Football and Poverty Often Go Hand-in-Hand

“Maggie,” a quiet, studious 13-year-old athlete didn’t want to lose her world: the school she attended since first grade, her friends, teachers and coaches. She and her mom stayed in a shelter about 25 miles from their little farm town. Maggie, who played on the boys' football team, urged me not to tell her homelessness secret.

She was massively relieved when I told her of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Act, a little-known law that protected her stability of education. One oft-ignored offshoot of McKinney-Vento is homeless students can participate in after-school activities - clubs and sports - the same as non-homeless students.

Surprise—millions of kids in this country are homeless. Stereotype-busters: homeless kids play sports, excel in chess, lead school clubs, volunteer in local activities and go to college.

The hit movie “The Blind Side” connected the dots between football and homelessness. So let’s focus on what for some is January’s salvation—who makes it to the Super Bowl. What does this have to do with poverty? A few things….

Not long ago I drove through a tired, impoverished town - Ferriday, LA - on the edge of Mississippi. Something captured my curiosity, and I wandered down a few side streets and hopped out of my RV to take pictures. I heard noises—kids playing—and looked around, spying a droopy pants, beanpole older teen coaching this small squad of determined little guys in the basics of football.

I wandered over, a white woman invading the sacred football turf of these black youth. Pointing to my camera I mumbled something about being a freelance journalist in search of stories, and asked if I could shoot some photos of them. Sure. Whatever. Back to work, Saints-in-Training, prepping for the big game.

Kids with hand-me-down equipment, if equipped at all, run streets and across litter-strewn weed patches, dreaming of Super Bowl-sized cheers. Many want to be called, few will be chosen. But they can learn lots of valuable skills along the way. Like Dr. Charles Mitchell did.

Neighborhoods like this exist by the tens of thousands across America, cities and towns of note and not, all with mayors. Some mayors honestly confess to me their cluelessness about real issues of poverty and homelessness. One told me, “I know real estate, insurance and politics,” bluntly admitting he knew nothing about those struggling to survive in his community.

Each year since 1982, the U.S. Conference of Mayors puts out the Hunger and Homelessness report. I used to be impressed. This slick publication garners a good amount of pre-Christmas media coverage: “9% Increase In Homeless Families,” spouted HuffPost recently. Wrong.

We activists take big issue with this seemingly sympathetic report, with at least 7 good reasons why it needs revamping:

1. Not scientific. Their methodology has been criticized by the conservative media.
2. The Mayors use the figures (e.g. chronic homelessness decreasing) to prove that their initiatives are working.
3. It is focused on urban big city America, and only 20-some cities take part each year.
4. It doesn’t include people homeless due to house fires, like those experiencing fires over the holidays and the winter months—or like the 8 young people in New Orleans who succumbed to carbon monoxide.
5. Rural, small town America is ignored. The U.S. Conference of Mayors should change its name to “U.S. Conference of Big City Mayors.”
6. The report never touches how these same cities surveyed are the ones that are also criminalizing homelessness (see the National Coalition for the Homeless report on this).
7. They should really consult with advocates on what kind of a study would be most useful from year to year.

Poverty In America readers can help. Sign this petition. Why? As part of our upcoming “Southern (Dis)Comfort” tour, we want to meet with Mayor Terry Bellamy in Asheville, NC, chair of the committee responsible for this survey, and urge her to push for a more comprehensive, accurate report. You’ll give us muscle.

Seems to me the voices we need to listen to are kids like Maggie and millions clamoring for a chance to make it in this land of opportunity. If we act for the kids we’ll probably score big where it really counts—our future as a great nation.

Photo credit: Diane Nilan