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Open Letter To National Organization for Women (NOW)


I wonder how NOW can justify supporting a woman who actively assisted her sleazy hubby in destroying the US safety net (AFDC)? Women, children and low-wage women workers are the primary victims of the fractured safety net. Hillary aggressively supported Bill in wiping out the 61-year-old AFDC program (after experimenting cruelly with it in Arkansas). They replaced our minimal safety net with a deadly TANF temporary program that forces single mothers to work off government child support in unwaged workfare.

And of course only the most vulnerable women provide this unwaged labor for both non-profit and for-profit businesses and government. The less handicapped women in crisis end up taking any job for any pay to avoid working for no pay. They provide billionaire business with all of the temporary, low-paid, part-time forced workers for all of their dead-end, permanent-poverty service jobs.

Meanwhile for ten years Congress has felt no need to raise minimum wage. Why bother? There are plenty of forced mama-workers taking anti-family jobs. No need to raise wages to lure workers.

Hillary believes in a Survival of the Fittest system for women struggling to support children without the fathers’ income. She believes in forcing women to stay with the batterers and abusers by making no other funds available. She believes in funneling millions of single moms into dead-end work that no one willingly accepts. During TANF reconsideration, Hillary refused to even consider allowing moms with disabilities or moms raising sick children to be exempt from the mandatory unwaged workfare. She refused to allow moms with tiny infants to be exempt. She refused to consider allowing moms to pursue post-secondary education. She supported the $7 billion shortage in child care funds which is driving states to further reduce TANF rolls drastically. She supported the rule requiring states to prove that 50% of the moms in crisis are involved in workfare.

Does NOW care about the increase in battered women, homeless women, hungry women, low-paid women, uneducated women that Hillary has promoted with Bill…and later as NY Senator? Must NOW sell out the lower 50% of poor and low-income and disabled women to win benefits for the upper 50% of the women's population? Does NOW support the spread of the deadly TANF to Israel (named the Wisconsin Plan) and other countries where women and children are targeted with the same economic violence? Where does it stop if we will not stick together as women for women, especially the most vulnerable women?

Pat Gowens, Editor
Mother Warriors Voice

(Sent to NOW on 4/12/07. No response. But Lillian Hanson added her thoughts.)

Feminist Agenda: Get a Job?

Pat,
Awesome reply to the NOW Task Force about Hillary. Well said! Yep, looks like Hillary strikes out with the likes of us poor women, that's for sure! And we all know feminists, for the most part, are crowing the "get a job, any job" mantra. They must keep in lock-step with the agenda that a mother is better off working any craptastic job than she is staying home. And she’s "doing nothing" getting a pittance of a welfare check for taking care of her family.

The mainstream feminists insist that it's all about "choices." But we know better. It's about going out there and promoting the "work-first" agenda. Children's needs are only answered by promoting "child care", etc. I'm all for upward mobility in the right context. But it seems the only choices feminism offers is work, work, and MORE work, regardless of WHO'S affected.

The right to stay home with one’s children is the big elephant in the room no one wants to acknowledge. If feminists chose to address the rights of mothers to stay home with their children, as they should, then they would face the flack from the public: "Hey, I thought you feminists said women DIDN'T NEED to be SUPPORTED by anyone to stay home with their children. They have the right to go out and make a living like everybody else"

They would lose their momentum from the bodies who support the right for women to be at parity in the workforce. In their eyes, there's NO gray area that says women have the right to be in the workforce AND to stay home. The almighty dollar wins out. Any time you read Ms Magazine, there are a plethora of articles touting the lives of women (and mothers) struggling to gain a foothold in the workplace. But there are NONE WHATSOEVER about mothers who wish to stay home with their children and have outside support in doing so. It's as if those women didn't exist.

As a young woman coming of age in the 60's-70's, I was all for women gaining a place in the workforce. But never did I dream that being able to stay home with your children would become an obsolete option. Even many conservatives point out this aberrance about feminism. And to my dismay, they have cornered that flaw in spades.

