Outraged Welfare Punishes Work and Saps Dignity From the Desperately Poor? Please Sign My Petition
This is Cross-posted from General Discussion - hope that's permissible. I came to Democratic Underground to request signatures for petition that pertains to General Assistance Welfare policy in California, and more specifically the Oakland area.
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http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/work-while-on-welfare?source=c.em&r_by=11132229
I'm on General Assistance welfare, which is the form of welfare people get if they are single, childless, and thus not eligible for all the "family-oriented" forms of the social safety net. I qualified for this because I was disabled but it was taking years for my SSI case to process. G.A. goes directly to my landlord, leaving me no cash to live on. I can pay for food with food stamps, but I have no means to pay for utility and phone bills, hygiene products, toilet paper, light bulbs, stamps and envelopes, bus and train tickets, over-the-counter medications, cleaning supplies, and a hundred other non-food items that people just need to get through their daily lives. Even Social Services, the creator of these rules, imposes demands that cost money for the "welfare recipient" who doesn't have a cash income"!
This leaves only 4 choices: begging on the corner, prostitution, petty theft, under the table work.
Now someone in the peanut gallery may be asking what happens if you try to do some casual work for necessities and legally report it, as Social Services requires you to do every quarter. What happens is Social Services punishes you by every means possible, puts you through time-consuming bureaucratic hell, tortures you with all sorts of stress, and, worst of all, undermines your housing situation because it takes back any money you earn out of the check to your landlord.
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/work-while-on-welfare?source=c.em&r_by=11132229
I've been told that the General Assistance welfare rules are different for every County and every State, which is one of the reasons it's so difficult to get a unified voice on the subject and explain why people on welfare are treated worse than prisoners in Gitmo - and show how the health, psychological, and dignity outcomes are all logical consequences of exposure to crushing circumstances. But I'm sure the fundamental absurdity is pretty much the same all over, so I hope that even if you are not from California and not from the Oakland Bay Area, you will still sign my petition and help shine a light on this ridiculous Rube Goldberg machine.
Bringing the reality of welfare to light is also the first step to ending its use as a political football. Many conservatives use the obscurity surrounding welfare to imply it's some sort of secret cash machine or that people like me are living high off the hog at the tax payer's expense. I have no cash income, and I'm punished for working for toilet paper. Please help me do something about it by signing my petition.
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/work-while-on-welfare?source=c.em&r_by=11132229
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Ps. I have to apologize for a post-and-run: I have a number of appointments today, and I doubt I will be able to check back for questions until late this afternoon. The appointments and paperwork in my life are never done, despite being "too disable to work". I think that actually means the economy just wasn't willing to accept me as I am. Thus I get busywork and stress I am not paid for.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Always nice to have a true-blue 99-percenter around.
Sending this along to a guy I work with who's a community organizer up there.
ROFLMAO!
Well I do spend a lot of time at CIL Berkeley, and those awesome guys did come out for me to sign my petition. 
And by coincidence, that was my first stop this morning, hahahaha. XD
But my advocates in the GA case are also made of awesome: Homeless Action Center in Berkeley. Like CIL, they are one of the few places that actually do real things to help people that desperately need help instead of just enroll them so their gig can apply for funding (like some other places in Berkeley >.> ) or hand them a list of other places that will supposedly help them (which will probably just "help" them by giving them another xeroxed out-of-date referral list, forcing people with zero transportation funds to do more running around).
And Berkeley is the enlightened, progressive, radical, some would even claim "socialist" city on the map of California. (Though those who would say that haven't been introduced to our low income housing problem or the extreme wealth inequality that has led even the techno hippies here to not really see the problems that remain to be solved around them). I'm extremely lucky to live here. If I had gone through the same sequence of health/poverty events anywhere else, I would have been homeless years ago, and I wouldn't have recovered. I doubt I would have held out alive this long to even talk about it. So I'm more than aware of my blessings.
Sometimes I do wish that the wealthier segment of Berkeley would put aside their "global agenda" for a moment, and put aside their built up assumptions about poverty which came from having to develop some defenses against all the people who do trek to Berkeley for the "lifestyle". There is a lot of money in Berkeley: imagine what it could do if it actually sunk in to those super rich people that *there is no low income safety net* - that some people really are begging and prostituting themselves and committing crimes because they HAVE to. And some people are laying in the street because they have no place to stay - it's not a lifestyle choice. If they just took the time to understand what the terms of welfare actually were, maybe they would try to do something. Providing a quicker bridges back to regular work that would realistically support the Berkeley rents *they* want to charge might be a good start.
See what you did there? Gave me an opening to opine about Berkeley!
Anyway, if there is a super-rich person reading this, and you want to donate your money to an effective place, here's a few:
- Homeless Action Center
- Center for Independent Living
- East Bay Community Law Center
- Lifelong Medical Care
Also, this might be a surprising one, but supporting the Public Library supports neediest people in the community. The public library offers free computer use, classes (including some limited legal aid in Berkeley), virtually infinite resources with the support of a reference librarian, public bathrooms and drinking water, open community space that you don't have to pay to be in (an indoor place to sit and rest can be very important if you're disabled), and - most of the time - treatment with dignity (though the librarians have a few requests of their own regarding reciprocal respect from patrons). The stronger the library is and the more programs it can offer, the stronger the community is *from the bottom up*. Think about it!