Family Re-Union

FAMILY RE-UNION CONFERENCE
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
April 24-26, 1992

REMARKS OF NANCY AMIDEI

I want to pick on something the Senator said and agree with him. We do need a new vocabulary. We do need a new way of looking at these issues and thinking about them. And we do need to act. We have studied this enough; it is time to act.

In my time with you this morning, I have three things to discuss. Though perhaps not exactly as you thought when you saw the title "Family and the Individual." The families, you know about; the individuals I have in mind, are each of you. And I am going to talk about what you can do to make things better for families.

I will begin with this notion of "a new vocabulary," especially as it relates to family-related problems. Next, I am going to identify my choices for the key issues facing families. Last, I have an agenda for you. It outlines a plan with five elements, but you get to fill in the details, you get to modify it, you get to do whatever you want with it.

First, a small personal note. You may have already caught on that I am not a formal type. But I am also a genetic optimist. (I am also a Cubs fan. We learned at a very early age to live with grim statistics and never give up.) But luckily the work I do helps feed my optimism. I get to about half the states in a year, and every place I go I meet people who are trying to make a difference, trying to make their corner of the world a little better. That keeps me going. I know there are duds out there. But duds do not give up their Saturdays to talk about families and their problems. You did.

I feed on the fact that you are here. We don't have fifty states with Senators as forward-thinking as yours, who would call a conference on families. But all across the country there are people like you who are showing up, acting up, speaking up, voting up; in short, they are working to do a better job for families and communities. It's a very powerful, so whatever you do is going to be feeding into similar kinds of activities all over the country. That's the good news.

I. Talking About Families

Now let's turn to how we talk about the problems. The most basic thing we tend to say is "families are changing." That is of course very well documented, with a lot of demographic data to back it up. When we say it, we tend to leave the implication in the air that families are changing for the worse.

Now, consider that for a moment. Is all of the change bad? Is change itself always bad? Not necessarily.

For example, there is nothing magical about having two parents. This may sound like heresy, but I was a peace Corps volunteer in Nigeria and some of my best students had six or even eight mothers. The top girl in our school had eight mothers, but that's what her tradition was. One parent, two parents, eight parents. There isn't a magic number.

In the early part of this century, we also had a high rate of single parent households. That was because women died early in childbirth; lots of men and women were in dangerous jobs and if they got sick or injured on the job. There were no antibiotics, so they died young. Many children grew up in single parent homes and survived; many single parent families did very well. Lots of single parents raise terrific kids; some of you may be the product of single parent families.

There is a sociologist named, Robert Hill, who has written a lot about the strength of black families. He reminds us that we shouldn't confuse "structure" with "function." We can't just look at a family and say: "Ah two parents, good family, everything-is-great-family; one parent, bad family, broken family, something's-wrong-family." We can't draw those kinds of conclusions just by looking at the structure. Some two parent families have a lot of trouble. Some one parent families do just fine. So we have to be careful how we talk about families.

The key, as Lisbeth Schorr pointed out in a slightly different context last night, is that we have to have a number of people willing to share responsibility and caring for the children in a society. They don't all have to be related by blood or marriage. As Marian Wright Edelman described in her book, it's a matter of the people in church, the policeman on the block, the storekeepers, other people being there and complementing what your own parents and teachers are telling you. There were lots of eyes on those children, and lots of "parent surrogates" sharing responsibility for them.

The key lies in not leaving that single parent alone, but shoring up that single parent, backing up that single parent. It means adjusting our institutions to help the single parent, because everything is harder if you are a single parent. For example, school meetings shouldn't only be scheduled only when the working parent has to be at work.

In Sweden, where they have lots of single working parents and lots of child care, child care workers are trained to treat single parents differently than two-parent families. One of the simple, little things they do every day when a single parent drops off a child, is ask how was the child's night? They know that having another parent in the household means having somebody else to talk to, to complain to; there is somebody to vent to, who is not the child, another adult to relax with. Sweden recognizes that it is possible for social institutions, community institutions, to make the job of single parents easier. In the same way, we can take care to make sure that our institutions are helping, not working against single parents.