All you hear from the feminist arena is the sound of wind whistling through a dark abyss, with no answer in sight. It's as if the feminists know one tune only -- "Work is the answer to all that ails women", and "You're only respected if you WORK for a living". Sad to say, this is all they seem to know, and all they're willing to examine. Pretty sad, indeed.

Lillian Hanson
San Diego Welfare Warriors

Editor’s Response: In defense of feminism, we need to remember that there are still radical feminists out there who do promote economic support for motherwork. Off Our Backs and Rain and Thunder are two such radical feminist publications. And there are some radical feminist blogs out there. Unfortunately mainstream media only promotes mainstream views

Since the new millennium, women around the world have chosen International Women’s Day to promote the Global Women’s Strike against No Pay, Low Pay and Overwork, demanding that governments Invest in Caring, not Killing.  This year brought successes for caregivers in two South American countries, and ongoing struggles for women worldwide.

Two unlikely Global Strike partners, Welfare Warriors of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Laborers Voice of Nazareth, Israel united in street actions on March 8 to protest Wisconsin’s welfare program, W2, which took effect in 1997 in Wisconsin, but invaded Israel in August 2005. In both Wisconsin and Israel mothers are forced to work at private companies and non-profits for no pay in exchange for their families’ basic survival income from the government.

This year Welfare Warriors chose to strike at Maximus, one of Wisconsin’s private W2 administrators, who also run “The Wisconsin Plan” in Israel. The Warriors protested against W2’s increase in the numbers of mothers working for no pay (workfare) and decrease in women’s wages overall as tens of thousands of women take any job for any pay to avoid W2’s mandated unwaged work. Global Strikers exposed the failure and danger of W2 which graduates the majority of its clients—single heads of households--into temporary and part-time jobs, with 81% earning wages far below the poverty level.

After spreading its no-wage, low-wage, anti-woman practices around the US, Wisconsin’s welfare program crossed the sea to Israel. Four private corporations, including Maximus, run Israel’s “Wisconsin Plan” which forces mostly Arab moms to work off their “Family Income Supplement” at 30 hours of unwaged work each week.

On International Women’s day, the Laborers Voice protested again Nazareth’s Wisconsin Plan. Since it began in August 2005, it has already terminated 940 families’ income supplements when mothers were unable to abandon their family responsibilities for 30 hours of unpaid work. (Moms often care for both elders and children.) Parents must leave their children when the youngest is two.  No childcare is provided or available. Children often accompany their moms to the “Wisconsin Center.” Similar to Wisconsin’s W2, the Wisconsin Plan in Nazareth forces women to travel miles away to pick up garbage, clean prisons, or dig potatoes—all for no pay. In one Kindergarten, the paid cleaning personnel were laid off after the kindergarten requested and received forced “volunteers” to do the cleaning.

At their March 8 protest the Nazareth moms were also mourning the first fatality under the Wisconsin Plan.  Just two days earlier, a married father of four children became sick while at the Wisconsin Center.  He requested medical help or permission to leave. The caseworker told him he could not leave until he had completed his 6 hours of required activities. He died on his way home.

While the 2006 Global Women’s Strike saw women in Wisconsin and Israel struggling to end low wage and no wage work, moms in Venezuela and Argentina were celebrating monumental victories. In recognition of their work in the home, the poorest Venezuelan homemakers, in particular single mothers, will receive a monthly income equal to 80% of the minimum wage, or about $180.  100,000 women will be paid in June, and another 100,000 in July. Eventually half a million women will be paid. Homemakers in Argentina will now be eligible for Social Security retirement benefits without having paid into the Social Security fund.

In this new millennium the world is beginning to recognize and value women’s hidden contribution to society as caregivers and homemakers. Hurray!

