November 99

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Not Another Year, Not Another Family

Grace Ross and Sharon Tetrault work with Sisters Together Ending Poverty and Working Mass.

What's happened to the families who have disappeared off the Massachusetts welfare rolls?

As we expected, people hobbled supports together for a while. Now mostly they suffer in silence, families dissolving, believing this is their individual fault, not a social experiment on us all. How many have simply disappeared? These are some of the stories we know.

Matilda, a recent graduate of Project Hope, tells the following story: "I have two friends who just gave up! Having been cut off of welfare in the first group in December after looking for months for a job, one of these friends called me. She has three small children that she has been raising on her own since her husband left. In February, she called me (she had been in my training program with me): 'Matilda, you know me, I have such bad learning disabilities there is no way I am going to ever get a job that pays enough to raise three children by myself!' She was hopeless; she held in her hand an eviction for the end of the month and with no income, she knew she would never be able to afford a down payment on a new place. Faced with no income and no home, even though I begged her to bring the kids to me, she walked into DSS that morning and dropped the kids off with no forwarding information. She was evicted and I have not heard from her since. She's out there, somewhere, walking the streets, doing God only knows...I am so worried. And I know another woman who did this too!"

Then there's Nelly. She's probably considered a success story. A young mother, she succeeded in finding work last November--a decent paying job--a couple of weeks before her December 1 welfare cutoff. She was very happy. However, the job was a second shift job. She spent three months paying different friends and piecing together baby-sitting while she looked and waited for a second shift daycare slot. You think she lived in a small town? No, she lived in the city of Somerville. Desperate, having used up all her personal connections, she sent her five-year old daughter to the girl's paternal grandmother in Florida--even though she was not making enough money to know when she would have enough to go visit.

A single father from Peabody found a well-paying, full-time job shortly before his welfare time limit ran out. He had to quit when his welfare worker told him he was not allowed to come home a few hours later than his adolescent son came home from school. There was no way around it. He felt hopeless. He quit his job and searched for another during school hours. He has only been able to find part-time work. He applied for an extension to the time limit and was denied. He and his son are struggling to survive. He says "I'm trying, I am following all their rules; it's just not fair."

Real wages (measured by how much our dollar will buy) have fallen or remained stagnant for most workers throughout the "boom" of the '90's. Economists such as Nobel Prize winner Robert Solow of MIT predict that welfare reform and time limits will lower wages for the bottom third of paid workers by as much as 12%, as desperate workers with families are forced to take any paid work, no matter how it undercuts wages.

December 1, 1999 will mark the one-year anniversary of Massachusetts' refusal to respond to the needs of low-income women, their children, and the children of other low-wage workers. Last December and every month since then, Massachusetts has cut families off of welfare, even families with no other means of survival. During this year, the situation has grown more and more desperate: 10,000 families and 6,000 individuals are homeless, and food pantry use has increased by 200 percent. The state's own statistics show that only half of the families forced off of welfare have found jobs. Of those, at least half are working at or below poverty wages.

This is unacceptable, especially in a state with a budget surplus of $798 million, and a government willing to reduce taxes and still spend $70 million to keep a football team in the state. We can not in good conscience stand for this any longer.

Therefore, I pledge to do all I can to assure that not another year goes by in which Massachusetts abandons its most vulnerable residents and puts all families in economic jeopardy, and not another family is made more destitute and hopeless by public policy.

Pledge of Support

I am serious about this and I pledge specifically:

_____To spread the word among my family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and members of my religious congregation about what is really happening with welfare reform.

_____To contact all my elected representatives and demand that they extend the time limit for those who cannot find work adequate to support their families with security.

_____To participate, over the next year, in at least three local or state-wide protests about the policies that hurt all low-income families.

_____ To engage in civil disobedience with others as outraged as I am if the situation has not changed by November 30th.

_____To provide economic support to those who are fighting the fight against economic injustice.

Please include your name, address (including Email), and phone number, and send your pledge to Working Massachusetts, 145 Tremont Street #202, Boston, MA 02111; 617/482-4471. We will contact you with further information.

[This is one state's model of resistance. If there is not yet a similar model in your state, it's time to create one. --Eds.]