Good idea SarahMC! I should write to him. I’m sure he could organize my thoughts better than I could.

It’s great tangle. Those small bodegas create a black market in food stamps. How much of what they do is exploitive, on a very small scale?

My folks owned a bodega. Eva was their customer. They did not do these deals, ever, although they did extend credit without interest.

Yet the black market in food stamps continued in the parking lot. Not everybody bought shoes with the cash, either. Many came back in for beer and cigarettes, my family’s main source of income.

The result was that my parents became very bitter towards their customers. They are subject to confirmation bias, just like anybody else is. They have evolved into very hard social positions.

Sorry that this long post just boils down to *sigh* and *I dunno what to do*.

Even though I knew it wasn’t my place to say she COULDN’T have WIC, I also felt vaguely icky about the situation for some of the same reasons you mention. This is not a baby who would have gone without proper nutrition if her mother hadn’t had WIC. The kicker for me, though, is that she and her family are far-right conservatives who decry social programs and government assistance for women like the ones in the ColorLine article. Sort of like when my grandparents complain about govt funded healthcare while ignoring their own status as Medicare recipients.

Yet still, I’ve always felt funny saying something about it – because I feel like I’m finger-pointing, or like I’m suggesting that I’M the one who gets to decide which women “deserve” govt assistance. And I know that’s a dangerous road to head down. *Sigh*

My friends and I all graduated college last June, and two months ago, one of my friends moved about 1,000 miles away to a large city she’s been wanting to live in for a while. She got a white-collar job, which she quit after a couple weeks because it was “hard.” Now, she’s sporadically babysitting and just last week told me she signed up for food stamps.

This girl has upper middle class parents, comes from a wealthy town in the bay area, and has a good degree from a good university. She also has parents who would love for her to move into her childhood bedroom until she figures out her life, and feed her, clothe her, and give her anything she needs.

It just makes me uncomfortable that she is using a safety-net service when she has so many other options that most people in this country do not have. It almost seems like she is taking these stamps away from someone like Eva, who needs them far more. Like she is trivializing the importance of this service? I’m not sure what to think about it I guess. Am I being oversensitive?

My thoughts on this are unorganized, so I apologize if I say anything offensive.

Btw: this article made me so sad and I forwarded it to all my friends, many of whom are swimming in class privilege. I hope this gives them something to think about.

@Beckysharper: SAD and also MAD. Or even MAAAAAD, for extra emphasis.

I don’t know what the feeling is but it isn’t good. Maybe that’s a sign for some personal change?

I just don’t even know what to write. The system of health care, sick leave, and all the rest is horrible in general. But Christ does this put everything into stark perspective. Who the eff thinks it’s appropriate to comment on tragedy by saying “everybody’s moms die enevntually”? The callousness is staggering.

When the welfare reform package went through in 1996, I was at a summer program at Wellesley and 15 years old. We had an hour-long discussion about what this meant, but the terms were so abstract. I wish articles like this had been easy for me to source back then.

“Eva knew people, and she got a job at a movie theater. What she really wanted though—then and now—was her GED. But welfare-to-work programs have ignored the need for access to education. When Congress reauthorized the cash assistance program in 2005, for example, four-year college education was deemed outside of the realm of appropriate and sanctioned job training.”

The article goes on to say that when Eva was booted from welfare for exhausting her time limit, she had that job at the movie theater–which means 1) that the job paid so little that she was still eligible for assistance and 2) that the callous “get a job” we hear so often from people against public assistance is absurd.

And, combining this with the fact that the ‘job training’ program coupled with the welfare assistance did practically nothing to assist Eva (and millions like her) in getting a better job…basically means that we’re telling people that we’ll make a show of “helping” them for a couple of years and then we just don’t give a shit anymore.