"We were poor and we're still poor"

I have to wonder if the presence of Barbara Ehrenreich in the NYT talking about the working poor and the recession will finally get people to pay attention to this notoriously invisible population:

...the outlook is not so cozy when we look at the effects of the recession on a group generally omitted from all the vivid narratives of downward mobility — the already poor, the estimated 20 percent to 30 percent of the population who struggle to get by in the best of times. This demographic, the working poor, have already been living in an economic depression of their own. From their point of view “the economy,” as a shared condition, is a fiction.

And as racial justice advocate Gihan Perera points out, our stimulus policies are not exactly poised to change anything.

First, Ehrenreich introduces a term that I've missed so far: the "Nouveau Poor" - which I take to mean the downward middle-class, likely people like my fiance and me, who live in a nice apartment with a lot of stuff but newly can't afford to pay our bills.  As Ehrenreich visits with community organizers in L.A.. they make the point that so many of the working poor are disconnected from the larger economy, and that boom times - the alleged "rising tide" to lift all our boats - actually has a detrimental effect on low-income neighborhoods in the form of gentrification and displacement.

I'm preaching to the choir here, I know.  The entire article is worth reading, as it gets into the outcomes such as overcrowding, domestic violence, "food auctions," missed medications, and other survival/coping strategies.

So what are we doing to shift this same-old cycle of hardship and oppression of the poorest among us?  According to Perera of the Miami Workers Center, very little:

...things are a-changin', but it does not mean a progressive rearrangement of the economy. In cities throughout the country, the stimulus has not been visible. It's early, but everything in the design of the Recovery Act means that it will make little structural difference for communities of color. Black, Latino, and Asian inner-city communities have been in recession since at least 2004. Whether the national economy can recover any time soon is a big question, but no matter what happens, local urban communities will stay in crisis for much longer. The stimulus was designed to save the existing economy, but not fundamentally restructure it.

He goes on to layout how stimulus funds go to tax breaks, plugging state budget deficits, and "shovel-ready" projects.  In actuality, we're seeing the $$ mostly go to social service programs, essentially dealing with our current recession emergency.  This is useful, but not the long-term investment we need in struggling neighborhoods.  As regular commenter Danetta pointed out in a recent post, echoing Perera but from a different angle, we need to "restructure" our economy and how we think about poverty and economic opportunity.  Beyond the stepped up need to deliver social services right now, anti-poverty activists must focus on this deeper, systemic problem.  We need a fairer system of economic distribution and opportunity, and a more reasonable, realistic, contemporary understanding of poverty in the U.S.

And so concludes my Sunday morning sermon. Please spread the word.

(Photo of homeless shelter mural by Valerie Everett)