LA Times-Hard News

pstrongPOOR Magazine gives the Bay Area's needy a forum. Its "formerlybr / homeless" mother-daughter editors have also created a journalismbr / welfare-to-work program. /strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/444/photo_1_feature.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby LA Times/p pHome Editionbr / br /Section: Southern California Livingbr / br /Page: E-1/p pSAN FRANCISCO—Dee Gray would probably want this story to start with the word "I". Dee thinks the best stories are told in the first person. Her daughter, Tiny, doesn't always agree.br / /pPThis is what it might look like, if Dee had her way:br / /pPI first heard from Lisa Gray-Garcia, also known as Tiny, in a long, long message on my voicemail machine about living poor in America's most expensive city. "A lot of us are affected by gentrification and poverty and how that translates to having to leave this area," she said, in a voice somewhere between nasal and squeaky. "Oftentimes, poor families arebr / the ones who are leaving."br / /pPOther mothers and daughters may wrangle over literary license, currentbr / events and how the media shape the news, but their ruminations don't oftenbr / make it into print. Dee's and Tiny's usually do. You can read them onlinebr / at Abr / href="http://www.poornewsnetwork.org/"http://www.poornewsnetwork.org/,br / a weekly news service with the motto: "All the news that doesn't fit."br / POr in the pages of POOR Magazine, where they write under headings likebr / "Editors' Statement by Dee and Tiny." You can catch them on the lastbr / Monday of every month on the Bay Area's KPFA radio, if you wake up reallybr / early.br / /pPOr, if you are on welfare in the San Francisco area and fortunate inbr / your misfortune, you can listen to them in person as part of their Newbr / Journalism/Media Studies Program. Many media and public-policy expertsbr / believe the program, which receives some funding from San Franciscobr / County, is the only journalism welfare-to-work effort operating today.br / /pPTiny and Dee—30 and "I'd rather not say," who describe themselves asbr / "formerly homeless, currently at risk"—have a few goals. They want tobr / change how the mainstream media portray poor and homeless people. Theybr / want to give voice to those who have long been silent, or at the verybr / least not been heard. They want to change how the government gets peoplebr / off of public assistance and into jobs. And they'd like to make the rent.br / /pPThey are as likely to march in a demonstration as cover it. Theybr / regularly lash out at the institutions that they feel harm poor people inbr / the name of helping; Child Protective Services is Dee's current favoritebr / target, although Pacific Gas Electric, the welfare system, thebr / California penal code, most police departments, and City Halls on bothbr / sides of the bay come under regular attack too.br / /pPTheir work—and articles by other PoorNewsNetwork reporters—appears inbr / other alternative publications and has graced the op-ed pages of thisbr / city's two mainstream newspapers. The star graduate of their first year inbr / welfare-to-work has a job writing regularly for the San Francisco Baybr / View, a small community paper covering the region's African Americanbr / population.br / /pPTheir brand of journalism favors advocacy over explanation. But ifbr / there is a place in the american media for the likes of conservativebr / commentator William Kristol and his iWeekly Standard/i, there's a place forbr / Tiny, Dee and POOR.br / /pPThe question, of course, is whether taxpayers should foot the bill forbr / teaching poor and homeless people to be writers, when most welfare-to-workbr / programs stress far more basic job skills. Not surprisingly, Tiny and Deebr / say yes. And San Francisco County agrees.br / /pPWith funding from the county Department of Human Services, whichbr / administers welfare benefits here, the Media Studies Program trained eightbr / people over the last year and will likely train another eight in the nextbr / fiscal year, says Amanda Feinstein, the agency's project director forbr / work-force development.br / /pP"They're tutoring and mentoring one person at a time," Feinstein says.br / "It's small. We expect it to be—small and intensive for the right type ofbr / person." /p pMother, Daughter Spiral Into Homelessnessbr / /pPBerkeley, 1993. Tiny spent three days in jail for driving without abr / license, having too many unpaid parking tickets, no registration for thebr / car in which she and Dee were living, and failure to appear on similarbr / earlier charges—what she now refers to as crimes of poverty.br / /pPShe was eventually sentenced to hundreds of hours of community service,br / which she worked off at a small nonprofit called Community Defense Inc.br / Osha Neumann, who runs the organization, asked her what she wanted to do.br / Survive. He asked her what she knew how to do. Write. Had there been abr / Media Studies Program at the time, Tiny would have been a perfectbr / candidate.br / /pP"She was struggling at that point to just keep it together and needingbr / every moment of her time to try and survive with her mom," Neumannbr / recalls. "I said, 'I tell you what. Why don't you do that writing as yourbr / community service for us?" We do advocacy for homeless people. She wrotebr / this article. I read it and realized that this is a really good writer."br / /pPA surprisingly good writer for a young woman who had dropped out ofbr / school in the sixth grade as she and her mother spiraled intobr / homelessness. Dee was a social worker