The Farm Bill

[lydy]

In 1981, I was 19 years old. I was living alone in a boarding house in Iowa City. I had been utterly unable to find a job of any kind whatsoever. The joke was that you had to have a master's degree to wait tables part-time, and be ABD to wait tables full time. McDonald's was only requiring a BA and a 4.0 GPA.

My support system consisted of my boyfriend, who was in college 50 miles away. My parents had disowned me. My other friends were college students, poor, and wrapped up in their own lives. I owed my landlord a truly astounding amount of money. The only reason he didn't evict me was because he was a terrible book keeper, and had no idea how much I owed him.

Usually, when I tell this story, I say that I had run out of food. This is not precisely correct. Life, as usual, is a bit messier than neat stories we like to tell about ourselves. I had two cans of soup, one of which I liked, and one of which I hated passionately, and about a half a pound of uncooked rice. I had been eating rice steadily for about a year at this point, sometimes varied with pasta. Just contemplating eating the soup I didn't like made me nauseous. On the other hand, I couldn't very well eat the soup I liked, because then I would have no food in the house. For reasons I no longer remember, I didn't really think of the rice as food. My solution to this dilemma was to not eat. At all.

It is relevant that I was very frightened, very alone, very lonely, depressed, and not completely in my right mind from stress with my family and my boyfriend. But it is also notable that what I had available to me was about 400 calories of food in the form of soup, and possibly another 400 or 600 calories of rice. Any way you slice it, that isn't even a full day's normal caloric intake. And I had no prospects of acquiring more. I had, I think thirty-five cents. Maybe. And no way to gain more money. So in a very real sense, it didn't matter if I ate the food today or not. It wasn't like I could just wait until the end of the month, and then there would be more money, more food, more options, more choice. I was at the end of absolutely everything. I was at the end of myself. So I didn't eat for three days.

Eventually, I started thinking about suicide. I spent quite some time wondering if I broke the plastic on the safety razor to expose the razor more fully, would I be able to actually kill myself. But, you know, what if I failed? There would be doctor's bills, which I couldn't afford. And worse, I'd look like a fool to all my friends. And what if I succeeded? Was that really what I wanted? Did I want to be dead, or did I just want to not be in the situation I was in? In all honesty, I was unable to answer that question.

Eventually, at about two in the morning, I took my loose change, walked over to Currier Dorm, went to the pay phone, and called the suicide hotline. A very nice gentleman talked to me. For a long time. At some point, the phone system cut me off. I became hysterical, weeping and pounding on the machine. A security guard came by to see what the ruckus was. I attempted to explain. I have no idea what I said, but eventually he reached into his pockets and pulled out some spare change and spilled it onto the counter. This is an act of kindness I remember vividly, thirty years later. The sound of the change on the metal counter. His dubious look, like he had no idea how to deal with this crazy teen-ager, but there was also the sense that he was doing his best. He went away. I called the crisis line back.

After more talk to the very nice young man at the crisis line, he sad, "You know, I really can't do too much about your parents or your boyfriend, but you know, it's four a.m. right now. The food bank opens at eight a.m. If you can wait just four hours, you can have some free food."

"Free food?" I said, utterly bewildered. It was as if he were speaking Swahili.

"Free food," he said, firmly.

I thought about this for long while. "Free food?" I asked again, tentatively.

"Free food," he repeated.

I thought for a long while more. Finally I said, carefully, as if trying to repeat a very complex rhyme, "Free food."

"Yes. Free food. Four hours. Can you wait that long?"

"Free food," I agreed.

Do you remember 1981? Ronald Reagan, the Evil Empire, Nuclear Winter, Mutually Assured Destruction, Launch on Warning? It was 1981. Bright and early, eight a.m. on the dot, I showed up at the food shelf. They explained the rules. I was given a grocery bag, and was permitted to fill it with whatever they had in their cupboards. In fact, since the bag they gave me was a little undersized, they gave me two. I was told that I could just pick and choose anything that was there. A vast array of canned and dry goods stared at me from metal cupboards. It felt to me as if all the wealth of Persia had been laid before me on brilliant carpets, awaiting my choice. Oatmeal seemed as beautiful and rich as rubies, that morning.

After I filled my bags, the receptionist, a scary battle-axe of a woman, iron-grey hair, heavy-set, with a permanent scowl, growled at me, "Are you on food stamps?"

"Um, no," I squeaked, terrified of her.

"Why not?" She had a growl that a tiger would envy.

"Um, too proud?" I suggested, not really sure. It sounded stupid to say that I had never considered that it might even be possible.

