The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives

Also by

SASHA ABRAMSKY _______________________

Hard Time Blues
(2002)

Conned
(2006)

American Furies
(2007)

Breadline USA
(2009)

Inside Obama’s Brain
(2009)

www.nationbooks.org

Copyright © 2013 by Sasha Abramsky

All photographs © Sasha Abramsky

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Designed by Trish Wilkinson
Set in 11 point Adobe Garamond Pro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Abramsky, Sasha.

    
The American way of poverty : how the other half still lives / Sasha Abramsky.

  
pages
    
cm

    
Includes bibliographical references and index.

    
ISBN 978-1-56858-955-8 (e-book)
  
1.
  
Poverty—United States.
  
2.
  
Poor—United States.
  
3.
  
Equality—United States.
  
4.
  
United States—Politics and government—2009–
  
I.
  
Title.

HC110.P6A54 2013

10
  
9
  
8
  
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3
  
2
  
1

This book is dedicated to
my darling children, Sofia and Leo.
May you always keep your exquisitely
fine-tuned sense of fairness
.

Contents

Acknowledgments

     
PROLOGUE
                
A Scandal in the Making

PART ONE:
THE VOICES OF POVERTY

     
CHAPTER ONE
          
Poverty in the Land of the Plutocrats

     
CHAPTER TWO
         
Blame Games

     
CHAPTER THREE
      
An American Dilemma

     
CHAPTER FOUR
        
The Fragile Safety Net

     
CHAPTER FIVE
          
The Wrong Side of the Tracks

     
CHAPTER SIX
            
Stuck in Reverse

PART TWO:
BUILDING A NEW AND BETTER HOUSE

     
INTRODUCTION
       
Why Now?

     
CHAPTER ONE
          
Shoring Up the Safety Net

     
CHAPTER TWO
         
Breaking the Cycle of Poverty

     
CHAPTER THREE
      
Boosting Economic Security for the Working Poor

     
CODA
                        
Attention Must Be Paid

Note on Sources and Book Structure

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

The American Way of Poverty
is a book with many benefactors and champions. I wish I could say that I woke up one morning with the concept fully formed in my mind, but I didn’t. Rather, there were an array of themes that I was exploring in my journalism and a slew of economic and political issues that, in the years surrounding the 2008 economic collapse, I found to be increasingly fascinating. The unifying concept of the book—the notion that there is something quintessentially American in how we, as a country, think about and experience poverty—emerged over time, with the issues crystallizing as I talked them over with editors; fellow writers; policy analysts and activists; and, of course, hundreds of people experiencing increasingly difficult economic conditions around the country.

The conceit is a large one: that a single book can both paint a vivid, reportage-based portrait of life on the margins of the world’s richest nation and, at the same time, develop a blueprint for a set of programmatic and conceptual changes that offer a way to a fairer future. Without a strong network of supporters who believed both that the issue was important and that I had it within me to tell this story,
The American Way of Poverty
would never have been written.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Mimi Corcoran and Elise Dellinger, both of the Open Society Foundation’s Special Fund for Poverty Alleviation. It was they who initially reached out to me to
suggest a large-scale, long-term journey through this hidden America. And it was they who came through with a grant to make this project possible. Their colleague Maria Archuleta was also a source of continual encouragement as the project evolved, from the early days when I first began to build the Voices of Poverty oral history website through the frenetic months of writing this book.

From the beginning, my researcher, Caitlin Buckley, provided invaluable help and extraordinarily speedy responses to my requests for information. Her memo-writing and statistics-collecting skills got me over many a roadblock as the project unfolded. Philip Acosta of Frontside Productions went far beyond the call of duty in the time and effort he and his team put into designing and implementing the Voices of Poverty website. We worked hard, and sometimes under extreme deadlines, to get the website up and running. The result was a testament to Philip’s professionalism and dedication to the work at hand. Jessica Bartholow of the Western Center on Law and Poverty ended up serving as an informal member of the team, making herself available for frequent coffees, over which we would discuss complex public policy issues. Her input was crucial for framing the problems at hand. Substitute whiskey for coffee, and Glenn Backes performed a similarly valuable function. From afar, JoAnne Page in New York, Marshall Ganz in Cambridge, Rocky Anderson in Salt Lake City, and Bill Luckett in Mississippi also allowed me to use them as sounding boards.

Once the reporting itself got under way, another circle of colleagues came to play a vital role: the
Nation
magazine’s Katrina vanden Heuvel, Mark Sorkin, and Roane Carey all encouraged my work on poverty and spent time both brainstorming with me and editing my articles into a shape fit for publication. At the
American Prospect
, I owe thanks to Kit Rachlis, Harold Meyerson, and Bob Kuttner for their ongoing interest in my reporting on these themes. Other editors who backed this work include Mike Hoyt and Justin Peters at the
Columbia Journalism Review
and Melinda Welsh at the
Sacramento News & Review
. And, of course, I perennially owe profound
appreciation to my agent, Victoria Skurnick, and to my book editor, Carl Bromley. A million thanks to you both for your determined belief in the vital nature of this project.

I would be remiss if I did not also give my warmest gratitude to Peter Barnes and the staff of the Mesa Refuge writers’ retreat, who provided me the inestimable gift in early fall 2012 of two weeks’ residency in the hills above the Pacific Ocean, just north of San Francisco. It was in those two paradisiacal weeks that the scales were lifted and the rough edges of the manuscript made smooth.