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
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National Newspaper Pub lishers Associ-
ation and West Coast Black Pub lishers
Association.
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spon sible for lost or damaged photos
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© 2012 The Skanner. ALL RIGHTS RE SERVED.
REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART
WITHOUT PERMISSION PROHIBITED.
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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.