Food stamp families to critics: Walk in our shoes

JESSE WASHINGTON

AP National Writer

Some have advanced degrees and remem­ber middle-class lives. Some work sell­ing lin­gerie or build­ing web­sites. They are white, black and His­panic, young and old, home­own­ers and home­less. What they have in com­mon: They’re all on food stamps.

As the food stamp pro­gram has become an issue in the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial pri­mary, with can­di­dates seek­ing to tie Pres­i­dent Barack Obama to the program’s record num­bers, The Asso­ci­ated Press inter­viewed recip­i­ents across the coun­try and found many who wished that crit­ics would spend some time in their shoes.

Most said they never expected to need food stamps, but the Great Reces­sion, which wiped out mil­lions of jobs, left them no choice. Some strug­gled with the idea of tak­ing a hand­out; oth­ers saw it as their due, earned through years of work­ing steady jobs. They yearn to get back to receiv­ing a pay­check that will make food stamps unnecessary.

“I could never have com­pre­hended being on food stamps,” said Christo­pher Jenks, who became home­less in his home­town of Minneapolis-St. Paul after a suc­cess­ful career in sales and marketing.

He refused to apply for sev­eral years, even pan­han­dling on a free­way exit ramp before finally giv­ing in. A few months ago, while liv­ing in his car, he began receiv­ing $200 per month.

“It’s either that or I die,” said Jenks, who grew up in a white, middle-class fam­ily and lost his job in the reces­sion. “I want a job. So do a lot of other Amer­i­cans that have been caught up in this tragedy.”

In 2011, more than 45 mil­lion peo­ple — about one in seven Amer­i­cans — received ben­e­fits from the fed­eral Sup­ple­men­tal Nutri­tion Assis­tance Pro­gram, the most ever. Fewer than 31 mil­lion peo­ple col­lected the ben­e­fits about three years earlier.

Forty-nine per­cent of recip­i­ents are white, 26 per­cent are black and 20 per­cent are His­panic, accord­ing to Cen­sus data.

Food assis­tance emerged as a cam­paign issue after state­ments by GOP can­di­dates Newt Gin­grich and Rick San­to­rum about African-Americans, the poor and Obama, whom Gin­grich labeled the “best food stamp pres­i­dent in Amer­i­can history.”

Crit­ics accused Gin­grich of seek­ing votes by invok­ing racial stereo­types about black wel­fare recip­i­ents with com­ments like “the African-American com­mu­nity should demand pay­checks and not be sat­is­fied with food stamps.” Chal­lenged at a GOP debate this week on whether the rhetoric was insult­ing, Gin­grich insisted it was not and received a stand­ing ova­tion from the South Car­olina audience.

Linda Miles is grate­ful to have food stamps, although she’s not happy about why she needs them. An Army vet­eran with a master’s degree, Miles, who is black, was laid off as a sub­sti­tute teacher in Philadel­phia amid deep bud­get cuts. After fac­ing an empty refrig­er­a­tor for too long, she recently started receiv­ing $200 per month in food aid.

“Food stamps are essen­tial, espe­cially with the econ­omy in the shape it’s in,” she said. “I pay taxes. I don’t steal any­thing from the gov­ern­ment. I paid my dues to soci­ety; I’m a vet­eran. You took some­thing from me by tak­ing away my job. I wouldn’t need food stamps if you hadn’t taken my job.”

Miles started an unpaid intern­ship this week, and also was cer­ti­fied to work in early child­hood care while she looks for a per­ma­nent job.

“I’m not one of these peo­ple who sit on their butt and just col­lect a check,” Miles said. “I’ve got a resume three pages long.”

Ron­nie McHugh was watch­ing the GOP debate from home in Spring City, Pa. When Gin­grich received the stand­ing ova­tion, McHugh got so angry that she turned off the TV.

“I’d give a mil­lion dol­lars if I could find a job. I’m 64 years old, and no one wants to hire me,” said McHugh, who is white, divorced, has no sav­ings and lives off $810 per month in Social Security.