who lost her job, became disabledbr / and then couldn't work. Their savings ran out in three to four months. Deebr / was an orphan who had been raised in a series of foster homes andbr / institutions. Tiny's father was long gone. They had no money and nobr / family.br / /pPThey were evicted 21 times in Los Angeles and Oakland, Dee says,br / recalling a time in which they had just enough money to get an apartmentbr / but never enough to pay the rent for long. Each time their welcome wouldbr / wear out, they would look for another temporary home. Lisa, too young tobr / have a bad credit rating, would do the hard part. "I would dress Lisa in abr / dress and gloves at 13, say she was 18 or 20, and she'd get us anbr / apartment," Dee says. "We'd stay as long as we could and save enough moneybr / to get another apartment. We moved up here, and it wasn't much better."br / /pPTiny's first article was about being poor, and it was published in anbr / East Bay alternative paper, an event that became a turning point. "Notbr / only was I heard as a writer and an artist," she says, "but I was heardbr / about this."br / /pPStanding in front of the magazine rack at Cody's Books in Berkeley onebr / day, she realized there were no publications that talked about the livesbr / of poor people—the kind of revelation that would happen only to a personbr / with little interest in advertising revenues.br / /pPSo, Tiny got together a small group of financially stressed people withbr / artistic or literary bents to meet each month and figure out "how to makebr / literary art out of our lives." With the help of a group of artistbr / friends, she raised some seed money and POOR was born. One Theme Per Issuebr / /pPVol. 1 of the intentionally glossy, almost-annual magazine came out inbr / 1996.br / /pPVol. 4 hit bookstores in April. Each edition explores a singlebr / theme—"Homefulness", "Hellthcare", "Work", "Mothers"—through art,br / fiction, poetry and first-person narrative. Each is an effort to define,br / and suggest solutions for, the obstacles facing poor people. The writersbr / are poor people. The artists are poor people. The experts are poor people.br / /pPLike the Web site, which is updated weekly, the magazine has a mix ofbr / harrowing accounts of life on the street and sad tales about the lengthsbr / to which men and women are pushed simply to "Survive." In these pages, thebr / word is often capitalized, a sacred verb, a statement.br / /pPThe journalism training program for welfare recipients evolved out ofbr / the "Work" issue and Tiny's own experiences on welfare in the years afterbr / the Clinton administration passed welfare reform legislation. It was 1998,br / and San Francisco had implemented its Personally Assisted Employmentbr / Specialist program to move men and women from welfare to work in partbr / through skills assessment and counseling.br / /pPTiny was told on several occasions that she would make a fabulousbr / receptionist. She had told various job counselors that she really wantedbr / to be a reporter or writer and that, although she lacked formal education,br / she would be interested in pursuing a college degree program. Thebr / response, she wrote in an article eventually published onbr / Poor-NewsNetwork, was that given her lack of education, earning a degreebr / would take too long.br / /pP"'And besides, is that really a practical career choice for someone inbr / your position?' I don't know ... was it?" she wrote. "My mother and I werebr / endlessly battling homelessness—we were deeply entrenched in thebr / so-called cycle of poverty ... one crisis snowballing into the next untilbr / you are never really able to fix any one problem, because you are justbr / catching the last one, barely."br / /pPWhile still receiving welfare herself and working on POOR Magazine,br / Tiny dreamed up her own welfare-to-work program, which eventually wasbr / funded by the San Francisco Department of Human Services. At its heart arebr / the mother-daughter team's strong beliefs about what is wrong with welfarebr / today.br / /pPIt is impossible, they say, for extremely poor people--especially thosebr / grappling with homelessness, substance abuse, mental illness—to learn anybr / really useful skill in the short time most government training programsbr / allow. That same government, they say, shoves poor people into any jobbr / that comes along just to get them off of welfare, whether there's a futurebr / in it or not.br / /pPTheir welfare-to-work program includes a lot of basics: reporting,br / writing, grammar, graphic arts, Internet design, desktop publishing. Andbr / some more advanced skills, such as investigative and advocacy journalismbr / with a focus on race and class.br / /pPAlong the way, they lecture daily on what they call "povertybr / scholarship"—the belief that poor people who have lived it are experts inbr / it. And they insist that their students write from their own experiences,br / acknowledge their own homelessness, banish their own shame.br / /pPFor Dee, this means using the word "I".br / /pP"Some write in the third person," she complains. "They don't have thebr / confidence to tell their story. They write about poor people as if theybr / weren't one of them. We want to hear their voice.... We teach first-personbr / narrative rather than poverty voyeurism—people from the outside writingbr / about being poor." 