For the fourth time, I ran out of money. I was out of food, out of coffee. This time, I chose once again to make the wrong decision. Now that I was hungry, it seemed to me that I was surrounded by people who were as hungry as I was. In the neighborhood, on public transportation, in the public library, by the railroad tracks, everywhere I turned there were homeless and unemployed men and women going for food stamps. Why is it that you don’t see them until you become like one of them? They didn’t have a university degree as I did. I was hungry but not concerned. How did the others fare?
There was one way to find out. Until that day, I didn’t really know what food stamps were all about, It was time to find out. Social programs are weird, even the best intended ones. A year ago, I had gone to Legal Aid to get help for Carmen Valenzuela when she got evicted from her rental home. They made her fill out a bunch of paperwork to make sure she qualified. Some of the questions were personal concerning her level of poverty. It was demeaning to her.
Mentality changes with time and at that time, no Hispanic family pride would allow one to claim poverty. Today, too many have been taught not only to acknowledge poverty but to try and prove that they are even more poor than they are only to get more handouts. Is this a step forward or a decline? However, you can still find many Hispanic families with integrity and pride who don’t do that, if you look for them.
Every time I brought individuals from the neighborhood to Legal Aid that year, they had to go through the same process, and would leave discouraged. I talked to their director and told him that anyone living in this neighborhood, by the nature of their address, should qualify for Legal Aid and didn’t need to be subjected to a third degree and sign documents they couldn’t even read. He argued with me that day, until then Legal Aid only dealt with individual clients. But then he called me three months later to say that Legal Aid had drawn a line around the neighborhood and anyone living there would automatically qualify for Legal Aid. Did I start collective representation? My first reaction was to think of several recent names of wealthy individuals I knew who would take advantage of this new development. But then, they would never know and might never go to Legal Aid for free legal advice. I was wrong! The rest of the residents would benefit greatly. At that time, it was a good move by Legal Aid.
I applied for unemployment, food stamps, and skill training. I don’t remember the details, but it was eye opening. Sometimes I could not believe my luck getting all that food for free. Other times, I was made to feel so small and so inferior that I wanted to send them all that help where the sun doesn’t shine.
One incident stands out in my memory. The lady at unemployment office didn’t seem to like me. It didn’t bother me. I had to show proof that I had gone to look for work at three places per week to gain approval of the next unemployment check. The first few checks came on time. It didn’t bother me because unemployment compensation is your own money that you and your employer have given to the government to save for you for times like this. That money came out of your own sweat. Food stamps are different, and I had some guilty conscience about these. At my next visit, I added some volunteer work places where I had worked in addition to the three jobs I had applied for. That check request was disqualified by her because if I volunteered it meant I had time in which I was not diligently looking for work.
I didn’t make that mistake again. I was spending all my time in volunteer work and peanuts looking for work. I wanted to stay close to the Barrio. But I claimed otherwise. Of course, the government doesn’t want you to use food stamps as a vehicle to do what you want instead of what you must do. The following week I wrote down my applications for work at an architectural firm and was disqualified for looking for a pay scale above what I had been receiving in the past. The system was such that you could not aspire to increase your income. They assumed you did it on purpose not to get hired. Each disqualification meant another week without money.
Then my truck broke down and I took it to the mechanic. That week I told the lady at unemployment that I would appreciate it if she could rush the check so that I could pay for and recover my truck and pursue looking for work. Big mistake! I was disqualified on the basis that because of lack of transportation I was not diligently looking for work. I am not making this up. Lesson number 24: Never, never, never volunteer any information when talking to government employees.
I lost several weeks of unemployment checks until I got my truck back. Nonetheless, I decided to take the issue to court. Fortunately, that was the time I got work at the Free Clinic. There is an appeal committee that hears such grievances, and it would take several months. I went to Legal Aid for help and at first, they laughed at me. Then they offered to help me prepare the case, but they would not represent me. That was okay with me. I can take care of my own, thank you. I had to sign a document saying that Legal Aid had the right to obtain information about me from any source they thought was necessary. I wrote on the margin “only for the next week as of this date.” I was not going to give a blank check to anyone to look up information on me.
Two or three months later, I finally sat in front of a committee of twelve people to present my case. I was still speaking on my behalf uselessly because it was obvious that my case had already been decided not in my favor, when suddenly one of the members of the Appeal Committee who had fallen asleep, snored loudly. Loud enough to be heard on the tape recorder.
“Please wake him up! If you people fall asleep, how can you hear my case?” I said quickly and loudly looking at the tape recorder. It was that technicality, not the value of my case that won my case. The embarrassed chairman closed the meeting immediately by granting me my request and I got all my checks retro-actively.
This ‘immoral’ experience of living off food stamps on my part has served me well all my life. You can’t judge other people until you walk in their shoes; then maybe you can. The system is not just rigged per se, but it is also incompetent and misused by both sides. Food stamps are a life saver, worth every penny when implemented well, but there is room for misuse, abuse, and the risk of becoming permanently depended upon it. Democrats come up with very good social programs, but when they put them in the hands of bureaucrats, they quickly deteriorate. Abuse by both sides applies to the provider and the recipient with insufficient oversight too. Additionally, there are hidden agendas difficult to uncover. We’ll look for them.
Even much worse than that; many social programs counted separately the number of ‘people-contacts’ made, unconcerned with the number of ‘cases resolved’. Of benefit to their report was that clients continue to return several times rather than solving their problem, if ever. And what if someday food stamps begin to be considered as a ‘social program’, and rather than trying to reduce the numbers in food stamps, the value of the program would be measured by its increase in ‘number of people helped with a handout, not with a solution’? I had been part of contributing to this travesty myself. It made me angry.
Newspapers quote politicians of one party proudly announcing how many new families on food stamps their government has helped each year. In the meantime, going through public parks on the way to Mount Lemmon, the U.S. Department of Interior has put up signs saying Please do not feed the animals, they will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to feed themselves. Do people in the government see the difference? I think we should feed the politicians to the animals and keep the tourist away until they come to their senses.
Ray would not let me get away with anything.
“Who should come to their senses? The politicians, the animals, or the tourists?” he argued.
Republicans realize this weakness, but they are gutless to do anything about it since they would be perceived as heartless, if they try to curve the flow. What the heck? I understand if someone would have tried to take my food stamps away when I had them. I would have punched them. Unemployment money, however, was different. That was my own money.
“The tourists, of course,” I answered, “you and me and them.”
Still, things are seldom what they seem. I always knew that the lady from the unemployment office had one against me - maybe because she didn’t think I was deserving. I won while she lost, thanks to a technicality. However, I think she was right in that I was wrong. She saw through me, but she was also alert and in due time she realized I wasn’t totally just sponging from the system because years later, when the real shit hit the fan during our struggle between the City Development Department and those in the Barrio, she heard about me and that I had employed thirty-two kids for a year. Out of the blue, she sent me a note of congratulations and support.