News and Letters Editorial January-February 1998

America's unfinished war on poverty

For those who became revolutionaries as young people in the massive freedom movements of the 1960s, it is sad to realize that 30 years after the Poor People's Campaign of 1968, racism and poverty remain unabated. The idealism of the Black struggle inspired youth, rank-and-file workers', women's and welfare rights movements; being part of those masses in motion led us to believe poverty would be eliminated. Instead, today in the U.S. ten million more people live in poverty than did in 1968.

POOR PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN

The Poor People's Campaign was sponsored by Martin Luther King Jr.'s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, at a time when he was expanding civil rights issues to include labor and economic rights. King was assassinated just before the May-June event, when he went to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers. This was also a time of welfare mothers' activism to change benefits and conditions of welfare.

The Poor People's Campaign was geared toward whites as well as Blacks, and many local organizations joined civil rights groups in turning out people to the marches that began all over the South and around the country and ended in Washington. The depth of the movement for change and its ability to self-organize were revealed as civil rights, church, and community groups sent money, food and clothing to the various staging points for the marches.

Over 100,000 people rallied in Washington and thousands remained for two months in an encampment by the Washington Monument called Resurrection City. While mired in mud, the tent city was the base for lobbying Congress to live up to President Johnson's declaration of a "war on poverty." The movement won some more anti-poverty programs; aid to nascent Black capitalists through small business loans and such was thrown in too.

But when the mass movement died down, the government programs did too, and soon the crisis in capitalism necessitated a change in government ideology, from "buying them out" to "stomping them out." This culminated in Clinton's welfare "reform" law of 1996 which ended 60 years of federal government assistance to the poor, especially children.

These 30 years have seen an increase in the gap between rich and poor, and no reduction in the rate of poverty. In 1996 (the last year for which government statistics are available) there were 36.5 million people below the poverty line, 13.7% of the population. In 1968, the figure was 12.8%. Poverty is defined by the federal government as income under $16,036 for a family of , figure which working class families understand is absurdly low.

WELFARE MEANS 'POOR'

If statistics for 1997 were available, they would undoubtedly show an increase in the "very poor"--whose income is less than one-half of the poverty -- recent state and federal "reforms" have forced between one and two million people off the welfare rolls in the last year. The Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy reports that already, 12% of U.S. families are "food insecure" and matters are going to get worse.

Although more whites than Blacks are poor and more whites receive -- stereotypes notwithstanding-the 28.4% rate of Black poverty far exceeds the overall national rate of 13.7%. The figure for Hispanics (who can be of any race) was 29.4%.

Eighty-nine percent of people receiving federal welfare money are women with children. Raising children is hard and important work, and the addition of workfare (compulsory work at minimum wage so as to equal one's government benefits) is unconscionable. It is ironic that middle-class women are still portrayed as bad mothers if they do not stay home to care for their children, whereas welfare recipients are treated as lazy moochers if they wish to do the same.

IN THE ABSENCE OF A MASS MOVEMENT TO CONFRONT THE CONTINUING PLIGHT OF THE POOR, EVEN INDIVIDUAL EFFORTS TO GET OUT OF POVERTY THROUGH EDUCATION ARE THWARTED. THE WELFARE RIGHTS MOVEMENT ADVOCATES EDUCATION AND TRAINING AS LEGITIMATE WORK, BUT THE NEW FEDERAL LAW MANDATES THE STATE TO COMPEL ALL WELFARE RECIPIENTS TO ENTER WORKFARE INSTEAD.

What has happened to the approximately 1.7 million people who were forced off welfare in the last year? There is little tracking to show if they found jobs or merely sunk deeper into poverty. There are guesses that about half found jobs in the recently expanded economy featuring minimum wage jobs that still leave families in poverty. More people rely on private charities; the long lines snake around food pantries and homeless shelters every day. And it is going to get much worse, since the states have not yet implemented all the requirements of the new federal law, including the mandatory time limits that disqualify whole families from further welfare for life.

THE POOR CAN DEFEAT POVERTY

Welfare rights groups are fighting state by state to increase benefits and restore eligibility, and even held nation-wide demonstrations on Dec. 10. Some groups are attempting to unionize workfare workers and to turn workfare into real, living-wage jobs. Some groups advocate job creation, but it is absurd to think that capitalism either can or wants to employ everyone.

Moreover, even as the capitalists are enjoying an increased supply of cheap labor caused by welfare "reform," they are terrified by the prospect that "full employment" will push up wages. Although the capitalists would have us believe Marx's ideas are dead, poor people constitute the same "army of the unemployed" he described in the 19th century, the gravediggers of capitalism that will replace it with a human society that doesn't breed poverty.

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