Street Roots • August 5-11, 2016
Book Review
Page 10
The Unseen Invisible: A study in how the game is rigged
BY M E G A N W ILDHOOD
C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T
t my company’s holiday party in
December, a coworker from the East
Coast told me of her shock at Seattle’s
visible poverty. “You can’t miss it unless you
don’t ever go downtown, and even then, in
many neighborhoods,
you can’t escape it,”
she said, marveling at
how different that was
from her home city.
At the same time,
she had no idea of the
laws banning or
restricting the
distribution of food to
the homeless sweeping
the country.
Invisible in
This perfectly
Austin
illustrates the necessity
of the book “Invisible
Edited by Javier
in Austin.” America’s
Auyero
poor are less and less
invisible. The reasons
why remain largely unseen, which could
contribute to the general blame-the-victim
stance so common in our politics and
attitudes about poverty. But, according to the
book’s introduction, “from the 1970s till
today, income stagnation, growing inequality,
increasing economic instability, soaring debt
and rising costs (in health care, housing,
education, etc.) have steadily ended the well
being of American families.... All are living in
times when assistance to the poor has
A
shrunk dramatically, and all are experiencing
the consequences of lack of living wages,
stable employment, educational access, health
insurance, welfare aid, housing and
unemployment assistance, etc.”
This book is about Austin, Texas, but it
could just as well be about Portland or
Seattle. And the 11 compelling narratives
could be about Santos, Clarissa, Ines, Chip,
Raven, Kumar, Ethan, Keith, Xiomara, Ella
and Manuel, but they are also about the
tangled web of structural inequality,
institutional racism, sexism, ableism and
more that keep poor people poor.
Their stories tell us to keep in mind that
financial struggle, poverty and homelessness
are a result of forces far beyond bad luck.
Javier Auyero’s collection of accounts
written by his sociology students about 11
poor people in a vibrant, rapidly growing city
demands that we not blame the victim even
as it humanizes the subjects as imperfect
players in their own unfolding stories. As they
drill down into individual experiences of low-
income people in Austin, these 11 stories put
our culture more sharply in focus, particularly
how we exploit, punish, shut out, ridicule and
devalue those whom our instant-gratification,
consumer-crazy culture depends on most.
Santos started working when he was 5 and
has labored his whole life at whatever job was
available. He works harder than many
successful professionals. “In Mexico, you can
grow whatever you want on your land ... in
the United States, you work for others,” he
said.
Clarissa, who worked 20 years in the
restaurant business until a car accident
disabled her, said, “When I got the insurance
from the lady that hit me, the hospital took it.
So basically, they made me homeless. A
hospital made me homeless ... I don’t want to
be taking disability. I.probably should (given
my ankle injury) but I don’t want to. I want to
support myself. I want to work.”
Ines, “as a low-income, undocumented,
single mother with limited resources, is
forced to rely on the punitive functions of the
state to achieve a sense of safety for (her
daughter) Araceli and control over the
family’s circumstances” because they do not
have access to other resources.
Chip’s story is a perfect example of the
kind of economic stagnation common in the
U.S. “In the case of low-income earners, like
Chip - is maintaining the same lifestyle what
a person wants when he or she retires? Most
advice about retirement is reserved for those
who are financially secure, not for people like
Chip.
About Raven: “Despite her best efforts,
Raven is routinely drawn back to stripping
and escorting, because of the financial
stability it provides. A night of dancing can
mean the difference between keeping her
apartment in south Austin and being evicted
or can enable her to afford gas to get to her
administrative assistant job in west Austin.”
Xiomara started an eventually successful
housecleaning business to support her family
when her husband, as is all too common, got
injured on the construction job. “Unlike most
jobs in the US, domestic work is almost
universally excluded from the protection of
most federal labor laws ... at the same time,
domestic work is also intimate and, by nature,
intensely personal. Workers labor in close
contact with the most private aspects of
families’ personal lives - they have keys to
their homes and often know their relatives
and children, if not in person then by
photograph.”
“Manuel is very much afraid of waking up
one morning to a call informing him that a
raid has taken his parents away. This event
would not only destroy the family unity forged
during his first years in the U.S., something
that he has come to cherish, but it would also
leave him unable to do anything about i t ...
Manuel’s fear makes sense:... In the last five
years approximately two million people were
removed from the country.”
It’s not just outsiders who view the poor
with fear and disdain. Clarissa, for example,
did not want to be associated with “the
homeless” and did not want to be seen as
“disadvantaged.” Worse, “when the minimal
social stability needed to foster mutuality and
to buttress solidarity among and across wage
earning households evaporates, the poor
cannot but prey on the poor.”
Getting to know these people and their
histories^ hardships and hopes serves to
heighten the tragedy of such internalized
oppression and aggression. I share Auyero’s
hopes that it can galvanize folks into action as
well.
Reprinted from Real Changes News in
Seattle
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