'Povery Voyeurism' by Mainstream Pressbr / /pPAlan Weil of the Urban Institute, a liberal Washington think tank,br / believes that the folks at POOR and the Media Studies Program are rightbr / about a lot of things, among them that most states emphasize moving peoplebr / from welfare to work as quickly as possible, "which means [take] the firstbr / job you can find."br / /pP"I think they're right in a different way, which is that our society'sbr / attention to the reality of life for poor people is very shallow," Weilbr / says. "If they can offer a more complete picture of that life, then theybr / are doing something that not really anyone else is doing."br / /pPMost publications put out by poor and homeless people—among them thebr / 40 members of the North American Street Newspaper Assn.—share a single,br / central goal: reframing the news, because their staff members believe thatbr / the mainstream media either patronize or ignore poor people.br / /pPTo Dee, it is "poverty voyeurism". Chance Martin, editor of iStreetbr / Sheet/i in San Francisco, argues that stories about poor and homeless peoplebr / in the traditional press tend to be formulaic, with the ones that actuallybr / talk to the homeless as "the most offensive".br / /pP"They serve to reinforce the personal deficit model," which says thatbr / poor people are broken and need to be fixed, argues Martin, who is on thebr / executive committee of the newspaper association.br / /pPGray, Gray-Garcia and Martin argue that such a model ignores thebr / complexities of lives lived in poverty. The mainstream media, they say,br / have a responsibility to report those lives fully—whether or not poorbr / people vote, shop or take vacations—and that everyone from employers andbr / teachers to legislators would benefit.br / /pPThe personal deficit model, they say, emphasizes the failures in poorbr / people's lives, instead of their tenacious coping. It ignores the factbr / that those living on the edge might be late for work because old carsbr / break down and buses are unreliable, not because of slovenliness. Thatbr / poor parents might not show up for parent-teacher conferences because theybr / have multiple minimum-wage jobs, not because they don't care.br / /pPWhat about the stories that don't talk to the poor but simply talkbr / about them? In a January report, the Harvard Family Research Projectbr / evaluated more than 2,000 articles on health care and welfare issues frombr / 29 electronic and print sources between 1999 and 2000.br / /pPThe most frequent welfare issues discussed included job training andbr / declining caseloads. The media's most common sources were researchers andbr / policymakers, the project reported, but current and former welfarebr / recipients were among the "sources rarely or not used".br / /pPShawn Fremstad, a senior policy analyst with the Center on Budget andbr / Policy Priorities in Washington, looks at the Harvard report as evidencebr / that the media need to improve their coverage of poverty. If POOR's Mediabr / Studies Program succeeds, he figures, it can be only a positive thing bothbr / for its students and American readers.br / /pP"The tricky part," he says, "is to what extent can this deliver inbr / terms of someone ending up in a job in the journalism field?" /p pManybr / Struggles for Program Participantsbr / /pPOn a purely philosophical level, the people in the program believe thatbr / any time a poor person speaks out in print, it is a small success in itsbr / own way. On a more practical level, the program is probably too young tobr / judge. It has been funded for only one full year, and its students facebr / many hurdles. Some are struggling with homelessness, some mental illness,br / some substance abuse and past incarceration. They have a lot to learnbr / about work and journalism.br / /pPIn this second year of their publicly funded effort, Dee and Tiny wantbr / taxpayers to shell out $8,600 to cover training costs for each futurebr / journalist in the program. And then they want those fledgling reporters,br / photographers and graphic artists to get paid $15 an hour, 40 hours abr / week, for a year as apprentices.br / /pPFeinstein didn't bite for the whole package; it is, after all, abr / Cadillac request from a government with a used-Hyundai budget. But Sanbr / Francisco funded them once and will likely fund them again at some level.br / Feinstein believes the Media Studies Program offers "just the start somebr / people may need."br / /pPBenny Joyner, 51, pen name Kaponda, was the star graduate of the Mediabr / Studies Program's maiden year. POOR taught this former legal secretary andbr / former prison inmate how to write a story, and he learned well.br / /pPFor various POOR publications, Joyner has written about California'sbr / "three strikes" law and covered a recent demonstration against lodgingbr / laws that forbid sleeping outside in public places.br / /pPAnd now he has job writing for the iSan Francisco Bay View/i, a smallbr / community paper focusing on the Bay Area's African American population. Hebr / has written about environmental justice, police issues and a local blackbr / micro-radio station. His biggest accomplishment? Probably the story, basedbr / on recent census data, about how San Francisco's black population hasbr / dropped 23% in the last decade. Joyner's story came out May 29. The Sanbr / Francisco Chronicle followed Joyner two weeks later.br / /pPJoyner is happy; his new boss is delighted.br / /pP"This is not fluff, not society news, not feel-good news," says Marybr / Ratcliff, editor of the iBay View/i. "This is real, important hard news, andbr / we're just thrilled.... We really need good news coverage. Benny is ourbr / lifeline." /p pBy: Maria L. LA Gangabr / br /TIMES STAFF WRITER/p p/p/abr/p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p