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News
Street Roots • September 8-14, 2017
Street Roots • September 8-14, 2017
News
BY KEN MARTIN AND ROBERTA
HABER
REUTERS/JOSHUA ROBERTS
Sen. A l Franken (D-Minn) watches Supreme Court nominee
Judge Neil Gorsuch testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee
during his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington,
D.C., March 21.
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R ITER S
treet paper vendor Ken Martin took
advantage of a chance meeting w ith.
U.S. Sen. A1 Franken.
Franken was getting out of his car, and
Martin was nearby, doing what he normally
does when he sells Street Sense, Street
Roots’ sister paper in Washington, D.C.
Remembering Franken’s questions during
confirmation hearings for Jeff Sessions and
Betsy De Vos, Martin greeted the senator
and told him he was doing a great job.
“I never went into much detail about my
opinion of him as a comedian - just as a
senator,” Martin said. “He responded very
humbly and kind of matter-of-factly. He said
thank you and asked me how I was and how
things were going with me. He didn’t say
anything especially statesman-like, and I
didn’t elaborate on my own situation. I knew
he was a man on a mission (to pick up his
dry cleaning).
“I gave him a paper and told him I had
interviewed (U.S. Rep.) John Lewis. I dug
out a copy of that slightly old issu e.... I said
something to the effect of, ‘We got John
Lewis. You might want to consider being a
follow-up.’ He said he’d think about i t ”
After a couple more encounters on the
street, they arranged an interview.
On June 15, after signing a copy of “A1
Franken: Giant of the Senate,” the
Minnesota Democrat sat down with Martin
at the Hart Senate Office Building for a
formal interview and some laughter.
S
Ken Martin: I often run into you while I ’m
in Tenleytown, a fairly wealthy area (in
Washington, D.C.). And my colleague once saw
you sitting on a bench in Franklin Park,
talking with a man who appeared to be
homeless. Do you do this often? What do you
talk about?
A1 Franken: I don’t think I do it terribly
often. I might talk about the person’s
circumstances or I might not. I just talk
about whatever he or she wants to talk
about. I don’t want to be intrusive. I just talk
about whatever happens to come up, such as
whether they enjoy the park or spend a lot of
time there. I don’t really have an agenda
when I do th a t I feel comfortable with pretty
much anybody.
K.M.: What do you think is key to ending
homelessness in the U.S.?
A.F.: I think there are a lot of keys. I’m a
big champion of cradle to career models of
education. Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem
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K.M.: I ’ll give you an example: Cathedral
Commons. That’s below Tenleytown, near where
the Giant is, a fairly affluent area. People who
have a low to moderate income, while they can’t
actually afford to move in there based on their
actual income, can apply to a lottery. Their
names are placed in a lottery, and if they’re
selected, they get an opportunity to get
subsidized housing.
A.F.: O K ...
K.M.: It’s bringing about a cultural change.
The best cure for homelessness is a home’
U.S. Sen. A l Franken talks with a street paper vendor about poverty in America
Children’s Zone has a good approach. They
have a Baby Academy where parents learn
how to be parents. It starts very early.
You have to attack it in different ways.
One, you need housing. The best cure for
homelessness is a home. There are a lot of
homeless people in America who have one
difficulty or another, whether it be mental
illness, addiction, a criminal record or
whatever.
We have a thing we do in Hennepin
County where I’m from, in Minneapolis. The
county Medicaid system has changed
because of the Affordable Care Act, and they
use some of that Affordable Care Act money
to get people housing. If you get housing for
someone who, say, has an addiction or a
mental health issue, then they won’t get
arrested and they won’t end up in the
emergency room. Those outcomes are very
expensive for the county, especially the
hospital and the jail.
Instead, if they are in a home and you can
get them wraparound services - including a
navigator to help, because sometimes all this
stuff is very complicated to qualify for and
there’s a lot of bureaucracy - you-can also
get them either some kind of treatment and
job training. That’s something that can
actually save the county money.
Right now, I’m trying to do something
with Thom Tillis, a senator from North
Carolina, a Republican. Our staffs have
gotten together to try to find ways to
continue with pilot programs like that, so we
can find a model that is proven to work. I
think providing a home does a number of
things. One, emergency rooms don’t get tied
up. Jails don’t get tied up. But also, more
importantly, it improves people’s lives.
It starts with the premise that the best
cure for homelessness is a home. You get
someone housing, and their life becomes
much, much, immediately better in terms of
the ability to know where you’re going to be
and to be able to buy food and all that stuff.
K.M.: Compared to what you’ve seen in
D.C., what does poverty look like for your
constituency?
A.F.: I haven’t done a comparative
analysis, but I would imagine there are some
of the same factors. In Minneapolis, we have
a lot of American Indians in urban settings,
so demographically it’s a little different.
What’s interesting is that in Indian country,
that’s on reservations, there are no homeless
shelters, and essentially what people do is
just go live with somebody else. That’s not
always the best thing, for the kids would
become exposed to different traumas.
Earlier, I was saying that the Promise
Neighborhood model that Geoffrey Canada
put together is a good thing. It includes not
just baby academies, but also social workers
who work with the family, starting when the
kid is zero, and home visits, and making sure
that those kids aren’t exposed to situations
or conditions that create trauma.