Another problem we talk about is the increase in early parenting. More very young parents--surely that's bad? It's riskier, yes. Absolutely, we want to discourage it. But is it immutable. No. Teens, thank God, grow up. They don't remain teens forever. Sometimes you make dumb mistakes when you are 15, but it doesn't mean you are going to make dumb mistakes for the rest of your life. Is it always bad to have a young mother. No. Some young mothers do just fine. They have to have a lot of help, but if they get that help, some are going to do just fine. Many terrific people had very young mothers. The short version of this point is: "at risk" does not mean "doomed."

Let me mention a third thing. We worry about dependence--the growing dependence on public benefits, on welfare, on anything from the government--including more people over age 65 relative to people between ages 20 and 64 (the young working age crowd.) Society is aging so we have increasing dependence. People in crisis must be able to depend on the others around them. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. It is good if children can depend on the adults in their society. I remember a woman calling a radio show when I was on the other end of the line and saying, If you feed these children in school, they will become dependent." "Ma'am," I said, "children are dependent." And they ought to be able to depend on us, the adults. That's okay, that's not bad. Dependence is not always bad.

In fact, I was intrigued, when the singer, Raffi, used the word "interdependent." I like that word. We all ought to think of ourselves as interdependent.

Frequently, the people who are long-term "heavily dependent" on welfare, are in that position because they are caring for an ill, disabled or impaired family member. That is why they need help long-term. We ought to call them the "long term dependables." They are doing what many of us would not do: giving up any possibility of a normal economic life to care for an elderly, or disabled, or Alzheimer's or emotionally disturbed family member at home. Many are dynamite people. We shouldn't be pushing them out of the welfare system; we should be targeting them for extra help (and also for tips on how they survive and how their families make it.) They are true supermoms.

Even the basic issues of welfare dependency need to be looked at in new ways. For example, we tend to use terms that confuse the issues. Do you know that half the families coming on welfare in a year, are off within a year? Or do you know that there are millions of "welfare success stories" all over the country? Joan Growe, the Secretary of State of Minnesota is a former welfare mom. Judge Sedgewick, an appeals court judge, is a former welfare mom. Two members of the Montana legislature, two members of the Wisconsin legislature, a couple members of the Pennsylvania legislature. (Probably members of the Tennessee legislature are all former welfare moms.) Whoopi Goldberg is a former welfare mom. Carol Burnett is a former welfare kid. Bishop Weakland in Milwaukee is a former welfare kid. Six members of Congress (that I have been able to identify) are former welfare kids. I have run into former welfare kids and former welfare moms who are now PhDs and County Executives, nurses, career Army officials, police, Head Start aides. They are all over the place; they are terrific people and they are welfare success stories. We've got to talk about them that way. Welfare has helped a lot of people.

It is important to put this into a bit of perspective. Welfare is not addictive and it is not illegal.

Welfare bashing is a popular sport these days, including this notion that women have babies for welfare. I read several articles from here last December when Tennessee was considering whether welfare grants would be cut again. I did the arithmetic: you have 97,000 families on AFDC with 170,000 children. That tells you that you don't even have enough for two children per family. The most typical welfare family nationally has only one child, and the fertility rate for women on welfare is almost half that of women not on welfare. Yet in those articles and editorials the example used over and over again was a mother with three or more children. Why? They are not typical.

The general point is not that I want to win a "Pollyanna of the Year Award" and put a good face on everything. But, if we are serious about wanting a new vocabulary, we have to be very deliberate and very careful about how we describe the problems, the people, the programs, and whatever we hope to accomplish. And we have to remind ourselves constantly that it very hard to respond to a pile of statistics, particularly if they are all grim. It is possible to identify strengths without ignoring real problems.

And it is useful to keep in mind that Americans like winners not losers. If we describe the people we want to help as losers, we are going to "lose" a lot of our audience.

A gentleman told me one day, "you people have good intentions, but you go about it the wrong way. You just pile on one grim statistic after another until I feel I have been beaten over the head with grim statistics. That won't do it. People need to know that there is something they can do about the grim statistics." Then he said, "What motivates, is a cocktail of fear and hope." I have never forgotten that. Of course the grim statistics give us a fear (and motivation to do some degree), but it is that hope that you can do something. That prompts action.

II. Key Issues Facing Families

Those of you who were here last night will think that I conspired with Lisbeth Schorr, I did not. But when the topic is families and what individuals can do for them, my top three choices right off the bat, no agonizing are: eliminating poverty, racism and sexism.

