MISCmedia for 2/13/01
Welfare and Dog Tricks
(Part 2)
by guest columnist Rachel Jacobsen

(LAST TIME, our guest columnist began her true-life story of being a cash-strapped single mom trying to avoid the state's three-month cutoff of benefits, which would force her to work away from home and hire strangers to care for her kid. Her only apparent alternative is to take a two-week "transitioning to work" seminar.)

I'VE CALLED THE SEMINAR PEOPLE. They aren't welfare; they are a private corporation.

A high-school cheerleader type answers. She says they have no credentials but the owner of the company is "really good;" she used to give motivational seminars to "really big companies, like Fortune 500 companies." But she stopped and is now working only with welfare mothers because "they are so committed to their community."

Yeah right.

I am getting a mental picture of another has-been from New York transplanted to Seattle for a last hurrah of aggressiveness. She's wearing shoulder pads and a big bow on her neck. Her motivational seminars in L.A. or New York (doesn't matter) are fizzling, and the temp company which employs her is not paying enough.

She finds out that people are required to prove they are "transitioning to work" or lose their welfare benefits, and she develops an easy money scheme: She'll hire people with no qualifications, pay them nothing, and charge welfare for the "transitioning to work" classes. (Which, I'm told, are mainly "discussion groups" with different themes every day).

I bet the classes are costing welfare a fortune; maybe $100 a day for each participant.

In the midst of all my questions about the "program" (I tell her it is discrimination to say that just because I am poor I need to learn how to parent), the peppy receptionist says, "We don't want anyone to come to the class if they don't want to."

Then she asks my name. I tell her I'd rather not say; I'm only calling to get information. She starts insisting the class isn't "designed for me." I want to scream at her that if I don't take this class I won't be able to pay rent. She must know that though, so I keep my mouth shut. I never tell someone they are evil if they already know it. She tells me of other classes, but we both know I can't bring my child to them. She's got me where she wants me. I hang up defeated.

Now thoroughly convinced I'm not going to take this class, I'm told the gritty truth from my social worker. If I don't take the class I would lose 40 percent of my benefits.

But that's not all! The measly $264 left over would go to a "guardian," a friend or relative of my choosing, who would dole the money out to me, since I'm clearly a derelict.

I have no idea who I would choose for this honored task. I'm on welfare secretly. It's not exactly something I'm going to print on a T-shirt.

Anyway, after I take this really stupid class, where I will be asked to participate in what sounds like group therapy lea by not even a social worker or qualified nurse or even someone who used to be a welfare mother herself, then and only then will I have a respite from hoop jumping (I think like a month, but I couldn't get a clear answer) until I have another hoop to jump through. Which I will dutifully obey.

During all this I have to breast feed round the clock too. I'm doing three jobs now, one with my child and one for welfare and one that is under-the-table work so I can actually pay rent and bills.

I do have an ace in the hole. To quote Ariel Gore, editor of Hip Mama magazine, "When they don't give a family enough to survive on at the beginning of the month and that family is still alive at the end of the month--well, obviously some fraud has taken place."

Strangely, welfare never asks me how I made rent this month, or how my newborn infant suckling at my breast is taking my "transition to work" seminars. They never ask me how I'm feeling about my government devaluing motherhood so much that they think I'd be better off in the work force and leaving my newborn with a "child care expert."

Welfare only asks me constantly to jump through hoops, hoping perhaps to keep me primed for the working world.

I don't know why else they would do this to a mother and her newborn.

NEXT: Learning to like Valentine's Day.

ELSEWHERE:

• The disappearing American phone booth....
• Abandoned images left behind in America's photo booths....

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• A personal account of being pushed out of dot-com employment.
• A fashion makeover gone very wrong.
• Parts one and two of a mild pique of jealousy for Mexico's public-transport system.
• Amazon.com tries the wrong way to become a respectable company.
• What might be the basis of '90s nostalgia.
• Boo for consumer-sex and non-sex; yay for real sex.
• What's wrong with Playboy isn't what its most vocal critics claim is wrong with it.
• What we know so far about the new administration.
• A glimpse of our forthcoming coffee-table photo book.
• Still more new cable channels.
• Just when you thought the '70s revival was dead, here comes a new energy crisis.
• Should we pity poor Belltown yet?
• How to improve Ken Burns's Jazz.
• I know what IT is, and if you're nice I just might tell you.
• Yes, Virginia, there's race discrimination in "nice" Seattle.
• A Hollywood insider acknowledges the death of the mass audience.
• Lynda Barry's Cruddy is anything but.
• My dream of a permanent alternative daily paper.
• People you're not better than.
• Parts one, and two of a remembrance at some people, buildings, and institutions that are gone or going at this time.

ARCHIVES:

• 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, and 1986-94 columns
• Reviews of literature & art, nonfiction & culture criticism, movies & videos, and music & noise
• Longer articles and essays
• Some slightly weird little fiction pieces
• X-Word crossword puzzles, now with on-screen solving
• Cyber Stuff, links to cool and/or useful sites
• A listing of many Things I Like (and a few things I hate)
• The origin and future of MISCmedia