On a crisp morning in October, 300 low-income families and their allies – all members of a movement known as the Equal Voice Coalition – gathered at a hotel in San Francisco with an ambitious goal: Together, they would spend the next nine hours devising strategies to push the concerns of low-wage workers into the national discussion. The mood of their meeting was upbeat, closer to a family reunion than a policy debate. But the mindset was grim determination.
Within days of the convening, news would surface that 7 million more people are living in poverty in the U.S. than previously thought. Many of these unseen, uncounted families are typical Equal Voice members – single moms working $15-per-hour jobs and senior citizens scrimping to afford the cost of transit fare to work. But in coverage of Recession 2009, a daily diet of stories about unemployed executives cutting back on vacations, these long-struggling, low-income families have rated hardly a mention.
“Me and my kids, we say, ‘What recession?’ We’ve always been in a recession,” said Margaret Martinez, a 60-year-old restaurant worker and Equal Voice member from Chicago who rations her trips on public transportation because the $2.50 fare is not a casual expenditure.
Far from middle class, yet not officially destitute, many in this family-led movement have begun to think of themselves as ‘The Missing Class.’
Economist Katherine Newman coined the phrase for her book of the same name published in 2007, the year that low-income working families from around the country began meeting in town halls to hammer out what would ultimately become the Equal Voice National Family Platform.
The “missing class” includes people like Karen Lynn Martin, a 39-year-old single mom from Chicago trying to guide her teenage son through school while working part-time to teach other kids how to avoid violence. Martin earns $20,000 a year and said she has never been able to afford health insurance.
It also includes Star Paschal, a 28-year-old single mother of three from Alabama, who manages Section 8 housing in the city of Auburn and counts herself lucky to have a job that pays $32,500 a year – though that modest income means she is $30 over the monthly limit to qualify for a child care subsidy.
“I feel like the government is sending the wrong message,” Paschal said. “Once a person makes even a little bit, we take things from them. People like me, we’re the missing class – between middle class and lower class – and we’re completely stuck.”
Among Equal Voice families, Paschal’s situation is typical. Most of those present at the San Francisco convening reported earning under $50,000 annually (with fully a third making less than $25,000), and before joining the coalition had never conceived of themselves as political activists. Yet through the Equal Voice movement, supported by Marguerite Casey Foundation, they and 30,000 other Americans in similar circumstances have come together – across geographic and racial divides – to develop a platform of interrelated family issues, from health care to affordable housing. In February 2009, they presented that platform to legislators in Washington, D.C.
Paschal was there, speaking to a roomful of families and a few Capitol-beat reporters. Now, in San Francisco, she redoubled her efforts, sitting at a circular table with other Equal Voice members to list tasks for the coming year (learn more about organizing, create a database for Equal Voice members around the country), identify their most pressing issues (health care reform and education), and show legislators that their many concerns are essentially inseparable: In other words, affordable housing does little good for families who live in communities plagued by violence. A solid education begins to look less important when a child is too sick to attend school and her parents cannot afford a doctor.
Health care costs were much on the mind of Billy Aguirre, a 36-year-old electrician who traveled from Phoenix, Az., to be heard. In his neighborhood, “For Sale” signs stand everywhere, the result of a wave of recession foreclosures.
“We get a couple of dollars more, and it goes right to health care,” said the father of four, who provides Internet service to his entire block because no one else can afford it. “With every negotiation, every bit we get goes to insurance, so we never see a real increase in wages.”
In 2007, when Equal Voice began in 12 states, America was focused on electing a president. The family-led movement bore down, drawing up a platform of eight, interlaced issues: health care, child care, education, criminal justice reform, housing, employment, safe communities and immigration. On health care, for example, Equal Voice families called for tax incentives encouraging improved access at public hospitals. They stressed more outreach and coverage, particularly for children. For many, it was the first time they realized that family voices might be able to influence policy.
Two years later, while Congress is struggling with the prognosis for medical care in this country, Equal Voice members are witnessing a ripple effect they never anticipated: Thousands of middle-class mothers and fathers, grappling with recession layoffs, foreclosure and crippling health care costs, suddenly get it.
“Now that everybody’s in the same boat, maybe people aren’t looking down at us so much,” said Sarah Freeman, a single mother from Seattle who attended the San Francisco meeting. “You’re not ‘the Other’ anymore. They know what you’re going through.”
National statistics confirm the Equal Voice experience. Poverty, according to figures from 2008, now includes more than 13 percent of the U.S. population – an 11-year high – and economists forecast that the rate will continue rising into 2010. Researchers at the Economic Policy Institute note that 2.6 million more people fell into poverty between 2007 and 2008, and that this is “only the tip of the recession iceberg.”
While the government defines poverty as a household income of $21,200 or less for a family of four, Equal Voice members readily point out the fallacy in those figures. Paschal, for example, lost her child care subsidy and, in order to work, was forced to spend $444 on day care for her three children – on top of paying $750 in rent.
“When you’re living paycheck to paycheck, that is something you just don’t have,” she said. “There was no room for me to purchase anything other than things for our basic needs, and I was still robbing Peter to pay Paul, calling the collection companies to explain what was going on but getting penalized anyway, which only left me in a deeper hole.”
Madeline Janis, executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, has written that a more realistic measure of economic hardship would be twice the federal poverty level – or $42,400 for a family of four. By that measure, 96 million people (including Paschal) are without basic economic security, she reported recently, “a staggering 32 percent of all Americans.”
Jose Medina, 43, is among them. With jobs as a baker, substitute teacher and office temp in National City, Calif., he saves as much as he can, but on wages of $10 to $15 per hour, it isn’t much. Health insurance? No way. What Medina wants is a job that pays living wages, something that will lift him out of the missing class and into the middle class. “I’m living the best I can, paycheck by paycheck,” he said. “But in terms of the recession getting me, well, I was already ‘gotten.'”
2011 © Equal Voice Newspaper