You want to know what hurts families, what puts stress on families? You want to know what pits old against young, men against women? Poverty, racism and sexism do. They underline much of what we are concerned about, much of what we talk about. When we are talking about "the problems," facing families, frequently what we are talking about is poverty, racism and sexism.

For example, it's true when the talk is about high infant mortality rates, high domestic violence rates, high teen pregnancy and birth rates, high dropout rates, high suicide rates, high disability and death rates, high unemployment rates, high mental and emotional illness rates, high societal violence, high social isolation. All are made worse by poverty, racism and sexism. Not because women or people of color are somehow genetically different, but because poverty, racism and sexism are so debilitating that until you deal with them, you cannot deal effectively with any of these other issues. If you want to help families, start there. If you want continued frustration, continued poor results, ignore poverty, racism, and sexism. Or assume that they will take care of themselves. They haven't so far, but you can assume it if you like.

Be warned: we can't build a national consensus for families by making women on welfare the Willie Horton of the '92 election campaigns.

I am firmly convinced (and terribly troubled) that our society is becoming a less, not more, just society. Everywhere I go and talk with emergency service providers, whether they deal food or shelter or anything. I ask them who is coming in these days, who needs help, what's your fastest growing group? All across the country the answer is the same: families. Families are in their soup kitchen lines, their shelter lines, on child care waiting lists, in emergency crisis help lines. Young people are growing up thinking that it is normal to have soup kitchens and shelters in every city and town in America. And it is not normal.

Children and families cannot live on rhetoric alone. Children cannot eat a thousand points of light. It is time to act. We know enough.

One last point: most of the poverty in this country is avoidable, maybe 90 percent. We brought down poverty in the elderly by two-thirds in just two decades. If we had done the same for families with children, just think what our society would be like today. Or if we were serious about bringing poverty down to ten percent that is probably not immediately avoidable, if instead of 36 million in poverty, we had 3.6 million. We'd be a very different society.

So, it's time to act. We have studied enough. We know enough. We have plenty of data, information, research, reports, testimony, commissions. We don't need anymore, we are very well-informed. But just being informed is not enough. It is like going to a restaurant just to read the menu. You would be well-informed but you would be missing the point. Sooner or later you have to decide what you want, what you are willing to pay for it and you have to engage with other people to get it. It's the same with public policy and families in our society. We've got to decide what we want, what we are willing to pay for it, and then engage with other people to get it.

So I am going to suggest for you now one task for everybody, and a five point plan that you can modify however you like.

First the task. Make translations. Not too many months ago, I was with a group on adolescent pregnancy and parenting. We did a little exercise. I said, "Tell me what works when it comes to teen pregnancy, teen parenting?" And the first fellow said, "It is a much more complex issue than many people realize. There are probably underlying psychosocial events that go back into childhood." Within two or three sentences he had lost even me, and I am not an ordinary public. We went around the room in this agonizing convoluted way. That won't engage others.

So, ask yourself what works. Name five things about whatever piece of this puzzle you care about and make yourself say (in just a phrase or two) what works. And after you've done that ask yourselves what ordinary people can do to help do something about this problem.

Incidentally, as we went around the room, everyone agreed that kids who were starting to fail by third or fourth grade were probably at greater risk of becoming teen parents. So I said, aha, one thing that works might be tutoring at risk first and second graders. They agreed that is one thing an ordinary person can do, sure. It is not so hard to figure out something to do, but we have to find a way to translate.

You should answer the questions: What works and what can ordinary people can do about it, in whatever you do? When you put together a panel, tell your panelists that the last part of their talk must include "what works." That way they won't just tell those grim statistics; they'll give that "cocktail of fear and hope." If you are drafting recommendations here anywhere include "what works" and "what ordinary people can do about it."

III. A Five Point Plan

Step One: Find ways to combine advocacy with direct service. Everything virtually we do has policy implications. We need to get into the habit of acknowledging that. Here are two simple ways to do it.

In Phoenix, a group working with children and shelters for homeless families, decided that the next time they had to try to raise money for the shelter they would include a petition. So whenever anyone was asked to donate to the shelters or food pantries, they were also asked to sign the petition. It read: "We the undersigned are doing our part to help meet emergency needs in our community by supporting the soup kitchen . Now we are calling on our elected officials to do their part and adequately fund programs for affordable housing, decent wages, etc." And they pointed out that even though everybody didn't sign, everybody who gave away a can of beans had to stop and think about the fact that that was not enough, that we have to be good individuals and make contributions, but we also have to be good citizens and support policies that would help even more people.