There are a lot of studies about the effects
of trauma in childhood, early childhood. The
term is “adverse childhood experiences,” or
ACEs, and there are studies showing that
ACEs lead to a change in brain chemistry
and that change creates barriers to learning.
The fight-or-flight impulses kick in and it’s
harder to concentrate on homework and it’s
harder to succeed.
(Geoffrey Canada) has been very
successful in creating an environment that
kids learn in. I think it’s all tied together, and
that’s just the way life is. Everything is
connected to everything else.
K.M.: As it should be.
A.F.: The kids, by the way, who come
through that, are very resilient. Not just the
kids who come through the Geoffrey Canada
program, but kids who survive ACEs and
manage to overcome the trauma. There are
ways to do that. These kids tend to have
tremendous resilience and grit.
K.M.: Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and
Urban Development, stated that public housing
encourages dependency and should not be too
comfortable. Personally, I ’ve never seen
comfortable public housing, and I was raised in
Washington, D.C. I ’ve been through all the
projects. What is your experience with public
housing, and how do you think Secretary
Carson’s outlook will affect policymaking and
implementation of HUD safety net programs?
A.F.: I don’t buy his political and personal
philosophy at all, and I just think that’s
something that he shouldn’t have said.
K.M.: Gentrification tends to create housing
instability. Given that local politicians tend to
rely on wealthy donors, will there ever be the
political will to address the problem of
gentrification?
A.F.: Some of that question I don’t know
how to address. I’m not sure that the people
you get your donations from are in
neighborhoods that have recently been
gentrified. Those neighborhoods seem to
start with younger people, younger affluent
people, but younger people who aren’t
necessarily your big donors. After a
neighborhood has been gentrified for quite a
while, then you get your big money people in
there. Gentrification has always been, to me,
a puzzle. Because you’re saying, “Well, the
neighborhood’s improving.” But the people
who have lived there for a long time are
getting priced o u t I like multi-income
housing so that in the same housing
development, you have low, middle and
upper housing. I’ve seen that model work
very well in St. Paul, (Minn.).
If you start isolating people who are in
poverty in neighborhoods, that neighborhood
is powerless and they don’t get the
transportation, they don’t get services.
That’s why public housing can’t all be put in
one area, and that’s something that I’m
afraid Carson doesn’t understand. Public
housing should be comfortable, and it should
be a home you can have pride in.
K.M.: That model is similar to inclusionary
zoning in D.C.
A.F.: What is inclusionary zoning?
A.F.: Economic diversity.
K.M.: Economic diversity and
environmental diversity, because people are
coming from different cultures and they’re
mingling with each other and they’re blending,
as opposed to separating. That’s why I see
gentrification as being an issue: This used to be
the gateway to the South, and I watched it go
from being a hospitable town to being a place
where neighbors don’t know neighbors.
A.F.: That’s been a change all over the
country. There’s a book by Robert Putnam
called “Our Kids” (“Our Kids: The American
Dream in Crisis,” Simon & Schuster, 2015)
that talks about his class of 1959 from his
town in Ohio where every kid in the high
school knew each other. The richest kid in
town and the poorest kid in town were in the
same school and knew each other.
The poorest kids in town were two black
kids, and both now have post-graduate
degrees. But now there are two high schools:
One is in the upper-middle-class
neighborhood and one is in the working-class
poor area. The way he describes it is
everybody used to take care of everybody
else’s kid, and you could go out and all that
stuff. But now it’s become too dangerous for
that. That doesn’t happen anymore. It’s a
really terrific book.
At the end, after he does that in (his
hometown), then he goes around the country
and the same pattern exists. The exact same
pattern has happened.
K.M.: Changing the subject - you recently
stepped away from the “I ’m a house n-^r” retort
from Bill Maher. To me, (canceling your
appearance on “Real Time With Bill Maher”)
demonstrated wisdom. On the other hand,
speaking as a member of the black community
and one that was not offended by the comment,
I understood it was a comedic reflex.
A.F.: You said it right: It was a reflex. In
his head, he went (snaps fingers), “I am now
saying something about how bad slavery was,
which is that slavery was so bad that the
favored slave got to work inside.”
Making an observation that has some
information and knowledge and perspective
to it isn’t racist, but the problem is that you
just can’t use that word if you’re not African-
American.
We pulled out of the show because,
frankly, I didn’t want people condemning me
for a whole week. And also, I know the
format of the show, and the format of the
show is that he gives an opening monologue
and then he goes to the first guest. So it
would have been him apologizing in the way
he chose to, followed by me as a guest. And
why would I be the guest on that show?
Instead, he had Michael Eric Dyson, who is a
professor at Georgetown University, is
African-American and writes about this stuff.
So what’s better for his show? For him to
interview a comedian turned senator, and me
having to go into, “Oh yes, he’s a satirist, I
knew blah blah blah ...” or having Dyson?
Having Dyson was better for the show.
K.M.: Indeed, and that’s why I said it
showed wisdom.
A.F.: Yeah. It didn’t take me long to figure
it out. (laughter)
K.M.: Why does it take America so long to
figure it out?
A.F.: Well, because they don’t think in the
same terms.
K.M.: With Bill Maher, you expect a certain
degree of political incorrectness.
A.F.: Of course you do, which is why I will
be on that show in the near future.
Courtesy o f Street Sense / INSP.ngo