Blog Day of Action: Poverty

When you hear the word "poverty," what do you think about?

Me? The images conjured up in my head are usually of dusty countries, where children with fly-encrusted eyes sport weirdly bulging bellies and women haul water in jugs from dingy wells miles away from their ramshackle huts.

And hey, we wouldn't be wrong. It's incredibly important to recognize and try to do something about that kind of extreme, abject poverty that exists for far too many people in this world.

But in honor of today's Blog Day of Action focusing on poverty, and since my blog is but a small, local blog, I want to focus on the kind of poverty that all-too-often goes overlooked: the kind that exists in our own backyards, right here in Wisconsin.

Statically, Wisconsin ranks 33rd highest in the nation when it comes to poverty, with a rate of 10.9% (including 14% of children). In human terms, that means that somewhere around 600,000 people in this state live in poverty, and the trend, unfortunately, seems to be toward things getting worse.

We're all feeling the increasing pinch of the credit crunch and general economic downturn. Those of us who were already living on the very edge, however, are being pushed into the abyss by this downturn in fortunes. Second Harvest, an excellent food pantry that serves 16 counties in southern Wisconsin, reports an significant increase in the number of individuals and families served by its programs over the last few years. This coupled with the unfortunate decrease in the amount of food being donated from corporations are both troubling signs of the times.

While poverty has been a pressing issue for a long, long time, things certainly seem to be getting worse for a wider range of people these days. Now more than ever, perhaps, it is important to take a hard look at our policies and programs, to see what we can and should be doing better to ensure that fewer (or preferably, none at all) people end up falling below the poverty line, and to help raise up those folks who are already there.

It will take a carefully considered balance between government and community programs to do this, but it's possible.

While we take time to consider the many and varied root causes of poverty--things like educational quality and opportunities, job availability and wages, culture, etc.--we must also be sure to tend to the immediate needs of those most at risk.

Organizations like Second Harvest and the Wisconsin Community Action Program Association (WISCAP) are crucial, and I urge you to either donate food, time, or other resources to help bolster their efforts. WISCAP especially provides a good example of the kind of work that helps lift people out of poverty by working toward job training and creation, fostering small businesses, providing educational opportunities for young and old, developing and maintaining affordable housing, and even helping to weatherize homes in order to make them more energy efficient (and therefore lower cost).

Poverty, whether directly or indirectly, effects us all - and it benefits us all to do what we can to lessen and/or eradicate it. In a country as wealthy as ours, there is no excuse for us to allow such large swaths of our community to live without basic resources. No one should have to choose between food and heating bills, or medicine and rent. It will take a mixture of personal responsibility, community action, and government assistance to make things better. The payoffs will be many: a more productive and educated workforce, lower health care costs, potentially lower crime rates, healthier people and families, etc.

We simply cannot afford to ignore the problems that exist all around us. Clearly there are deep divisions over and misunderstandings about poverty even in seemingly well-off and liberal Madison, where debates over homelessness have recently turned heated. But it's important to take a hard, honest look at ourselves and our communities, and to make good-faith efforts at real improvements. We can't just sweep the problems under the proverbial rug, hoping that they'll just move to other cities or stay quiet enough that we can just walk by without looking.

Today, the Capital Times has two articles dealing with homeless students in our state's public schools, and how, with limited funding, they're trying to address their needs as best they can.

For an excellent, more in-depth look at poverty in Wisconsin, read this report from WISCAP (pdf).

If you want to help, consider a donation to Second Harvest, supporting programs like Porchlight, or helping out with something like the Luke House Community Meals Program. Every little bit helps.

The kids are all right

Addressing the issues of crime and community well-being on the southwest side of Madison, an article in today's Capital Times highlights the progress made and problems still faced since Ald. Thuy Pham-Remmele held a listening session in which some 800 residents showed up to express their concerns. The article does a good job of speaking to the good that's come of Pham-Remmele's recent push to get the city to take notice, but without skirting some of the serious issues that still persist.

Madison is an interesting study when it comes to neighborhoods: certainly there's crime everywhere, but we do, as a city, tend to overlook our more outlying areas. When we talk about Madison to out-of-towners, much of what we discuss involves downtown, and the near west and east sides. Aside from roller derby bouts out at Fast Forward, rarely do we hear or talk about events and activities on the south side of the Beltline.

These places deserve attention, and not just of the negative sort. Because while it would be foolish to entirely overlook the very real problems faced by these communities, it's equally important to recognize the people within them who are working to improve their neighborhoods and to lift up those around them.

One of the recurring themes of the article and of the people interviewed are unsupervised teenagers. The piece opens as a police officer walking his beat on the southwest side talks to local kids and encourages a group of girls to show off their latest dance moves. It goes on to quote that officer, Mike Hanson, as noting that "the core of the problem that has people up in arms is a large number of young people 'engaged in unsupervised, deviant behavior.'"

The sentiment is echoed later by a fellow officer: "Amos also said the biggest underlying issue in the area are those 10- to 17-year-old kids unsupervised by their parents who commit crimes. The Meadowood Shopping Center at Raymond Road and Whitney Way is a particular source of tension."