"Do you pay taxes?" she demanded, still in that gruff, authoritarian voice that I found so frightening.

"Um, when I have a job," I told her, very earnestly. I was very, very earnest at that age.

"It's not just for bombs, you know," she said in the most disgusted voice I'd ever heard. "You. You have an appointment at Johnson County Social Services at 10:30 this morning. They'll set you up on food stamps.'

"Thank you," I squeaked, again, utterly confused.

"Do you know where they are?" No, I didn't. She told me. "Do you have bus fare?" No, I didn't. "Here," she growled, and handed me four bus tickets. "Don't forget to go."

Which is how I ended up on food stamps. In 1981, a single person got $70 a month. It was a great bounty. But more importantly, it changed my life. It removed a very real, very persistent, and almost overwhelming fear. Eating on a regular basis also helped ameliorate (although obviously not cure) my depression. It gave me confidence and courage. It let me socialize with my friends again, because I was no longer constantly on guard against trying to beg from them. It is actually almost impossible to underestimate how huge a change this was in my life. It was the first step forward to being in charge of, and responsible for myself. It also got me into the system. I was referred to CETA, which was a jobs program for people between the ages of 18 and 25. It, like food stamps, worked exactly as it should. It got me on the job training, which made me valuable to my employer, which got me full-time employment (temporarily defining full-time as 40 hours a week with no benefits), which got me the experience to get a better job with the county, and so forth. For me, food stamps were transformative. There are ways in which it makes sense to look at my life before and after food stamps.

So, that brings me to the Farm Bill. Which the fucking Republicans want to pass without Food Stamps. A lot of very intelligent commentary has been written on how the Farm Bill has always been a compromise bill, wherein Food Stamps are traded for support for agribusiness, and how this compromise is breaking down. But you know, I don't feel intelligent or reasoned or informative on the topic. What I feel is fury and betrayal. I know, first hand, real live personal, how utterly and vastly important being able to eat can be. In the end, it seems to me that the fucking Republicans are saying that they wish I had died all those years ago, when I had run to the end of myself. It's hard not to take it personally.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know about the Republicans in Congress, but speaking as an individual who supports his local food bank, gives $20+ to every indigent I meet in Seattle, and spends time trying to help indigents get work and get back on their feet, I'd have to say, "No, that's not what Republicans mean when they vote against food stamps. They are just saying that it's better for people to help each other directly than to funnel everything through the Washington bureaucracy first."

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the "people helping each other directly" doesn't come anywhere close to meeting the need. Hell, all of the people helping each other directly + all of the faith-based folks + all of the nonprofits + all of the government assistance doesn't meet it. And that government assistance? Often FUNDS two of the other three - yes, even faith-based organizations often get government funding to help them keep their doors open. Your local food bank? No doubt received government funding either directly or indirectly (I say that because many folks confuse food banks with food pantries, and the two are not alike), and likely also received heavy discounts on some surplus government food.

So no, it is NOT better for "people to help each other directly than to do it some other way." It takes ALL of those different ways working together to even stand a chance at meeting the needs of our communities.

[pnh.livejournal.com]

As most people with any common sense know perfectly well. Assess the truthfulness of above extraordinary claims accordingly.

Really worn out by being expected to believe shit is Shinola because someone asserts it's so with minimal politeness. Shit is still shit.

[(Anonymous)]

Very well said. And since our communities are so segregated, most of the people who would rely on each other as a safety net, are already struggling too much to help each other significantly.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

You know, that's actually a very good point. A sad one, but a good one. In addition, some populations are not comfortable going to churches for assistance - nonprofits and social services are often their only place of safety.

The other thing direct assistance doesn't provide is case management - which is often absolutely vital to help the person with getting out of the situation they are in.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

The other thing about this is that if people help each other directly, the people helped cannot keep their dignity. They must beg for help. Even if you were right and this met all their needs, they've had to literally beg to get the help. A $20 handout is much less use than $70 worth of stamps, because the $70 is reliable, countable on, and not humiliating. You apply for the stamps. You beg for the money. It's possible to be on welfare and think "Well, I paid tax, when I get a job I will pay tax again, now I am accepting money from the community pool, when I get a job I will be paying back in" -- just as Lydy says here. It's not possible to beg without despising and humiliating yourself.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

I don't want to argue with you in lydy's journal, where she is being so clear, honest, and on point. I just suggest you look up the last ten things Republicans in Congress have said about food stamps. You should know about them; they're running your country.

