Poverty is over, if you want it

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Poverty is over, if you want it
by Fran Quigley Dec 31, 2003

Dreaming of a new abolitionist movement

Once again, it’s been a rough year for many Americans. One out of every six children lives in poverty, far above the rate in other advanced countries. Over the course of 2003, millions of Americans found themselves homeless. The need for emergency food and shelter far exceeded the supply. Within a few miles — or even a few blocks — from where you read this, a child sits hungry and cold in a decrepit, drafty home. His mom or dad likely is away, working one of their two or three low-wage jobs.

Anti-slavery abolitionists of the 19th century, like anti-poverty advocates of the 21st century, were dismissed as powerless and unrealistic fringe figures.

In a nation of historically unsurpassed wealth and power, we can do better than this. Much better. That’s the message from the dreamers. The dreamers remind us that we can get so focused on mitigating the offensive actions of the Bush Administration — and the “end of welfare as we know it” Clinton Administration before it — that we neglect to articulate an alternative vision of our own. We have written about some of the dreamers this year: the good folks fighting for a living wage ordinance, campaign finance reform, fairer taxes and environmental protections. Let me introduce you to two I haven’t written about, mostly because I can’t pretend to journalistic non-bias when it comes to this pair. One is Florence Roisman, a professor at IU Law-Indianapolis, and a dear friend. The other is Bill Quigley, a professor at Loyola Law School in New Orleans. He’s a dear friend, too, who also happens to be my eldest brother. Both Florence and Bill have spent their lives engaged in fierce combat against poverty. Florence is one of the country’s leading advocates for affordable housing. Bill has represented advocates for a living wage, lead poisoning victims and opponents of the shameful School of the Americas. Now, Florence and Bill are both articulating a vision of how we can get beyond just reacting to abuses and move toward real economic justice. Last summer, in one of those rare speeches so stirring that it resonates long after the microphone has been carted away, Florence lay down the gauntlet. In a keynote speech to the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, Florence told the audience of public interest lawyers that “it is your responsibility to end poverty — to attack and eliminate the structures that keep people in the United States poor.” In that speech, and in an earlier article entitled “The Lawyer As Abolitionist,” Florence insisted that there is no inevitability about poverty, and that advocates need to accept nothing less than good education, jobs, health care and housing for all. Her charge is usually directed to an audience of lawyers. Among other actions, Florence encourages lawsuits to strike down the inequity of large housing tax breaks to wealthy homeowners and the comparative pittance to help the poor. But she rightly points out that courts are also quite responsive to other forms of advocacy that help shape what we think is possible. Which is where Bill comes in, reciting the amazing fact that 45 million people in this country are working or looking for work, but still make less than poverty wages. “Historically, the first response to poverty has been to advise the poor to work,” he writes in his book, Ending Poverty As We Know It (Temple University Press, 2003). “But if the poor are already working or cannot find a job, what’s the next response?” Bill offers his answer, as simple as it is bold: We need to amend the U.S. Constitution to include a guaranteed right to a job at a living wage. The Protestant work-ethic American-dream moral foundation for such a proposal is inarguable. So Bill spends much of his book refuting the inevitable “it’s a nice idea, but ...” counter-arguments. To the notion that a job guarantee would play havoc with the so-called free market, Bill replies that it is naïve to think the U.S. market is free to begin with. Corporations spend millions manipulating Congress and state legislatures to create the tax and regulatory atmosphere most advantageous for their businesses, he points out. A jobs-at-living-wage constitutional amendment would provide the working poor with some of the same market protections that, say, Pfizer just got with the recent Medicare bill. As for cost, Bill concedes that a full-employment plan of public jobs and incentives for private hiring is a billion-dollar-plus proposition. But our current system of propping up underpaid and jobless households is hugely expensive, too. Bill’s most compelling argument relies on historical precedent. Full employment at living wages has been proposed in the U.S. many times before, most eloquently by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1937, FDR said that our nation “should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied working men and women a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” Indeed, for two folks so focused on the future, Florence and Bill spend a lot of time reminding us that our past justifies our dreams. Florence notes that anti-slavery abolitionists of the 19th century, like anti-poverty advocates of the 21st century, were dismissed as powerless and unrealistic fringe figures. So the dreamers are in good company, both in noble spirit and in the prospect for ultimate success. “To end poverty in the United States almost certainly will be easier than it was to end human slavery here,” Florence says. At the start of this century, many will say that bringing an end to U.S. poverty is unrealistic. But Florence and Bill remind us what was thought unrealistic at the start of the last century. One hundred years ago, there were no child labor laws, no minimum wage, no anti-discrimination laws. Social Security and Medicare were unheard of. “These ideas were called unrealistic, idealistic, impractical and impossible,” Bill writes. “But, after thinking about it, Americans decided that getting government involved to help out was the right thing to do.” It’s the right thing to do now, too. So, at year’s end, let’s indulge ourselves in a little time to dream. To dream of a country where our huge wealth is shared, if not totally equally, enough so that we erase the shameful specter of over-indulgent multimillionaires in a land where so many are homeless and hungry. Then, once we dream a bit, let’s get back to work. For, as Florence said, quoting one leader of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, “All revolutions are impossible until they happen. Then they become inevitable.” To read a copy of Florence Roisman’s speech, log on to www.healthlaw.org/pubs/courtwatch/roisman.pdf. For more information about Bill Quigley’s book, see www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1675_reg.html.

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