City officials have offered to lease the space in the Meadowood Shopping Center that used to house Jacobson Bros. Meats & Deli for a community center with a pilot dropoff center for teens and youth.

But Ald. Pham-Remmele has refused to support that use, instead envisioning an intergenerational center where people can meet for a quilting group or bridge club, and where she can hold neighborhood meetings.

Neighborhood kids have already started to benefit from programs like those offered by the Wisconsin Youth Company, which provides a safe place for adolescents to do things like play baseball, basketball, and learn hip-hop dance. And this is precisely the sort of thing these neighborhoods (and most neighborhoods, for that matter) really need. Roving bands of unsupervised children usually mean two things: overburdened or uncaring parents, and a lack of youth activities available.

Teenagers are never going to just sit indoors and stare at walls all day long. Not all of them want to go to the library to read or sit in church all summer, either. Communities need to realize that by offering a variety of activities to their younger citizens, they benefit both the area and the kids themselves. Areas of town with fewer things for kids to do seem to be more prone to higher levels of crime, loitering, and general disturbances. Why? The kids are bored! So they invent things to do, some of which might not be all that wholesome.

Some of this is the result of kids with parents who are either overworked and can't make much time to spend with them (think 3rd shift workers and people with multiple jobs, for example). Some of this is the result of kids with parents who are simply ill-prepared to be parents, expressed either through abuse or neglect. Sometimes it's a combination. The trick is to balance the need for people to take responsibility for themselves and their children, with the need for communities to help provide services and activities to make life a little easier for these folks.

Pham-Remmele's idea of creating an "intergenerational" community center is a good one, but it only seems to address half of the problem. Mix in a place for youth to go for various activities, and that plan might just be a winner.

Kids need attention. Those girls who showed off their moves to the police officer are living proof. And there's nothing wrong with that need, obnoxious as it may express itself at times. Whether through showing off or committing crimes, the kids are trying to tell us something: they're not getting the attention and direction they need at home, so they're looking for it wherever and however they can get it. This isn't a new theory, and I don't pretend to be its originator. But I've seen this play out with my own two eyes, and I can attest to its validity.

Through a combination of social programs (all the way from maternity leave to job skills training to better availability and affordability of daycare programs), respite centers, after school programs, community centers, effective public transportation, and a general desire by those in the neighborhood to work and communicate with each other, we can better address the problems faced in places like Madison's southwest side. It won't be easy, and it will never be a quick fix. But long-term plans and solutions are critical if we hope to affect long-term change. Personally, I think it's worth it for everyone.

In defense of dane101

Full (and very obvious) disclosure: I've been a regular contributor to dane101.com for a couple of years now, and I'm rather fond of the little collaborative-blog-that-could. So it's likely to be with an extra amount of bias that I come to its defense when attacked. Also, I'm exhausted and a little cranky. So, you've been warned.

Over at Fearful Symmetries, Palmer takes aim and fires a series of salvos over dane101's bow. Among some of the many issues he seems to have lately taken with the site are its perceived lack of hard political coverage, the inclusion of personal essays, and a lack of diversity.

I have to give credit where credit is due: we don't always do a good job of covering everything that deserves covering. The Madison area is itself more than a bit diversity hungry when it comes to media, so it's not a huge surprise that dane101 sometimes suffers the same fate. I have to say, though, that compared to some of the more mainstream news and culture outlets, and especially when you consider that dane101 is entirely volunteer run, we do a pretty damn fine job.

If articles are skewed a bit toward the twenty-something crowd, that's because most of the writers we're able to attract are in their twenties. But dane101 is always open to new contributors--young, old, middle-aged, black, white, and everything else. Perhaps the author roster is simply reflective of the demographics of internet-surfing Madison, or maybe it's a chicken-and-egg scenario: if we covered a wider variety of subjects, would a wider variety of authors come out to help? Or vice versa?

My main beef with Palmer's post is that, in all of his complaining, he fails to mention that he, too, once wrote for dane101. And then stopped without warning. That's fine--contributors move on all the time, we have lives, and some have even landed more lucrative (see: paid anything at all) writing gigs. But he doesn't seem to recognize that that's exactly what happens all the time, and that it makes it difficult to maintain consistent coverage of anything when there's such constant turn-over.

In fact, I suspect that much of the griping that I've heard leveled against dane101 is the product of a similar misperception. Are some of the criticisms valid? Absolutely, and any publication/organization worth its salt should be open to them so that they can learn and improve. But I can't help but get a little miffed when said criticism is misplaced, or when it doesn't include possible solutions or offers for help. The people who run dane101 are attempting to provide a community service, to give something back, and to provide information and activities that might be valuable to their friends, neighbors, and strangers. Why tear an effort like that down? What good does that do anyone? Instead, why not attempt to help improve it, or even start your own version that may (or may not) be an improvement?

We need to and are constantly striving to include a wider variety of subject matter and opinions on the site. We could certainly use more contributions from people who are in Dane County but not necessarily in Madison. We could use more of everything, really. So the question becomes, if a site like dane101 is valuable enough for you to read and critique, is it not then valuable enough for you to contribute to in some way?