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

If that were true, then the Republicans in Congress, and their wealthy patrons, would not be hoarding their personal money like misers. They would be engaging in real patronage -- endowing many institutions (see Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockafeller) and using their wealth and privilege to improve the conditions of the nation. Instead, as I said, they are misers who resent the very population that has created their opportunity.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Which is a way to fob off the mutual responsibilities we have to each other, and hope some magic happens. Food Stamps exist because the local number of good samaritans weren't (and can never be) equal to the need; esp. when something like the present situation is at hand.

So whatever rhetoric they use to cover it up, when they vote against food stamps it's because they don't care if people starve. I hope you really are ridiculously well off (to afford $20 to "every indigent [you] meet"), and unusually generous (to dole it out). What I suspect is you are just blind to how many people are truly hungry; that the number too proud to beg in the street; who look well off; though they are slowly starving, is more than you like to think about; and that the Republican Party thinks the rich are more deserving than the poor is something you refuse to consider; choosing to listen to their words, than to look at their fruits (by which ye shall know them).

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

There's a fantasy that in the past before FDR, communities and individuals did this all out of the graciousness of their hearts. Unfortunately, that's a fantasy. I spend time reading old newspapers from a rural county in Virginia and there was Home Relief and the Poor Farm. All the welfare was at the county level, but it was still coming out of taxes and not voluntary. No voluntary charity system has ever worked -- the Catholic Church was in the days when it was running the charities was a branch of the government that took 10% of everyone's income and the Islamic traditional system was equally a state enforced tax rather than charitable donations.

I'm on a Social Security pension and can't afford to live in the US unless I took the additional benefits.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I would never denigrate the great power of individual kindness. Random acts of charity are wonderful and important. But they cannot do what food stamps did for me. They gave me back my future.

When you are that low on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, when you don't know when or even if you will eat again, you stop planning for the future. It's not that you, or at least I, spent all my time wondering about where my next meal was coming from. In general, I tried not to think about it at all. I had done all the things I knew how to do to arrange for food to happen on a regular basis. It had all failed. So now everything was in the wind. It was all up to chance. Maybe a friend would buy me dinner. Maybe I'd find a dollar bill in the street. Maybe I wouldn't eat. But planning, there was no planning. Once I had a guaranteed amount per month coming in, once I _knew_ with certainty I could eat, suddenly, I had my life back. I could access my future again. I could plan.

In point of fact, as our economic system is currently constituted, this type of stability is best supplied by institutions. Typically, by a corporation paying something at least resembling a living wage in exchange for labor. Less commonly, the government stepping in to provide this function for people who are unable to access that part of economic system. There are still some people who are entirely dependent on an individual for their daily needs. But the most common sort, housewives (househusbands) who do not work outside the home, still most usually have a contract to help provide some stability. We call this marriage, but it is at its root a civil contract. The exact nature of that contract is changing as the economic roles of women change. Most of these changes are for the good. But there is still a very real, contractual relationship. The other type of person most commonly entirely dependent upon the largesse of a private party are children. However, again, there is strong law which requires that their daily needs be met daily. All children are at least theoretically attached, legally, so some parent or guardian who is, by law, required to provide food, shelter, education, and health care.

Some people do thrive in less certain circumstances. But the truth is, they are rare. Most people in uncertain circumstances, dependent upon random acts of charity, have that uncertainty ricochet through their lives causing chaos. A dependable source of food provides a floor, a place to stand, a way forward. A kind man on the street who had given me $70 would not have had anything like the same effect. Yes, I would have been able to eat for a month. But it is just the problem of the two cans of soup writ large. It puts the end a little farther away, but it doesn't resolve the issue. It doesn't offer a way forward. At best, it provides a holding pattern over the sea of chaos.

[jenny-islander.livejournal.com]

I looked up the math a while ago after some pundit or other was on the air proclaiming that if "the churches" took over food aid, then nobody would need government money for food ever. Even expanding "the churches" to mean all organized congregations of whatever religion, that still means a burden of thousands of dollars per churchgoing adult per year. And this assumes that nobody in any congregation anywhere in the U.S. is in need of food aid themselves--that nobody is disabled, nobody is too old to work, nobody is facing more month than money.

Do you have thousands of dollars to put into your local food bank? I don't.

How much does government food aid cost each taxpayer right now? About as much as a family pizza party. That's per year.

I give as much as I can to a local food bank because I looked up the programs--WIC, SNAP, CSFP, TEFAP--back when it looked as though the main earner in our family was going to lose his job due to one company devouring another. This was before the last round of cuts. Back then, all of these programs together were just barely enough to keep a family healthy. Since the cuts, food banks are more important than ever. But private aid cannot replace government buying power.

