Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 8, 2012)
Opinion Job Growth? Many Just Want a Job “Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now” B ERNIE F OSTER Founder/Publisher B OBBIE D ORE F OSTER Executive Editor T ED B ANKS Advertising Manager J ERRY F OSTER Account Executive L ISA L OVING News Editor H ELEN S ILVIS Multimedia Editor D AVID K IDD Graphic Designer M ONICA J. F OSTER Seattle Office Coordinator J ULIE K EEFE S USAN F RIED Photographers The Skanner Newspaper, established in October 1975, is a weekly publica- tion, published each Wednesday by IMM Publications Inc., 415 N. Killingsworth St., P.O. Box 5455, Portland, OR 97228. Telephone (503) 285-5555. E-mail: info@theskanner.com World Wide Web site: http://www.theskanner.com T he January jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor was good news for the 243,000 people who found jobs. And good news for the American economy as the unem- ployment rate fell to 8.3 percent, the lowest level in nearly three years. This is the 16th straight month of jobs growth, but the recovery can’t come soon enough for the millions of long-term unemployed like Tiffany Haneb- uth from Middletown, Ohio. She says, “I just want a job, any kind of job.” As with other families barely afloat on minimum wage jobs, the Hanebuths never had steady smooth sailing, but they were self- supporting until two years ago when Tiffany was laid off as a carhop at a Sonic drive-in and could not find another job. “I remember before, you could just go anywhere and get an applica- tion and get hired that day. It’s not like that now,” she said. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Julia Cass recently met Tiffany Hanebuth on assignment for the Children’s Defense Fund, and Cass says by anybody’s definition Tiffany is a survivor and a worker. Tiffany was raised by her father who she said was a biker and bar owner. “He started bringing friends home and it was too much for me,” Tiffany said. By the time she was 12 she left home to stay with friends and eventually found a job, got her own apartment, and finished high school. Tiffany did- n’t meet her mother until she was 17. “My father told me she didn’t want to take care of me because she was a drug addict,” Tiffany said. “I wanted to find her and I did. She was a drug addict.” Despite the fact that her own childhood was so chaotic and cut C HILD W ATCH Marian Wright Edelman short, Tiffany wants to provide a better life for her own children, Aaron, 10, Ayden, 7, Daniel, 6, and Serenity, 5. Aaron said he wants to go to college, get a job at NASA, live with his mom, and pay the bills for her. Tiffany has and a homeless shelter. The shelter staff helped her get public housing at a sprawling complex named Freedom Court where Tiffany pays $180 a month rent. She also signed up for food stamps and in June 2010, for cash assistance from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Anyone who thinks welfare recipients do nothing but sit around and cash their checks isn’t familiar with the schedules of Tiffany and many others like her. The welfare reform of the late 1990s put the emphasis on moving recipients from welfare to work and set a lifetime limit on federal- Tiffany has always been the breadwinner for her children although their father, who doesn’t live with them, helps out with child care and other occasional needs always been the breadwinner for her children although their father, who doesn’t live with them, helps out with child care and other occa- sional needs. She’s worked at gas stations, fast food restaurants, gro- cery stores, a Bob Evans restaurant, and various factories through temporary agencies before she lost her job two years ago. Tiffany managed on unemploy- ment for almost a year but fell behind on her rent and the family was evicted. She lost $150 when a landlord kept her deposit and did- n’t give her the apartment. “He said, ‘Take me to court if you want to.’ I think he knew I couldn’t afford to do that.” That’s when the family lived for a while in a motel ly-assisted cash payments for many families. Initially recipients are required to go to a job readi- ness site for a month to get training in resume writing and interview skills and use the com- puters and fax machines to apply for jobs. The big problem is that when there aren’t many jobs, the system doesn’t work as designed. So Tiffany was assigned to com- munity service in exchange for receiving cash assistance (about $650 a month for her and the chil- dren). Her assignment was at the local Salvation Army where she put donated clothing on racks and did whatever else she was asked to do. After several months, she was hired there and went off cash assistance. “But I only worked there a month and a half before they had to let the new people go,” she said. When she reapplied for cash assistance she was told she would be sanctioned for not reporting to community service and could not receive assistance for three months because she was on record as not having signed in at the Sal- vation Army. But Tiffany said she didn’t sign in for community serv- ice because she had started to work there instead. She said she took her pay stubs to the welfare office but the sanction was not withdrawn. “The guy was