Sunday, August 9, 2009

Criminalizing poverty

Barbara Ehrenreich -- author of 20 books, including the bestseller "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America" -- has a piece in The New York Times today on the criminalization of poverty. She writes:
The pattern is to curtail financing for services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement: starve school and public transportation budgets, then make truancy illegal. Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Be sure to harass street vendors when there are few other opportunities for employment. The experience of the poor, and especially poor minorities, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks.
Despite much public rhetoric to the contrary, class is a large and often determining factor in many aspects of American life. Not only are the poor politically powerless, but they are vilified as being lazy, shiftless and stupid. Though frequently the subject of anecdotes that conclude they are scamming the system, most people on the bottom of the economic ladder are desperate to free themselves from their circumstances. When, as a child, I was sent to the corner store with food stamps I felt humiliated by the experience, keeping the paper coupons hidden in my pocket and only approaching the counter when I thought the fewest people would see me.

There's a famous quotation from French Nobel Prize winner Anatole France:
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.
The statement is, of course, ironic, but amazingly the Ehrenreich story points out that an American local public official, recently and without irony, said, “If you’re lying on a sidewalk, whether you’re homeless or a millionaire, you’re in violation of the ordinance.”

8 comments:

N.starluna said...

I think what disturbs me most is the criminalizing of food sharing. Reminds me of how the British criminalized making salt in India outside of state sanctioned companies.

Anonymous said...

How can the poor be powerless when the government refuses to enforce its immigration laws for fear of alienating a voting block?

N.starluna said...

Anonymous - can you clarify - what does that have to do with the price of beans in Modesto?

Anonymous said...

The premise that poor people are powereless (including politically powerless) is false. The power that illegal immigrants and their allies have over elected officials in the US is a clear example of that.

Anonymous said...

There are significant benefits that only poor people are entitled to (e.g., food, health care, and housing).

How is this powerless?

N.starluna said...

Anonymous - I'm still not clear how you connected homelessness and poverty to immigrants.

Anonymous said...

Nothing about having to apply for or accept food stamps or low income housing, etc. makes someone feel powerful. If you ever had to do that, you wouldn't say such things!

Anonymous said...

I think Cyndi Lauper said it best: "money changes everything "