing costs to uh spiral out of sight for poor people uh we have to do some things like that but it's it's not complicated and it's not Beyond us think of the trillions many trillions of dollars already spent by the Federal Reserve and
• 79:00 - 79:30 the treasury to shore up the banks or the $3 trillion dollar that Joseph stiglets and his colleagues estimate we have spent on war getting rid of poverty would be cheaper by far let's just get rid of it we don't want it um you
• 79:30 - 80:00 know what should be done about poverty I think the whole question again of um higher wages most I mean it's jobs and income when you talk about economic poverty it's you need steady work decent paying jobs a higher minimum wage there are many living wage campaigns around the country people are arguing for this um there's less argument for income support programs the public has really turned against them during this past perod they've always been against them they turned against them some more but I
• 80:00 - 80:30 think we have to argue for stronger Income Support Systems especially since the economy is less welcoming to more and more people even when we get out of this mess that we're in they're going to be a lot of people who the jobs are not going to come back people need housing um they'll say that one of the number ones are probably the number one need on the part of homeless people the reason why people are homeless is because they can't afford housing there's also I mean we have to add jobs in here and have to add income in here I mean there's sort of a major weird
• 80:30 - 81:00 contradiction between the housing market and the and the work Market labor market because the labor market obviously could only you know if you I mean you can't exist on minimum wage anymore I mean I exist on minimum wage when I was married my wife worked in less than minimum wage in a department store but uh and to get me through school but you could do that then you can't you can't even begin to do that now so the um so you know you have a real desperate situation where the labor market and
• 81:00 - 81:30 what it can afford or supposedly pay people can't even begin to touch what the housing market can provide the market left to its own devices tends to produce homogeneity it doesn't tend to produce you know hogen uh inclusion it tends to produce exclusive en Clays by income generally That's What markets tend to do and they're very good at it so if you want to have the market run full til and that becomes your answer for creating an economic mix I don't buy it it's not
• 81:30 - 82:00 going to work [Music]
• 82:00 - 82:30 n [Music]
• 82:30 - 83:00 I think there's a lot of caring people
• 83:00 - 83:30 about there and uh I you know I think there's people that just aren't aware
• 83:30 - 84:00 you know they just don't live in the poor neighborhoods and I don't think they realize what kind of problems exist I think sometimes there's people that do know and then there's people that just don't have a clue about who the poor are well that's an interesting question do we as a society have a responsibility I think we should have such a responsibility um my fear is that we don't and through this term e Conde what
• 84:00 - 84:30 I think is going on is that not only that we don't but that we don't care that we don't so it's um but at the same time you know you hear this stuff about America's a compassionate country and that kind of stuff but I think right now empathy is in pretty short supply there there are always consequences to actions and those empower really don't know what they're doing they have no idea what the consequences of their actions are they they make
• 84:30 - 85:00 decisions that are often times snap decisions that sound good and feel good but they don't see 20 years down the road because they don't look 20 years down the road they may look to the next election to come and say you know I pushed for 45 more police officers on the street vote for me again but they don't see any further down the road I think that one result of 30 years really uh since the last two
• 85:00 - 85:30 years of the Carter Administration but certainly uh escalating when Ronald Reagan took office one result of 30 years of castigation of the poor is that uh even liberals and progressives who are politicians are afraid of the word poverty or the poor
• 85:30 - 86:00 or programs like welfare they won't touch those terms uh they're toxic they're afraid of them and uh the Obama Administration won't touch them either unless they are forced to I think that the people who dominate this Society now that is the the Banking and Financial and Industrial corporations and other corporations service
• 86:00 - 86:30 corporations that that dominate government and politics in this Society now cannot be relied upon to do something about poverty nor do I think you can rely on uh the the political parties that we have today the Republicans and the Democrats are both parties of big business and big corporations you let somebody like me from Over the rine and inner city lowincome single mother and disabled to boot call
