| by Amber Poole |
“Some lives are made small so others may grow.” Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America
It’s just a different kind of child abuse in the 21st century. We don’t expect children to work in coal mines, or slaughterhouses, nor do we subject them to undue farm labor at a young age rather, we stuff them into classroom chairs, we over-test them, and then hope they can hang in there until high school graduation. And then what? Ten plus more years of higher education to find a meaningful position in academics. Suit up for the all- consuming tech companies. Medicine?
Like cultivating mushrooms, the conditions must be ideal. But when you’re poor in America, nothing in one’s life is ideal. An advanced education, a dorm room, an allowance, funds to invest in a future career, family support are reserved for the wealthy.
A wage earner, particularly a woman alone with children will be looking at a different prospective.
A different kind of slavery. Economic bondage. Her options are few.
In 1986, I became a statistic: a single, working mother of a son in a fatherless household. Without a college education, I could do no better than earn a wage.
We lived below the poverty line, $11,000 annually for eighteen years.
I had a job working at the hotel but it wasn’t enough to make ends meet so I worked weekends at the bookstore. We were fortunate to live on family property where the rent was low to negligible and I had help with Zack. But when I went to bed at night, I went to bed alone. There was never anything leftover for recreational indulgences. Zack was a bright child, very social but had difficulty adjusting to the confines of a public school environment. They labelled him ‘the class clown’ and we all know what that spells: troublemaker.
His first drug bust was on Valentine’s Day. He was 14. My brother posted bail and we waited at the county jail for his release.
The boy whom I had hoped would go to college, get married, have children, and favor a suburban life was now ensnared within the inner city order: the street. We were exposed and would be for a long time to come, fighting battles together and apart.
Like most mothers, I wanted him to be safe. I didn’t want the absence of a man to make a difference. I wanted my love and protection to be everything for him; I wanted it to bind him to what was right and good. I wanted it to be his moral compass, but the street was bigger than me; actually, bigger than all of us.
Desmond concludes his prologue to Poverty, by America:
“Ending poverty will require new policies and renewed political movements to be sure. But it will require that each of us, in our own way, become poverty abolitionists, unwinding ourselves from our neighbors’ deprivation and refuse to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.”
I couldn’t wait to come home and drink a bottle of wine every night. At first it was easier to do because Zach was so young and required more physical attention than psychological, playing with toys, bathing, story time and tucking into bed but as he got older, this psychological strain of raising a young man without a father was ever more demanding.
Taking care of my mother, a prescription drug addict, added even more challenge to being broke, feeling trapped, lonely and without hope.
My story is not the story of the woman without any help, hastening from one shelter to the next with children in tow and on top of that, a woman of color. That was not my story even though I still lived through the painful, waking nightmare of not knowing if the street would ultimately consume my only child and leave me alone to bury him.
I only set out to write a glimpse of my story as a single mother in order to impart a shared intimacy with another single, working mother – with a woman. The psychological instability within this community today is unprecedented. Desmond says, “Poverty is the constant fear that it will get worse.” There is no limit to the anxiety one feels when living exposed, vulnerable and without support. Furthermore, society kicks in an extra dose of shame for good measure, as if there’s something lacking in one’s character to be poor.
But let’s face it, let’s get real: Rich people are terrified of poor people, especially the ones who live homeless. And since the government is made up of rich, self-serving politicians whose agenda certainly doesn’t include women and children who are powerless over the street, the question begs who is going to provide the social safety net which will prevent a further decline into a collective abyss from which one cannot be recovered?
It won’t be the government, you can count on that.
At least not directly. Desmond’s research indicates there is an abundance of money for the poor if only they can access it. For example, Hawaii is sitting on a gold mine of benefits, unadvertised.
Poverty abolitionists, poverty warriors.
What if women were to gather into small communities? Three women and their children should be enough to start. To live as a cooperative, either in the same house or within walking distance. As a cooperative is based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, and solidarity as laid out by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, then these principles could be employed.
Two women would work outside the home while the third would be working the system. When you’re raising your children and working two jobs, it’s impossible to run these traps as it’s a full time job and the government knows that. You don’t honestly think they want you to win, do you?
I know this sounds like Utopian feminism but my husband and I established a shelter in Poland for Ukrainian refugees at the start of the war (February, 2022) and held onto it for 18 months. I wrote a book about it. Sunflowers at my Table: War Diaries of a Ukrainian Community. It’s not easy but we, all 40 to sometimes 45 of us, lived together for this length of time.
My point is I don’t think anybody’s life will get better in isolation. And women, by nature, gather.
Women are under attack, all over the world. They’re being raped, murdered, deemed worthless, imprisoned, denied education, and further to that, their children are unprotected.
How else can we fight back, resist unless we gather? It’s a basic military strategy. They call them troops.
I’m not saying it’s easy, but to put such a strategy in place that assures the right to basic human needs: affordable, secured housing, food, education and health care is not asking the limit, but asking what we must have in place to raise our children.
We must appoint advocates that we trust – EACH OTHER.
I’m not in this for the sake of what they call feminism. I’m too old. If this is what they call Utopian feminism, then so be it.
I’m an elder. I’m in the game because of my story, for no other reason than because I genuinely care about mothers and their children. Full stop.