So what is this all about?

by Laurie McElroy/PNN

The three hundred block of Stockton Street, between Post and Sutter, is as alienatingly citylike as San Francisco ever gets; chrome and fiberglass rental cars shuttle blindly back and forth, and beneath the voracious wheels broken bits of glass glimmer, like tiny screaming nerves, trapped in the matte asphalt of road.

White-collared strangers float to and fro over the sidewalk where cracks, between the pastel-black slabs of pavement, do not go all the way down; concrete makes an uncompromising scab over the wounded earth and nothing natural can lift a blade through it. The Grand Hyatt Hotel at 345 Sutter rises like a cold monument to this illusion of urban order, a fitting place for Wade Horne and his minions to have conducted their gruesome business.

Horne is the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. He has been directed by HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson to facilitate a series of national “listening and discussion sessions” to help prepare policymakers for Congress’ reauthorization of welfare reform legislation next year. These so-called “listening sessions” are ostensibly being held to gauge the real effects of the much-touted welfare reform on providers and consumers around the country, but out of the 40 or so, asked to attend the October 24th session at the Grand Hyatt, there were no caseworkers at all and only one invitee was a current welfare client. Now how’s that for balanced input?

It was my pleasure as a mother and TANF recipient to attend a rally organized by local welfare rights advocacy groups such as Low Income Families’ Empowerment Through Education ( LIFETIME ), People Organised to Win Employment Rights (POWER ), Center for Third World Organizing, POOR Magazine, the Coalition for Ethical Welfare Reform, Homeless Prenatal Program and Every Mother is a Working Mother, to name a few, to protest Horne’s exclusionary tactics. Over 200 mothers, fathers, children and activists came together in an elemental show of unity and power, directly in front of Horne’s borrowed citadel, the Hyatt, to explicitly voice our disapproval of punitive “reforms” that prioritize reducing caseloads over providing struggling individuals and families a permanent exit from poverty.

The first person I spoke to at length was Leilani Luia, Board Chair of LIFETIME and mother-on-aid of three. She was competently short, dark-haired, face aglow with sweat, nearly lost in a fleecy, pajama-like teddy bear costume. “We’re out here fighting so Wade Horne hears our concerns regarding welfare reform. We don’t need low wage, dead end jobs—we need more opportunities and education for welfare families instead! Federal guidelines allow only 12 months to complete any educational-type job training, and the state allows only 18 months, but studies have shown that for a family to get out of poverty for good, they need MORE than a 2 year education. The messages they send poor women are so different from those they send women with money; we’re lazy when we want to stay home and take care of our kids. Middle and upper middle-class people get big tax breaks for their children, but most working poor families’ incomes are too low to qualify for the rebate. It’s like telling us, ‘You don’t matter’." Before she could continue, the loudspeakers came out. A rather festive picket line was forming just in front of the hotel’s gaudily emblazoned awning. “Whoops, gotta go!” She smiled fiercely, donned the costume’s bear head, and whirled away into the bristle of homemade signs.

I finished scribbling notes on Leilani, then turned to a slender young woman dressed in dark, office-casual clothes. “So what is all this about to you?” I asked. “Are you mad?”

“TANF is coming up for reauthorization,” she replied. Her name was Marisa; she was an intern at Service for Immigrants’ Rights and Education Network ( SIREN ). “They’re shutting out the community because they don’t want to hear our input or experiences. This demonstration is our attempt to force them to.” And after a short pause, “Yes, I’m mad. I can’t speak for my organization, but I agree with the basic message behind their critique, which is, ‘reduce poverty, not caseloads’!”

Singly and in groups, representatives of the organizations in attendance gave their cheerily belligerent pep talks. The picket line moved like a wedding samba. Hours flew by on militant wings. Finally, two o’clock arrived and the protesters began to disperse. Not surprisingly it was then, when everyone had apparently almost gone, that Horne and a few of the politicos from the closed session came down from their $195-a-night tower.

Horne approached me first. He was a tall, bland man, with the balding pallor and well-cut clothes of beaurocratic aristocracy. He had a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, just like all politicians.

“Did you want to speak to me?”

Playing the nervous intern to the hilt, I grimaced, shook his soft, outstretched hand, pointed him toward one of my editor’s, Tiny, and dashed off to catch the last of the comrades before they crossed Post Street, shouting, “Come back! The evil men in suits are here! Come back!”

The straggling crowd resurged. As she emerged from the building, I asked Kristin Deichert, a consultant who works for Berkeley Assemblywoman Dion Aroner, about the lack of testimony from the clients and frontline workers of local Human Services agencies. “I have no idea,” she shrugged. “All the counties were asked to bring consumers...”

“We notified the American Association of Public Service Workers,” said Sheri Stiesel of the National Conference of State Legislators, who stood beside Deichert. “We asked them to tell the agencies to bring caseworkers and consumers, but nobody showed. We don’t know what happened.”

Deichert, who had wandered away, returned and touched my arm. “There’s the one person in the meeting who is on aid. I think she’s from Nevada. She’s over there...”

When I spoke to Michelle Kramer she seemed somewhat reluctant to talk to me, although she agreed readily enough. She told me that her hearing about and being invited to the listening session was really a coincidence, that her worker had gotten an office memo, while Kramer was visiting on an unrelated matter, two days before the session. Her flight and accommodations were hastily arranged, and no offer was made to provide payment for childcare expenses or any compensation for her time. “I wish more people had been able to come,” she sighed.

So do I, I thought wryly, smiling without a hint of bitterness and thanking her for her time. So do I.