Reviving a "Poor People's Movement" is one of the campaigns that I
think American leftists -- especially leftists in Ohio -- should be
working on. The following article says "Ohio had one of the steepest
declines in food stamp participation....Last year, [only] 59 percent
[of the eligible poor] got them." It would be a good campaign for
the Green Party or the Labor Party to get involved in, working
perhaps with the Ohio Empowerment Coalition (at
<http://www.overtherhine.org/contactcenter/oec/>), BREAD (at
<http://www.nabrit.com/bread/>), the Black Radical Congress (at
<http://blackradicalcongress.com/> -- Ohio has two BRC local
organizing committees, one in Cleveland [Cynthia Triplett,
216-391-9015 / [EMAIL PROTECTED]], the other Toledo [Abdul Alkalimat,
[EMAIL PROTECTED]]), and other orgs, though I don't know if
it would & even could.
Without a movement that links the poor, progressive unionists,
religious leftists, activist lawyers, etc., folks won't even get what
they are entitled to, much less demand better programs than what
exists.
Yoshie
***** New York Times 26 February 2001
Millions Eligible for Food Stamps Aren't Applying
By ELIZABETH BECKER
CLEVELAND - As she weighs bunches of purple grapes or rings up fat
chicken legs at the supermarket where she works, Fannie Payne cannot
keep from daydreaming.
"It's difficult to work at a grocery store all day, looking at all
the food I can't buy," Mrs. Payne said. "So I imagine filling up my
cart with one of those big orders and bringing home enough food for
all my kids."
Instead, she said that she and her husband, Michael, a factory
worker, routinely go without dinner to make sure their four children
have enough to eat. They visit a private hunger center monthly for
three days' worth of free groceries, to help stretch the $60 a week
they spend on food.
But they have yet to turn to the government for food stamps.
"I've never talked to anyone in government assistance," Mrs. Payne
said. "I didn't think we'd be eligible because we own a home and a
car."
Workers at the local food bank said it appeared the Paynes might
qualify for food stamps. Local welfare officials said their
eligibility could not be determined unless the family filled out an
application, which the Paynes said they now intended to do.
The Paynes say they have never been solicited to apply for food
stamps. In that, they are not alone. In a study last year, the
Department of Agriculture reported that at least 12 million people -
including at least a million children - are not receiving food stamps
even though they are eligible. Based on detailed annual surveys of
tens of thousands of people, the Census Bureau has estimated that 3.7
million households experience hunger as a result of not having enough
money for food, and that many more - 9.7 percent of all households -
cannot reliably afford all their basic food needs.
"There is no reason that any American in 2001 should go hungry," said
Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, who is chairman of
the Agriculture Committee. "States should do everything possible to
make certain that those who qualify for food stamps know it and are
enrolled if they so choose. That was the intent of the law."
Yet that has not happened in most states. Despite studies warning
that bureaucratic hurdles discourage the poor from applying for food
stamps, states have been wary of streamlining their application
processes.
A major reason, some critics say, is that states fear they will be
penalized by the federal government for giving recipients too much in
food stamps - or too little. In 1996, Arizona was fined $21 million
because of the high number of errors its social workers made in
calculating the size of benefits. Those complicated calculations are
based on mandates drawn up by the Agriculture Department to deter
fraud. But as a result, many states require the poor to fill out
long applications and visit welfare offices every three months to
make sure the benefits are correct.
"This is a nutrition program and it should be simplified," said
Joseph Gauntner, director of Cuyahoga Health and Nutrition, a tough
critic of the food stamp program he administers for the county that
includes Cleveland. "Now the rules read like a welfare program that
is all about preventing fraud with ridiculously rigorous requirements
for a benefit that averages only $73 a month."
Food stamp rolls have tumbled to 17 million people from 24.9 million
at the time of the 1996 welfare overhaul law, according to
Agriculture Department figures. Only half of that drop can be
attributed to the strong economy or new restrictions that removed the
eligibility of some adults without children and immigrants, according
to studies by the Agriculture Department and the Center for Budget
and Policy Priorities, a liberal public policy research group.
"Food stamp participation has fallen much more than the strength of
the economy would explain," said Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, the
senior Democrat on the Agriculture Committee. "At the same time, the
demands on food banks, soup kitchens and similar food sources have
increased markedly."
America's Second Harvest, the principal nonprofit source for food
banks across the country, has doubled the amount of food it
distributes, to two billion pounds in the last two years, says
Douglas O'Brien, the group's policy director.
Ohio had one of the steepest declines in food stamp participation.
In 1994, 80 percent of the state's eligible poor received food
stamps. Last year, 59 percent got them.
Mr. Gauntner wants the state to streamline application forms and
procedures for food stamps and adopt options offered by Congress in
November that would adjust rules to reflect the higher cost of
living, including a change that would allow a family on food stamps
to own a reliable car for work.
He also wants money for a program to tell people about food stamps.
"Working doesn't mean you're getting out of poverty anymore," Mr.
Gauntner said. "The issue isn't getting people to work anymore, it's
figuring out how to help them feed themselves after they come home
from work."
Rather than urging an expansion of food stamp programs, Mr. Lugar
proposes greater tax benefits for corporations and small businesses
that donate food to the nonprofit private food banks. He said that
this could encourage producers and restaurants to donate some of the
more than 80 billion pounds of food wasted each year in the United
States.
As Ohio's food stamp rolls plunged, demand at private food banks like
the Euclid Hunger Center in suburban Cleveland exploded. When it
opened 10 years ago, the center was an emergency pantry for 100
families. Last year it helped 1,000 families, giving out 255,000
pounds of groceries - canned soups, pasta, vegetables - from the
Cleveland Food Bank.
Fannie Payne signed up there and, with a family of six on an income
of $1,900 a month, qualified for three bags of groceries each month.
Lisa Hamler-Podolski, executive director of Ohio's branch of Second
Harvest, said that a third of the people at Ohio's food banks last
year were first-time users.
"They are a new class of people, mainly working poor, who are running
out of resources," Ms. Hamler-Podolski said.
"We're behind on all of our bills," Mrs. Payne said. "We don't pay
electricity until they threaten a cutoff. To be honest, I'm behind
two months on the mortgage - that's $600 a month. We owe $800 on the
water bill and $500 for heat."
The Euclid Hunger Center helped her seek aid from her parish, St.
William's Catholic Church. But it hurt that three cars broke down in
six months.
"They all died and we had to get Mike to work, so we bought a good
used car we can't afford," she said.
The first thing to go was money for food for herself and her husband.
"Some nights Mike and I eat our kids' leftovers, and when I don't
have any money for milk I feed the kids soup for breakfast," she said.
Discount coupons helped Mrs. Payne stretch her money, but each month
the situation got worse.
Recently her husband volunteered for his factory's latest shift, 10
p.m. to 6 a.m., to earn extra money. She started working four days a
week, 5 p.m. to midnight. Now their 13-year-old daughter, Kali, is
in charge of the house from 10 to midnight, looking after the
sleeping children - Sara, 9, Joseph, 7, and Alex, 3.
Joseph has noticed that food has grown scarce lately. When he and
his mother were shopping recently, Joseph stopped a stranger with
food bulging out of her cart and asked her if she was rich.
"No," the woman answered. "I have to feed a big family of five people."
"We're a family of six people," Joseph said, "and we could never buy
that much food." *****
