I sent the first draft of my book for someone to read and provide comments. After a few months, she came back with her comments and suggestions, many of which I took to heart and incorporated into what became the final product.
One comment that kind of floored me, was her reaction to the multiple chapters devoted to Poverty. She said, "everybody knows about poverty." I was struck by that comment because I was of the view that the only thing most people knew, really knew, about poverty was where not to look.
Michael Harrington, in his great book The Other America, made the point that in our modern age (the late 1950s when it was written), most of us no longer interacted with the poor and as a result they became invisible. Most of what we know about economically distressed communities is how to avoid them. And many of us pass judgment on the character of poor people knowing little about their daily lives and struggles.
I felt no need to prove the obvious, that there were poor people in each of our communities, or that life in poverty often was a daily struggle for survival. Nor did I feel the need to offer solutions to eradicate poverty from our communities, there are others who could do and have done a far better job than I ever could. However, my goal was to explain, in real terms supported by data, why there was a need for my agency, RICLAPP, and other similar agencies until attorneys could be universally - as a right - be provided to indigent civil litigants
A companion goal was to convince the reader that those who live in poverty deserve the same legal protections and services that are available to the broader society. And, like indigent defendants in criminal actions, indigent civil litigants should likewise be provided legal services in civil matters.
That is why I use anecdotal, scrubbed examples and hypos to describe the legal issues confronting the poor. And I describe, particularly in Volume 1, Chapter 2, the tangible benefits that accrue to all of society if these services were provided.
If you're interested, and don't forget all proceeds from the sale of the book will be directed to legal services organizations, you'll have to buy the book. I have no intention to re-litigate a matter contained in the book, but I would like to take a moment to raise a few issues, some contained in the book and brought to stark relief, since its publication.
First, the stereotypical description of "poverty" and "the poor" no longer works, if it ever did. Using a mathematical standard of measure from nearly 50 years ago is as useless today as it would be to continue to ask when, or even if, we'd ever put a man on the moon. To continue using that poverty measure, while simultaneously using a "supplemental measure" that merely regurgitates the same factors while tweaking the weights of those factors gets us nowhere in firmly grasping the extent of poverty in our midst.
Poverty is a tangible thing, as impactful on a person's life as fresh air. You can see it, feel it, live it. If a person lives in substandard housing, that's because with her limited income that's all she can afford. If a person has trouble feeding and clothing his kids, that's a function of extremely limited resources. And if a person wants to improve his lot by receiving an education, his or her only option may be to attend substandard schools in her neighborhood.
More often we are seeing a "standard of need" measure used to determine the level of poverty in a community. Using real data from the community, we are able to describe in great detail the cost of those items necessary to achieve a minimal standard of living. Average housing cost, food and clothing costs, transportation costs, and health care costs are but a few of items measured and more often than not, the results are astounding - the actual standard of need is often tens of thousands of dollars more than the dollar benefits provided to the poor.
Also, if we're truly honest about it, we'd see a poverty component that we often overlook: the demise of the American middle class. In part due to the Great Recession of 2008 caused by the banking crisis, many middle class workers and families began a free fall from which many still haven't recovered. In the book, I try to describe the differences between the existing generational poor and the victims of the Recession. RICLAPP, because we applied a means test for our services, served the generational poor along side the newly situational poor. Both groups shared the same housing concerns, food insecurity concerns, health fears, and income insecurity threats.
Now due to the Great (unofficial) Depression of 2020 caused (in part) by the Covid-19 pandemic, we're seeing the same things play out and as Yogi Berra once said, it's deja vu all over again.
Without getting into the weeds here, let me make one last point. Over the past few years, numerous studies have reported that 40% - 50% (depending on the study) of all American families have only $400 saved to respond to an emergency. Four hundred dollars for a seven hundred dollar car repair. Or for an eleven hundred dollar set of braces for each kid. Or maybe an unexpected seven hundred dollar annualized increase in the mortgage payments due on the family home.
And to add to this, the Covid pandemic has resulted, so far in 40 million households being unable to pay their mortgages or rent (shades of the 2008 banking bubble crisis) and 30 million households experiencing food insecurity.
There are structural elements of the overall economy which contributes to, if not causes, this economic dysfunction, some of which I get into in the book. However, suffice it to say that the hypothetical family with four hundred dollars confronted with a seven hundred dollar car repair bill, who may have access to other capital to meet the unexpected, is a whole lot better off than the generational poor who haven't the four hundred dollars, nor collateral to take out a loan through traditional sources. All they may have is payday lenders, our modern day loan sharks preying on the poor.
Second, as the human cost of our current Covid catastrophe is revealed in greater detail, we see that the black and latinx communities have been hit harder than the white communities. This, too, is a function of poverty - the reality that poverty kills. In the general sense, black and latinx communities are more likely to be economically distressed. There are numerous reasons why this is so, some having to do with racial and economic discrimination, others having to do with educational services that too often fail to meet the needs of our modern, global economy. But this fact is unassailable: the total wealth of an average black household is just 10% that of a comparable white household. Let that sink in. After our "War on Poverty" and the whining and moaning that too much money is spent on "entitlements," there is a 90% wealth gap between black and white families. And this too is a tangible reality that can be seen, felt, and experienced.
So in our Covid catastrophe, many blacks and latinos were deemed "essential workers" by the government. Often they worked as minimum wage, low-income workers in the food, medical, and some retail industries. Some worked as employees at the fast food drive-through restaurant or retail food outlet, other as orderlies in hospitals and skilled nursing homes, and others worked as clerks in the building supply outlets. Still others worked in entry level positions as our first responders.
While many of us stayed safe and snug in our homes, these people were busy preparing and in some cases delivering our food for us, tending to the medical needs of our loved ones, and keeping the building trades busy so as not to totally tank the economy. And these people were victims of the outrageously criminal lack of planning to prevent community spread, forcing people to work without sufficient PPE or adequate testing to measure their exposure to the virus.
Let's be clear: these folks didn't go to work to further the noble mission of the Golden Arches. They went to work because if they didn't, they'd likely lose their jobs and no matter how little money they took home, it was better than no money coming in at all. They weren't only victims of the Covid-19 virus, they were also victims of the dysfunctional economic system that treats people as fungible cogs in the economic machine.
To be clear, I'm no Marxist or socialist seeking to overthrow the capitalist system or some such rubbish. I'm only pointing out an obvious ill in our economic system and body politic because as I said in a prior post and detailed in my book, public goods and services are unequally distributed based on the level of political power of each competing recipient group. And in our democratic system, economic resources equals political power and influence. The poor have no economic resources and thus no political power, therefore they can't defend or advance their interests in the grand bargaining that occurs with other recipient groups.
And this will segue into description of some of the legal issues confronting the poor and how we can level a decidedly uneven playing field.
Comments