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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN
There are many reasons why people don’t have enough money to acquire what they need to live. For example, they just don’t have the earning power; they have been laid off and don’t have savings; they have had a medical emergency and can’t work; they don’t have child care and can’t leave their children unattended; they have never learned how to handle money; they don’t have any family support; they have been evicted; they are late teens just emerging from dysfunctional famiies. There are many reasons, and not everyone’s needs are the same.
There are a couple of avenues for getting government cash assistance—when the family network isn’t healthy or wealthy enough to intervene, or when charitable resources aren’t enough. Through MFIP (Minnesota Family Investment Program) a family of three can get $503/month; one adult and one child can get $437. One adult without dependents can perhaps receive $203/month from another fund, General Assistance. These amounts have been the same since 1986. The cost of living has risen 113%.
The Welfare Rights Committee (WRC) is asking that these amounts be doubled. “Double the Grants.” One can see why, just by considering the cost of housing. The WRC is also asking for an end to the five-year limit to assistance. Although the average length of time on assistance is two years (most people don’t know this, says WRC), there are occasional unusual circumstances when it should stretch out much longer. And, to allow for other variations, they are asking for “Aid to All in Need,” which would provide an avenue of assistance for the odd cases that don’t fall into the other categories of aid now available.
Tahsha Jackson, part of the Welfare Rights Committee, is one of those “odd” cases. She told me her story.
TJ lives with and cares for her mother, who is a diabetic triple amputee and has numerous psychiatric problems. The caretaking is erratic and crisis-filled, which would make it impossible for TJ to work at a scheduled job. So far she’s not been able to get cleared as a personal care attendant (PCA) for her mother by the Department of Human Services because of her prison record. And, while she can get SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, that is, food stamps) and she can live with her mom in her mother’s subsidized housing, she can’t get General Assistance, which is designed for adults without dependents, but almost always disabled adults. She has no car and no money to buy a bus ticket. Keeping up her morale is the first effort she has to make.
TJ has not had an easy life. To add to the difficulties of physical survival, she says, “Lower-income and poor people are being stereotyped as irresponsible deadbeats. It squashes their ambition and confidence. Everyone that’s low-income and poor are not looking for a handout.” She says the system tries to bring you down mentally. CWR co-worker Linden Gawboy says when you’re low-income and poor you have to give 200% [just to keep it together, physically and mentally].
In the back of her mind as a child growing up on the southside TJ always had politics or some kind of public life in mind. Things happened along the way that clarified her desire to work to change the system.
TJ went to four high schools: Work Opportunity Center (WOC); South, Southwest, and North. She got into fights at North and of course realizes now she shouldn’t have allowed herself to be provoked. But at that time she got angry. Also, her mother had a psychiatric condition that made it impossible for her to care for her children so TJ had to stay with different family members. With all the chaos she managed to finish the 10th grade and then “life got in the way.” She put her dreams on hold. At age 17 she gave birth to her first child, a girl. Two years later her son was born.
At the age of 23, she was living in section 8 housing, working at a fast food restaurant, receiving AFDC (Aid to Families and Dependent Children, back before it was replaced by MFIP) and raising her kids. She was more or less able to survive. At least she could pay the rent. Then she clashed with the landlord’s girlfriend, whom she feels had always had it in for her. A jealous girl thing, like the kind of thing she had encountered over and over at North High. When the girlfriend provoked her, she responded, with a knife. Although TJ was cut in the arm and had to have stitches, TJ was sentenced to seven years probation. She believes (and so do I) if the races had been reversed, the instigator who cut her arm would have gotten the seven-year probation. TJ represented herself in front of a judge.
The fight was the beginning of a long detour in TJ’s life. However, today she calls the whole experience an opportunity. It made her see the injustices in the system and gave her the motivation to try to make changes. And of course she has learned that no matter how much someone provokes you, you can’t react. You can’t let somebody push your buttons. The fact that the woman was an alcoholic, and competing for her man’s attention should have been taken into account. But TJ just reacted. Bad move. This fight would have had a more fair resolution today with Restorative Justice, but those programs were not in place at that time.
During the seven-year probation, TJ learned the important thing was to “keep yourself busy with positive things. And don’t react to the parole officers—the ones who act like policemen. Some will leave you alone.” During that time, she was required to be tested for drugs at least once a month and sometimes twice. Twice her tests turned up positive and she spent a month in the workhouse each time. She said she used drugs at that time because it was what everyone around her was doing. It would have been a major project to stand up to it. About five years into her probation, a test came up with an inconclusive result (they said they found something, but they couldn’t identify it). She didn’t have a trial, but rather a court hearing, in which she again represented herself. The result was that she was sentenced to two years in Shakopee.
It was a very difficult time. She felt railroaded. Almost all of her family turned their back on her. She was threatened with termination of parental rights and she lost her apartment.
In prison, she started studying the law and appealing the termination of her parental rights. She discovered there were other women in the same situation and she tried to help and encourage them. After a year a pro bono lawyer stepped in to help.
In the meantime, thankfully, her kids, 7 and 9 when she started serving her sentence, were able to stay with their paternal grandmother.
It has been a hard battle since being released from prison, in 2000. She can’t get out from under her “record.” Nevertheless, she is proud that, “Even though I had my issues in dealing with the system, my kids have become independent and self-sufficient.” They have a good relationship with their dad, and TJ and he get along, too.
From 2000 to 2012 TJ did political work, on Keith Ellison’s staff, starting as a volunteer and moving to a paid position. She also volunteered in Obama’s first campaign. In 2012 she started taking care of her mother off and on. She lived with a partner while looking for work after that, but when they broke up, she went to care for her mother full time.
Right away she applied with the agency that handled her mother’s care to be the PCA. They sent her application to the Department of Human Services and it was denied because of her prison record. She has tried to get her record expunged, which can be done in certain cases, usually for a fee. TJ so far has done all the legal work herself. It has been difficult getting legal aid. In one phone hearing with a judge, TJ says he told her, “ Due to your conviction you’re not entitled to a fair hearing.” The legal battle continues with appeals and extensions. A jaywalking fine she can’t pay is one of her obstacles. Hopefully, eventually TJ will be cleared to be her mother’s PCA. That is her main personal goal at this point. She would also like to get her GED and go to college, to study political science.
Whenever the government’s available programs make it possible for people to survive and thrive, everybody wins. It saves money that would otherwise have to be spent on pick-up-the-pieces/damage control programs. I think one can be motivated by compassion and/or self-interest in supporting the WRC’s “Double the Grants” and “Aid to All in Need.”
It should be noted that a bill asking for a $100 increase to the monthly grants (SF734) made it into the omnibus Health and Human Services (HHS) appropriations bill (SF1458). Hopefully the full legislature will vote on it by Monday, May 18, at midnight. If it passes, the $100 increase will go into effect in October 2015.