[(Anonymous)]

1. Individual giving and government programs are not mutually exclusive;
2. It's nice to think about people in need being helped by people who can and want to - but I have been in the writer's situation, and I sure as hell wouldn't want to COUNT on individuals helping out. That fear she talked about? The absolute, bone-deep terror, that you're going to die, and there is NO safety net - not your family, not your friends; you can't find a job to save your life, literally - that awful, dehumanizing fear?

That goes right out the window if you're just hoping some kind person will throw you a dollar here and there. We need government; we need to help our poor and helpless, or we have no right to call ourselves a civilized society.

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

I also support my local food bank. I give where I can, although not as much as I wish I could since I'm not that well-off myself. I work in my local soup kitchen. Every day at my library I help connect unemployed people with the resources that they need to get jobs, whether by helping them with their resumes and applications, pointing them towards job sites, or giving them tips on places that they can go to get help improving their skills to become more hireable.

I live in a poor county next to one of the poorest counties in the Southeast US. As the recession came in, that county's factories shut down, and suddenly 1 in 4 people there were unemployed, and had no prospect of employment because there were no jobs to be had in our area and no money to move to where the very few jobs could be found. The ones who were left were working low-end retail jobs or employed by the school system... and the school system was rapidly going bankrupt without a tax base to provide them with funding. Our county was also hurting, because a lot of our residents worked in the same factories.

So, who exactly would you expect to pick up the slack in that situation? The retail workers and janitors who were barely scraping by before the recession hit, fuel prices went through the roof, and food costs followed suit? The small business owners who suddenly had no customers? The churches that were stretched to the limit just trying to keep their own parishioners from starving to death or losing their homes? They're barely making it themselves, and literally cannot afford to support others on the side - and because they're so close to the edge themselves, they're less likely to try. "Charity begins at home" after all.

Yeah, there's some people who game the system. There's some people who have never had a job in their lives, and will do their best to keep it that way. But there is a satisfaction that comes from working hard and getting your paycheck at the end of the day/week/month, a sense of dignity and independence that most people crave. Given the chance, all of the many people I've met who are unemployed, or on welfare or other forms of social assistance would love to go to work and never again have to ask for anyone's help feeding themselves or their families.

[contrafrutexus.livejournal.com]

Some have difficulty distinguishing between ill-will and good will misinformed by false perception---it is possible to be a generally good person, want what's best for many people, including (say) that none of them starve, and still come to conclusions about policy that, if put into effect, would result in precisely not that situation. Conservatives and Libertarians say that about us on the Left all the time, at least if they'll allow as we're not all Puuuuuuurrrrre Eeeeeevyilllll or (to be redundant) female in body xor mind; it's actually even more irritating to me when people of the Left on my side make the same error, which I'll state as: My views are obviously right and I understand all relevant facts, therefore my opponent is either insane, stupid, or evil.

It's very comforting, because it means that one's own conclusions need not ever be in question, given one's own obviously good intentions and level of understanding...so I try to avoid it as an occasion of mental laziness. On a purely practical level, it is also very bad for strategy, as failure to really understand your opponents [INSERT Sun Tzu reference]...I got very irritated in 2001-2002 repeatedly hearing that Islamist terrorists were 'doing it for the 72 virgins' when they were much, much, more dangerous than that: they were doing it because it seemed like the most right and apt and just thing in the whole world to do. (I also think Bill Maher's point about their not being 'cowards' is useful; planning against cowards is easy, real terrorists are tougher.)

So I, for one, don't think that's what Republicans and Libratarians 'want' the poor to starve, for the most part---there is a small minority who'd be willing to admit that they'd like to see useless eaters go to the wall, but most believe that their ideas would result in everyone both freer and at least adequately fed. They ignore or are ignorant of that what they want is very much what we had, it proved inadequate to task, and so we tried something else---certain Liberal politicians in Britain toward the end of the Nineteenth Century personally made the change from laissez-fairies to Bolshevist scum (that is, very conservative social-democrats). Be that last as it may: the point is, we developed these systems for reasons, and unless things have changed very much, there's no reason to assume that those reason as are now invalid. Failure to understand that is why so many on the Right end up believing in conspiracy theories, since if good and sane and reasonable people didn't come up with the Welfare State, it must have been dropped on us from High Orbit by Space Masons with hooked probosces.

Joke but true: this is a very conservative argument.


I do not question their good will and yours, though I am bothered by a level of incuriosity or faith in the niceness of the Universe that allows such a belief to stand unwavering...be that as it may: I don't think they or you are evil or stupid or insane; just dead wrong.