actually rude. He said if I wanted to keep complaining, he’d take my food stamps and Medicaid too.” By that point Tiffany had sold her car and television and gotten behind on bills. She’s still in a hole. Tiffany got back on cash assis- tance after the three months passed. She now does 86 hours a month of community service at the food pantry of Family Services of Middletown and likes it there. She usually takes the bus but at the end of the month she sometimes walks—a two-hour trip. The direc- tor gave her a bicycle, but it was stolen at the housing project. Tiffany’s children sometimes get backpacks of food at school on Fridays to take home for the week- end. But cuts in federal and school district funding have put this school year’s backpack program in jeopardy. Tiffany, who’s never been afraid of hard work, doesn’t want to have to rely on assistance and donated food forever. For now, the safety net is doing exact- ly what it is designed to do: keeping Tiffany and her family above water. Read the rest online at www.theskanner.com Fax: (503) 285-2900 The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Associ- ation and West Coast Black Pub lishers Association. All photos submitted become the property of The Skanner. We are not re - spon sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicited. © 2012 The Skanner. ALL RIGHTS RE SERVED. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITHOUT PERMISSION PROHIBITED. To see The Skanner News on your smart phone go to theskannermobile.com or scan this QR code with your app. • • • • • • • • Local news Opinions Jobs, Bids Sports Entertainment Music reviews Bulletin board RSS feeds Gov. Christie distorts Civil rights History “No minority should have their rights subject to the passions and sentiments of the majority. This is the fundamental bedrock of what our nation stands for.” —Newark Mayor, Cory Booker I n recent weeks, outrageous statements targeted at minority citizens have come out of the mouths of a number of conserva- tive politicians – everything from the assertion that African Ameri- cans prefer food stamps over pay checks to the claim that “black people” are using “other people’s money” to get ahead. But last week, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey may have topped them all when he declared, “People would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South.” The Gov- ernor’s statement was made in the context of his proposal that the issue of same-sex marriage in New Jersey be settled by a voter refer- endum. But his words amounted to an insult to generations of men and women who put their lives on the line for equal rights. They also ignore the fact that the sole pur- pose of any civil rights struggle is to gain rights for minority citizens that the majority has historically Page 4 The Portland Skanner February 8, 2012 T O B E E QUAL Marc Morial and consistently denied. The nonsense of Christie’s state- ment was made all the more became necessary for people of conscience to organize in protest against such treatment. Christie should remember that in the 18th century, it was not a referendum but a revolution that formed the United States of America. In the 19th century, it was not a referen- dum, but a civil war that ended slavery and unified our nation. And in the 20th century, it was not a referendum, but a series of non- violent civil rights struggles that His words amounted to an insult to generations of men and women who put their lives on the line for equal rights apparent by the fact that during the heyday of lynchings, poll taxes and “separate but equal schools”, any referendum on voting rights and civil rights for African Ameri- cans would have excluded many of the very people seeking those rights. In fact it was only because the majority for centuries had first enslaved and then discriminated against African Americans that it defeated Jim Crow and secured voting rights for women, African Americans and other disenfran- chised minorities. Sheila Oliver, New Jersey’s first African American woman Assem- bly Speaker, correctly saw Christie’s proposal to submit same-sex marriage rights to the whims of voters as a shirking of responsibility. She said, “The major issues of our time such as women’s suffrage and civil rights were rightly decided legislatively. We are elected by the people of New Jersey to protect civil rights. We do not pass on such tough decisions.” Oliver also took issue with Christie’s characterization of the civil rights struggle, adding, “Governor, people were fighting and dying in the streets of the South because the majority refused to grant minorities equal rights by any method. It took leg- islative action to bring justice to all Americans, just as legislative action is the right way to bring marriage equality to all New Jer- seyans.” It is almost unthinkable that a sitting governor would either be so uninformed, so callous to suggest that civil rights movements have not played a necessary and posi- tive role in ensuring that the promise of freedom, equality and democracy is made real for every citizen. We think the Governor owes the people of New Jersey and all Americans a clear explana- tion. Marc H. Morial is the president and CEO of the National Urban League.