• 86:30 - 87:00 legislator and ask for a meeting oh well uh he's booked up for right now and next week he's going on vacation and one legislator we actually had to tell him that we was a fifth grade class coming to talk about how our government works and when we got there and he seen that we work kids he was very upset with us but that was the only way it was oh well
• 87:00 - 87:30 I've got a meeting here I've got to go here and I'll be out of the office that day and oh then next week I'm I got to go on vacation I haven't had vacation and you know so you can't get them to meet with you it's like if you're lowincome you don't have no needs you know toss them in the and get rid of
• 87:30 - 88:00 them na better a in my kitchen to be
• 88:00 - 88:30 [Music] out in trouble I get it [Music]
• 88:30 - 89:00 down better call in my kitchen B to be R our doors
• 89:00 - 89:30 [Music] [Music]
• 89:30 - 90:00 I think um one of the problems is that poverty really does bad things to people we know that uh people who have lost their jobs lose their sense of identity the first time you meet someone they always say oh I'm Dan what do you do and of course the person who's unemployed feels they have no identity the person who you know they they lose their identity and that's terribly devastating to a person's ego and so on so what do people do they become involved in drugs and alcohol um what else happens well
• 90:00 - 90:30 people um some people become very poor and they turn to Crime so it's not like uh being poor doesn't lead to consequences that change people and that are bad and it's not like all the perceptions about the poor are completely wrong or unrealistic but it seems to me that the poor can be changed by being drawn into a a new social life a new social movement with a different ethos I think in situations of Oppression it's always
• 90:30 - 91:00 the group that's oppressed that has to educate those that don't understand it I mean you hear that around race you hear that around gender issues you hear that around class issues is that and and how to get people to believe what our experienes I believe we have a responsibility to eradicate poverty and I think it's good like sharing resources um helping is just dealing
• 91:00 - 91:30 with the symptoms I think but we do have a responsibility to figure out how can we end the situation that people are having to stand in line for food I mean sometimes people want to give and want to help and it's out of that Spirit of oh like charity we' got to learn how to walk with that foot of of of giving what we can because there is people do need that assistance but also learning how to
• 91:30 - 92:00 walk with that foot of Justice to make changes and how can things be restructured so that we don't have this situation when the labor movement was strong public benefits improved when the labor movement the Civil Rights Movement the women's movement and the welfare rights movement was strong so and and between 1935 and 1975 and I've documented this literally with numbers that that during those periods when those movements were active the standard of living Rose productivity Rose uh poverty fell so and so it's CAU
• 92:00 - 92:30 pressure from below political pressure these movements people have to get together and realize that they can and should do something about changing the way um public resources are spent um people who who are in poverty would need to do what they've done in the past and that's organized and that's f um the power structures that want to keep them that way and of course the the best way to do that is to organize
• 92:30 - 93:00 around their own issues if you remember the marches on Washington in the 60s Dr King and others um what stands out in my mind are the signs they would hold up said jobs housing uh along with the signs that said I'm I'm a man um so there were two things being said there I'm a person who has selfworth and I need need to be recognized as such and I demand um fair housing Fair jobs Fair access but that
• 93:00 - 93:30 that's a groundup movement I think it won't happen until the poor themselves make so much trouble that doing something about poverty becomes uh the more practical course that certainly is the experience of the 20th century it was when the poor in the 1930s made real trouble that uh the New Deal
• 93:30 - 94:00 Administration expanded emergency relief and then WPA and again in the 1960s it was riots that fueled the poverty programs of the 1960s but they won't protest unless they have hope so another reason for being so happy that Barack Obama and the Democratic majority has taken over Washington because they whether they
• 94:00 - 94:30 intend it or not they're going to give people hope they are giving people hope and hope is a critical ingredient of protest movements George W Bush Administration and even the Clinton Administration before it uh didn't give people any hope remember even Democratic Party Clinton uh saying the time for big government is over uh the the solution to problems of
• 94:30 - 95:00 education is school uniforms nonsense of that kind uh constituting his political rhetoric and then we got George W bush and the rhetoric became much much harsher it's not only that a a leader like uh George W Bush can't be moved by protest movements but that kind of leader has
