Our Estimate of the Situation

It's clear that the logic of the current welfare to work scheme is the destruction of the wage structure at its base, pushing living standards down to that of slaves. Certainly, if I'm about profit and I want to hire a plumber, I would want someone at $2.50 an hour who's prepared to work at that level as opposed to paying $18 an hour and upwards. These are just some of the dynamics that are taking place today around workfare and this whole dismantling of the welfare state that we see taking place before our eyes.

What is our approach to this situation? In new days, you gotta do things in new ways, and it's very important that we come to terms with that new day - what is that newness, what is that quality that is different from past periods? Otherwise we find ourselves trying to put as square peg in a round hole, and we get frustrated, because it's just not going to fit. We have to proceed understanding what the situation is, what is new today as opposed to yesterday, and therefore, how do we proceed. In other words, we need to know whether we are dealing with a "teddy bear" or a "grizzly bear." With a teddy bear you use one set of tactics, like embracing it, but if you're dealing with a grizzly bear you don't embrace it, especially if it's hungry - you get the hell out of there. So you have two different approaches based on two different assessments of the situation. So the first step in determining our approach at this time in this new day is an estimate of the situation we face. An estimate is also important with respect to our perspective. Often because of the influence of a narrow outlook of race, identity politics, ethnicity, etc., we get caught up in one element of a process and we forget the entire process, we don't understand it. It's like we can be in a forest and become so fixated on a certain tree that we forget the dynamics of the forest. Weather patterns and so forth are such that fires periodically occur in a forest, it's part of the functioning of a forest ecosystem. Fires serve to renew a forest by clearing it of older trees and allowing new trees to grow and so forth and so on. If you have a fire coming from one end of the forest, and you're over here only focusing on this one tree, and it's dynamics - it's diameter, it's life cycle, etc. - you're going to get consumed by the fire! This is what can happen if you don't proceed from a perspective of all the parts of what we're dealing with.

And so the idea of an estimate of the situation includes what's new in the situation, and a perspective in which we can determine the different parts and elements of the whole, so we don't get caught into one element of the thing. A lot of people do get caught with regard to the changes that are taking place with the welfare system. They're fighting over who is going to get the best chair on the Titanic. They're not talking about how you fashion those chairs into life rafts to get the hell off the Titanic. They're fixated on "I want a better chair."

This question of perspective is absolutely critical, and our experience over the last eight years in organizing ourselves as poor people is that what we're dealing with is not a "teddy bear," but a "grizzly bear," and the economic changes we're facing are going to make the great depression look like a picnic. What we've gotten from some of the major economic and financial players is that they're very much concerned with the globalization of the economy and the trends associated with that process. What we learned from the Great Depression (and people should study that period in history) is that in response to that massive economic dislocation there was a tremendous social movement in response. Once you take people's basic needs, they have to move. They can't just accept the situation. There were two incidents that occurred in the late seventies that I think is indicative of what we're talking about in terms of the situation.

Basic to this new situation is this tremendous technological revolution that everyone is talking about. This is resulting in tremendous social and political dislocation. This electronic revolution, information revolution, technological revolution, whatever they call it, is profound, and taking effect; we're finding families who are dislocated, jobs which are taken away on a massive world scale, and this "downsizing," this nice word that means people being laid off, is real. And these jobs are not coming back. One incident that demonstrates the implications of this situation was in Michigan. In the auto industry in Michigan some 200,000 workers were downsized around that time. There was a man who had been downsized, laid off, and he had exhausted his unemployment benefits; UAW had negotiated sub-benefits, and he went through that and eventually went onto welfare. Once he got on welfare, it was determined that the value of things he had accumulated while working - his house, his car, his TV sets and things like that - made him ineligible for welfare, so they cut him off. He couldn't find a job through this whole period. His response was to take out a gun, point it at his head, and blow his brains out, as that was the only option he could see. He thought that he was basically at fault for the problems he was facing. There was a similar situation of another man, but when he was kicked off he got one of those convertible tables, a Coleman stove, and went with his dog and entire family down to the nearest supermarket. He set up the table near the meat section - not the chicken and liver part, but the fillet mignon section. He turned on the stove, got vegetables, and fed everybody steak, including the dog! The manager got wind of it - everybody was making a commotion of course, seeing this guy in the middle of the supermarket cooking food for his family. They called the police, and the police were naturally connected to the media, so everybody was down there to apprehend the guy. The media reporter asked for his comment. He said "I'm not going to sit by and allow my family to starve. It's as simple as that." This latter case is not an aberration, but an indication that people are not going to accept human suffering, people are getting angry, and not looking for a better seat on the Titanic, but a way to get off the Titanic. This is what our method of approach is all about.

We're finding all throughout the country people asking "How is it you guys have been able to sustain over the last seven to eight years, and been able to attract different strata of the population into activities and discussions and so forth to bring about some kind of change in the thinking and priorities of this nation?" Our approach is based on our experience, our study of history and other's experiences; the basis of our approach starts with an estimate of the situation; we are constantly reviewing and revisiting that analysis - we are not satisfied with a superficial view that leaves us at the surface and does not go to the substance, we are not satisfied with looking at any particular element, we are trying to look at the whole big picture. We're constantly committing ourselves to that kind of study and educational process in our organizing approach. [Continued tomorrow - Part 1 of 6]

On the Poor Organizing the Poor