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 Fall 2005
Monday Afternoon at the Welfare Office
So I spent a lovely couple of hours at the obligatorily ugly welfare office today. With about 200 other moms & kids, I waited to see my worker for my yearly food stamp review. My monthly allotment of $152 in food stamps comes between my family and starvation.
This cinder-block monstrosity is in the middle of Milwaukee's poorest neighborhood (aren't they all), It is surrounded by corner stores and cheap furniture stores. The funny thing is that they closed it down a couple of years ago for "remodeling." For 1 1/2 years they relocated it to the courthouse downtown and an anonymous building on the other side of town. I heard a rumor that there was a rat problem. But I think the folks in charge just needed to spend some federal block grant money.
During the remodeling, moms & their kids, who already have to spend bus time, bus-stop time, and sitting-in-ugly-welfare-building time, had to re-route ourselves to the downtown courthouse or the anonymous building. Neither building was prepared for the mom/baby/toddler onslaught.
 And the few moms who have cars had to keep running outside to feed the parking meter. Of course this meant taking the chance of missing their call to see their worker. And then having to explain to the bored receptionists why they simply COULDN'T reschedule their appointment. They just went out to feed the meter, and why couldn't they still see the worker? Please? Please, goddamnit???
For almost two years Milwaukee shut down the main welfare office and when the finished product was unveiled---IT LOOKED EXACTLY THE F…IN SAME! Same concrete blocks, same boarded up places where windows are supposed to be, same dirty sidewalk and street where the only people allowed to park are the workers. Same maze of offices. Except the city was nice and put a few frescos over the areas where windows are supposed to be! And they re-named the building after some politician.
Now I guess when a couple of moms are talking we aren't supposed to say "oh I have to go to 12th & Vliet" (which every poor person in the city knows about). Instead will feel a sense of purpose and self-worth when we talk about our appointment at the Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center.
Where business goes on as usual. Where you wait for hours on plastic chairs alongside what seems like every teething baby in the city. Where caseworkers routinely “lose” families' paperwork so the worker “has no choice” but to sanction that family's foodstamp allowance for the month. The place where we come to beg our workers to give us back our foodstamps or our medical assistance.
What always gets me about places like the foodstamp building, or the shiny new W2 buildings (Wisconsin Works, our euphemism for cash welfare), is the absolute acceptance that life is about waiting in line without complaint. Cuz that's what you get for daring to be poor and looking for a “handout.” Or trying to keep from losing your cash/food stamps/childcare/medical assistance/home/children. I call it the welfare waiting-line mentality. And I see the same thing anytime the city or the state or some private charity decides to give stuff away.
Toys for Tots is an example. You get free toys if you're too poor to show your kids the wonderful American Christmas tradition of spend-and-go-into-debt. To apply for Toys for Tots, you wait in line outside a building alongside a couple hundred other moms. Then you get inside and prove to some worker somehow that you're poor and not some middle class person trying to scam the charity out of some free toys.
Once you've verified your poor-needy status, you get a number to--get this--go stand in line in a couple of weeks. Once more your are outside in December in Wisconsin--while you wait to get called in to choose one--sometimes two--toys for your kids. And you get a few generic wrapped toys that basically amount to department store over-runs. (A few years ago my daughter got a Scott Baio coloring book. I kid you not).
Few question this welfare waiting-line mentality. We wait in line at the food pantry. We wait in line at St. Ben's meal program. (I dare anybody in Milwaukee to drive to 9th and State after 5 PM everyday to see all the people (hundreds!) waiting in line for a hot meal.
We stand in line to get Energy Assistance, a worthy program that keeps We Energies (our gas/electric monopoly) from shutting off our electricity and gas in the middle of the summer. They used to shut if off in the winter too. But activists shamed the utilities with all the deaths they were causing.
So now they wait to shut us off til we no longer need electricity or gas--i.e. the summer. Such fun camping out in the dark, with no refrigerator or fan or lights. Such fun for the disabled who die in the summer heat because our bodies/hearts/immune systems are too weak. Such fun having no hot water--but who wants to take hot baths in the summer anyway? Or cooking gas--but wait, all the meat and milk in the fridge spoiled when they cut off your electric anyway. So I guess that's not such a big issue. Besides, there's always the barbecue grill.
But back to the welfare waiting-line mentality. Wait in line for emergency shelters, even if you're black and blue and just escaped that battering ram of a man who lives in your house.
Wait at the Social Security office. Wait at the clothing bank that will give your kids a used winter coat or shoes. Wait, wait, wait.
But don't forget what makes waiting really interesting and fun--it's toting along the kids. The brand-new babies, the toddlers with never-ending head colds, the babies still in the womb. Tote along all the kids' accessories--diapers, change of clothes, bottles, backpacks, toys to keep them from driving you crazy, books, drawing papers, crayons, snacks, lunches, homework if it's during the schoolyear.
If you're disabled it's a case of standing in line with your walker or cane or (in my case) oxygen. Standing in line is no fun when you can only stand for a few minutes at a time anyway. Think about what else disabled moms have to tote: wheelchairs, canes, oxygen, scooters, babies, babies in womb, toddlers with runny noses, bored older kids, and the inevitable kids' accessories. Plus we have to tote along our tired, disabled bodies.
If anybody still doubts that every one of us waiting-in-welfare-line moms deserve a mother of the year award, remember that most of us get to that waiting line BY BUS. And almost every one of us finds time for the waiting line after or between or before long hours of low-wage work in some fast-food restaurant or nursing home or day care center or unpaid workfare for welfare.
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And yet our children are reasonably well-behaved, considering that many of them are either up too early or too late, are standing out in all kinds of weather, or spend inordinate amounts of their lives in day care centers. Our kids’ hair is combed and braided (well, except my kid, who often runs screaming from the comb). Children do homework, help with taking care of the younger kids, and cope with the situation with remarkable aplomb.
I've decided that there must be a giddy sense of power that comes from being able to command poor people to stand in line, at the drop of a hat. Social service agencies and poverty pimps know that as long they either terrorize people with the loss of benefits, or lure them with the promise of something free (but of implied scarcity), they will be able to command already-exhausted and over-extended moms and kids to wait, wait, wait.
Mary Anderson
Milwaukee, WI
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