Another example comes from a denomination called, the Disciples of Christ, which has a little program called Mother-To-Mother. They team up a low-income woman who wants to accomplish a certain thing in her life with three middle class women who agree to be her "team"--and help her do whatever it is she wants to accomplish. E.g., if that low income woman is on welfare and she wants to move to a better neighborhood, the team may help her by driving her around, or if they find a landlord who doesn't want to rent to welfare recipients, the team can become her advocates. They will do whatever it takes to help that mother make the change she wants to make. They are her team.

Step Two: Find ways to make community services more responsive to vulnerable families. Help individuals but don't leave the system that let them down just as rigid and cumbersome as it was before giving the help. One excellent example of this comes from Tucson.

The people running the food bank there said their volunteers were frustrated, because volunteers, as they pointed out, at the point when families need emergency food, they probably need a lot more, as well. But the volunteers didn't necessarily know all the agencies in the community and they would guess at where to send somebody. The families would get frustrated and the volunteers would feel bad.

The device they came up with is ingenious. They decided to hold a school C.A.R.E. Fair. They began planning in April 1989, and they sent out letters to all the child serving agencies in Tucson. They said, here is a need low-income families have; they have a hard time getting their children ready for school in the Fall. We are inviting you to join us to have a one-stop "shopping" for services in a low-income area school auditorium, the last weekend in August. In order to join us you have to promise three things: you have to promise to provide a service on-the-spot (you cannot just come in with brochures.) It has to be free. And you have to send a policy-level person who really knows your agency to all the planning meetings.

The last week of August, 26 community agencies showed up. The Social Security Agency was there giving out SS numbers. The Department of Health was giving inoculations and health check ups. Someone from the business community brought a xerox machine so that people could get records of their new social security number and health records. They had the Urban League there signing up people for after school care. The mentor program was there signing up children for mentors. The clothing drive people were there with the clothing. The WIC program was there signing up the pregnant women and young babies. The Head Start people were there signing up pre-schoolers for Head Start. There was a mix of public and private agencies, and everyone had a wonderful time. They served 900 families in a single afternoon--3,000 children--for a total cost of $2,000, all of which they got donated. They said they made one mistake: they accepted a donation of free billboard space, and then had to pay for the artwork to go on it. (They didn't need a billboard because they got free advertising all over the place.)

The second year 53 community agencies participated and 4,000 children went through. As one person said, "we saw more people smiling here than at Disney World."

Among the many things that happened, some occurred after the fact. As a result of having these agencies work and plan together all summer they learned what each other did. They now have an annotated list of all family-serving agencies in Tucson: who does what, who is open on weekends, who serves teens, who serves little ones, who charges, who doesn't, who has crisis service at night, what kind of staff, whatever. Any volunteer even in their first hour on the job, can look at that list and make a referral. Families are less frustrated, and the community agencies are working better together. They met an immediate need, and got community resources to work better together for the families involved in the process. (I have often thought that similar C.A.R.E. Fairs would be good for families with disabled family members or someone who has someone with Alzheimer's in the family, or any special need.

Step Three: Own the problem. So long as a problem is remote or someone else is responsible for it, our responses are not going to change. If we think poverty is government's responsibility, probably nothing's going to be done. I am not saying that government can't do anything, because I believe that government can do a lot. But citizens have to be invested; people have to be invested. We have to own the problem for government to work well. And when we do, no problem is too big.

I actually have a plan as to how you can do something to eliminate poverty, at least for all the families in which someone is working--which is about two-thirds of the families in poverty. This idea is modeled on the Sullivan Principles. You may remember Reverend Leon Sullivan. He was invited onto the board of GM and he got castigated by his friends. They said, how can you a black minister, be on the board of a business doing business with South Africa. He said, because I can make them into a force for good, or I can at least try. He said, I have some principles. I think that if businesses in South Africa actively pursue them, it will change the way black employees are treated and change their lives by asking them to abide by certain principles. The device was pure genius. He took an issue that was thousands of miles away, remote from most people's lives and made into something very close to home. Anyone could ask the businesses in a community to become signatory to the Sullivan principles.