• 95:00 - 95:30 the effect of suppressing protest movements people understand that he won't Bend and that you can get badly hurt now Barack Obama on the other hand for one thing he won with a new constituency not entirely new but he won by pulling out youth voters on a really historic scale black voters turnout must have been up around
• 95:30 - 96:00 85% uh Latino voters workingclass voters and notice also that his support increased after he was elected as the economy spiraled downward and George W bush became steadily more ridiculous uh the so Barack Obama needs those voters he needs
• 96:00 - 96:30 important blocks of Voters who either are hard suffering hardship themselves or who will be empathetic with those who are suffering hardship he needs them and his Ric shows that and people can hear it they can and and that gives them courage that gives them hope they know that Barack Obama will not call out the
• 96:30 - 97:00 National Guard if they protest at food stamp centers for example they know that so there's a kind of dialectical relationship between political leaders that need voters and protest movements protest movements can be protected by electoral politics and the leaders that are thrown up by new constellations of Voters and not
• 97:00 - 97:30 only protected by electoral politics they can win ultimately through electoral politics it's just that they don't do it simply by you know going out and registering to vote and then turning out on Election Day it's that they take advantage of this electoral constellation to raise new issues and to raise them in dramatic and disruptive ways to raise them through social movements we don't have the propaganda
• 97:30 - 98:00 apparatus we have the movements as we were finishing this film new poverty information was released by the US Census Bureau for the year 2009 not surprisingly the poverty rate got even worse during the past year adding an even greater sense of urgency to an
• 98:00 - 98:30 already desperate situation the official poverty rate for 2009 was 14.3% up a staggering 1.1% from the 2008 figure of 13.2% according to the Census Bureau the number of people in poverty is the largest number in the 51 years for which poverty estimates are available that number is now 43.6 million people an increase of 3.8 million people in just one
• 98:30 - 99:00 year during a 2-year period when our government provided billions and billions of dollars to bail Banks out of the threat of bankruptcy millions and millions of our fellow citizens have sunk deeper and deeper into the Quagmire of poverty yet we hear virtually nothing from public officials about how to help those at the bottom of American society those who have been most affected by the massive job losses during this Great Recession the only help under discussion
• 99:00 - 99:30 in the US Congress is whether or not the bush era tax cuts should be extended are tax cuts the solution to Poverty during the past 6 years those at the bottom the poor and near poor saw very little of the Bush tax cuts if the cuts are extended to 2011 that will continue to be true in 2011 those making $10,000 or less will see a whopping $5 while those making between 10,000 and
• 99:30 - 100:00 20,000 will get $137 those making $200,000 to $500,000 will get $7,499 while those making $500,000 to $1 million will get $1,495 and those making more than a million dollar will see at at least $128,800 more for 6 years those at the top have
• 100:00 - 100:30 gotten the most out of these tax policies the conventional wisdom is that the rich will invest that money and create new jobs but what we have seen is nothing like that not only is unemployment staying high but many people have given up even looking for a job isn't it time to challenge The Glenn Becks the rush Limas the Bill O'Reilly the ran Pauls the Jan Brewers the Robert rectors the Robert Samuelson isn't it time to denounce them
• 100:30 - 101:00 as not just wrong but as selfish and uncaring and heartless isn't it time for all of us to share in The Amazing wealth and resources of our country not just the rich and those who defend them after all whose labor creates that wealth [Music] [Music]
• 101:00 - 101:30 Jesus Christ a man TR through the land hard man and [Music] to the rich give Goods to the poor so the Jesus Christ in his
• 101:30 - 102:00 grave yes Jesus A [Music] Man by hand his followers true and one dirty coward called Jud scar P Jesus in his [Music]
• 102:00 - 102:30 grave he went to the preacher he went to the sh told them all the same said all your jewry give it to the poor so the Jesus Christ in [Music] hisus
• 102:30 - 103:00 come folks around he the bankers and the peaches they nailed on the cross and they laid Jesus Christ in his [Music] grave now the people followed him around sing and Sh
• 103:00 - 103:30 G but the cops and the soldiers nailed him in the and the Jesus Christ in his [Music] grave the people H the breath when they heard about his death and
• 103:30 - 104:00 everybody wondered why land and the solders that he that naus [Music] Christ this song was made in New York City of man preachers and slaves if Jesus was a preach like did in
• 104:00 - 104:30 gilee they laid Jesus Christ in his [Music] grave Jesus a man and a carp by