Pat Gowens

New Orleans: 18 Months After Katrina

Let’s Take Action:
Brigades of Workers and Witnesses to New Orleans

Did you know that 50% of homes in New Orleans still (mid November) have no electricity? And NO public schools and NO public housing is open--2 and1/2 months after Katrina? Did you know that the feds/ FEMA are NOT releasing funds because the city, state and feds still have no "PLAN" in place? So 100,000 folks in Houston, 80,000 in Baton Rouge and 60,000 in Atlanta can not return. Remember how all those poor people had to wait on rooftops for days, while the disabled and elders died? And everyone had to wait for help for a week because there was no "PLAN" for their evacuation? HMM... STILL NO PLAN. Not even the poorest, most low-tech countries are unable to provide electricity to their people for three months after a hurricane. This is open warfare on the poor to allow the rich to carry out an instant land-grab around the French Quarter.

Now is the time for activists across the country TO TAKE ACTION to save New Orleans from instant gentrification. We have an unprecedented unity of perspective among progressive peoples. We agree that the slaughter of New Orleans’ low-income communities was not some backward US “incompetence” nor merely an act of mother nature. The US has more than enough technological expertise and economic resources to protect our people from Hurricanes, even hurricanes exacerbated by global warming. No one doubts that massive instant aid would have been provided if the people on rooftops or in nursing homes were white people with money. And they would never have been forced to live in sports stadiums hundreds of miles from home.

We also agree that the levies were intentionally “sabotaged” by the federal government’s slashing of $71 million for their maintenance. (There IS disagreement on how much direct sabotage may or may not have been involved, but that is not important.) We all know that experts— and even published articles — had predicted this exact devastation for four years. Our “leaders” had plenty of time to prepare for the storm with an evacuation plan--for everyone-- and shoring up of the levies. But instead they chose to do the opposite.

Since we know that this not-so-natural disaster is being used to facilitate a modern land-grab and an escalation of the war on the poor, what can we do? We know that the mass media shamelessly promoted racist distortions of the poor community’s alleged criminal response to the crisis. We’ve watched in dismay as our government arrogantly gifted no-bid contracts to monster billionaire corporations like Halliburton, Bechdel and Maximus —despite their histories of fiscal corruption and human abuse. We’ve been sickened to learn that these billionaires will be allowed to pay LESS than prevailing wages to workers rebuilding New Orleans, thanks to another blatant federal government intervention.

It’s time to move beyond charity and bitching. The African American, bi-racial and white people in poverty who have been so violently abandoned and violated will never be able to return, reclaim and rebuild their communities without support. And that support will not be coming from billionaires like Halliburton and no-sayers like Maximus. On the contrary, the corporate mission is to reclaim the miles around the French Quarter, for the wealthy white population.

I propose the creation of brigades of volunteer workers and watchers from across the US. They would assist New Orleans neighborhoods, organizations and individuals who want help rebuilding—and provide witness to the actions of the corporate billionaires, the military and the police. Political groups and churches could organize these buses of both skilled and unskilled workers, coordinating efforts with groups in New Orleans. The US has organized similar brigades of volunteer workers during the Civil Rights campaign and to Israel, Cuba, and Guatemala (witnesses).

By taking action to STOP the land-grab in New Orleans and STOP the no-sayers of public benefits, we will also be sending a message to our leaders. They will learn that the US people will TAKE ACTION to stop billionaire corporations from ruining our government and pushing our country into ugly racist warfare on poor families, the disabled, and struggling workers.

Pat Gowens, Editor

Call to Action on TANF!!

There is still time to contact your senators. Let's FLOOD them with demands for "Justice in TANF"!

There is still time to affect the TANF re-authorization bill (HR 4) which passed the House in February.  The Senate TANF  bill is in the Senate Finance committee, The vote on it has been postponed TEN TIMES. But it will probably be voted on in September 2005. The House bill (HR 4) would only allow three months education to count as work for women on TANF, despite their need to support their families singlehandedly. Instead of allowing education, the House bill would allocate $1.5 billion to states to train and "educate" moms to marry. And the House bill would require single moms on TANF to work off their TANF checks at 40 hours a week!