The Sullivan principles are very simple. For South Africa they asked: Do you have separate workplaces by race, separate bathrooms by race, separate wage scales? What caught my eye was that they asked businesses in South Africa, are you working for more affordable housing in the community? When I saw that one I thought, if we can ask that of businesses in South Africa, we can ask that from American businesses of South Memphis, South Carolina, South Harlem or South anyplace. And so I began developing an American version of the Sullivan Principles.

They have become known as the Decency Principles. There are three bottom line principles. First: Do you pay at least a poverty-level wage? Anybody right now who is hiring for under $6 an hour is part of the poverty problem. $5.50 per hour will get just over the line, $4.25 just doesn't even come close.

Second question: Do you provide health coverage for all your workers--prorated if they work less than full time? Anybody who is deliberately hiring at 37-1/2 hours to avoid health benefits, should not be called a decent employer.

Third: Are you working for more affordable housing in your community? For example, would you work for low-cost housing in your community? Will you bank at the banks that make loans in low income neighborhoods?

I started writing and talking about this by applying it to businesses. Before long a small business owner said to me, "if I did that I'd be out of business." She said, could you have sliding scale for people like me? We agreed that there could not be a sliding scale for decency. However, we could have a fallback position: if a business can't do these three things, would you work for the public policies that will get the same result, help work for national health care reform; help work for more affordable housing and subsidized housing. Will you help us work for an expanded earned income tax credit or a children's allowance for families. But you cannot have it both ways. You can't say I won't work for it in my personal life and I won't work for the public policies that can make it happen. You have to do one or the other (or both) to be a decent employer.

The second thing that happened is that I realized that we have to apply the principles to more than businesses, we have to apply them to ourselves. We have to pay a decent poverty wage to the person we hire to clean our house. We should be raising this question every time we make an economic decisions where to hold a meeting or a wedding reception, or what resort to go to. A county commissioner in southern Indiana now raises these three questions when businesses come ask for tax abatements. His argument to the council is that a tax abatement is a form of subsidy. He is in favor of that if it is above board. But if businesses are underpaying their workforce and not providing health coverage, soon they will be sending them to the county health and social service agencies and the business will be getting a second subsidy, a double subsidy. But this time it is back door, hidden from the voters, and nobody sees it. So now he says if you don't meet this test you don't get tax abatements. A city council member in Houston now applies it to all contracts the city lets. Students in Utah are applying it at their school, and a church group is trying to make their block a poverty-free block--with all the businesses and residents abiding by the Decency Principles. You could develop a Tennessee Decency Principles Project.

Step Four: Be political be advocates. I wrote the advocacy book, So You Want To Make A Difference, in part because I wanted people to be political. Many feel intimidated by the process. (The book includes an aerobics plan for advocates, if your political muscles have gotten flabby.)

The important point is we all have to be political. This is a unique year. There will be tens of billions of dollars available from the military. It is not whether there will be money but how much and where it will go. If we don't speak up, it will go into jails and roads and tax breaks for people who are already rich, but it won't go into helping families.

Step Five: Include something visionary something bold. One of the things that cheered most me in recent years, was hearing about "Free The Children" in Memphis. The concept is exactly right. Here is a whole city that says we are going to free the children from poverty. It is a stunning wonderful way to approach this. Not just relieving symptoms, but going after a root cause--poverty.

Recently I read about a fellow who reminds his students that back in the 1950s a lot of people were working on how to perfect the iron lung. They built better and better iron lungs. Meanwhile, a few people were working on a vaccine to cure polio. That's what we have to do. We have to be vaccine developers against poverty, racism and sexism.

One last thought. If you are worried that you already have too much on your plate, and you can't take this on because you have too much to do; it's not a good excuse. I had a student in Houston who came up to me and said, "This may be a cop out but I am a wife, a mother, a full-time graduate student, and I have a part-time job, I can't also be a full-time advocate. "You are right, " I said, "that is a cop out." I don't expect or her to be full-time advocates if you don't have the time. I do expect you to be lifetime advocates. And if at this time in your life, you can only give 5 minutes a week, give 5 minutes a week. If at some point in the future you can give 10 hours, then you should give 10 hours. That is what it is going to take--each of us doing as much as we can, whenever we can--until we turn this thing around. Whatever it takes the issue is not full-time, it is lifetime. Thank you.