“I would like them to sit in my shoes,” she said of the debate audi­ence. “I would tell them I had a hus­band who made $150,000 a year, I had a good salary. We were both laid off at the same time by the same com­pany, and I’ve never been able to rally from that.”

“If they had a chance to sit in my shoes, they would be happy to have a pro­gram to help peo­ple who did work all their life.”

Some crit­ics say the Obama administration’s poli­cies have pushed peo­ple into depen­dency on food stamps. Eli­gi­bil­ity rules were broad­ened in 2002 and 2008 before Obama took office; his 2009 stim­u­lus pack­age relaxed some work require­ments and tem­porar­ily increased payouts.

For oth­ers, the reces­sion, which pushed the unem­ploy­ment rate as high as 10 per­cent and increased poverty, is the pri­mary culprit.

The Greater Philadel­phia Coali­tion Against Hunger has seen a dou­bling of enroll­ments in sub­ur­ban coun­ties, with a smaller increase in the city itself. “These are much higher-income areas,” said Julie Zaebst, the coalition’s pol­icy cen­ter man­ager. “This is part of the evi­dence show­ing that the most impor­tant rea­son for the growth in the pro­gram was the recession.”

It was an injury that pushed Rus­sell John­son of Mor­gan­town, W.Va., over the edge. He held down a steady refrig­er­a­tion job until he fell off a roof six years ago. On Wednes­day, he and his wife, Car­olyn, used their food stamp card to buy $64.71 worth of gro­ceries. That was more than half of their $102 monthly benefit.

“It’s not enough, but it helps,” Car­olyn said. “I think it’s a great pro­gram for the peo­ple who need it.”

The John­sons, who are white, main­tain a big gar­den, hunt, fish and buy in bulk, like the 50-pound sack of pota­toes in their cart. Car­olyn also is dis­abled; they receive $763 per month in total dis­abil­ity payments.

They are furi­ous with Gin­grich. “I’d rather work than be on food stamps, but, I mean, my body says no. So what am I gonna do?” Rus­sell said. “If I sit for too long, my back starts hurt­ing and my leg goes numb. If I stand too long, the same old thing. And if I walk too much, my legs give out like they ain’t even there.”

He said the peo­ple crit­i­ciz­ing food assis­tance eat at fancy restau­rants and pay $25 for a sack of potatoes.

“Me, I’m dang lucky to get to go to McDonald’s,” Rus­sell said.

About half of those receiv­ing food aid are chil­dren. In Fresno, Calif., Josephine Gon­za­les has received assis­tance since becom­ing preg­nant with her first child last fall. She is trained as a med­ical assis­tant and pre­vi­ously worked at an ele­men­tary school, but hasn’t found a new job since giv­ing birth.

“I use food stamps because I’m a sin­gle mom and I don’t work, so I need a way to sur­vive,” said Gon­za­les, who is His­panic. “Instead of spend­ing the lit­tle cash I have on food, I can spend it on dia­pers and other things for my baby. It’s just a small help. It’s not mak­ing our lives luxurious.”

Twanda Gra­ham of Mont­gomery, Ala., started receiv­ing food stamps when she grad­u­ated from high school 22 years ago. She has worked all that time, cur­rently in a cloth­ing store. She is unmar­ried with four chil­dren, and said she does not earn enough to feed her family.

Gra­ham, who is black, believes she is pay­ing for her assis­tance with taxes with­held from her pay­check: “They are not giv­ing me any­thing for free.”

Vic­to­ria Busby of Okla­homa City is a white sin­gle mom with two chil­dren. She has received food assis­tance inter­mit­tently since her first child was born two years ago. A high school grad­u­ate, she works part-time build­ing web­sites for a man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pany, and aspires to become a nurse.

She is not ashamed about receiv­ing aid. “I don’t feel bad about it because my chil­dren need to eat. It’s helped quite a bit.”

Sophia Clark is a film school grad­u­ate in New York City who works part time at Victoria’s Secret while she free­lances on movie pro­duc­tions. In Decem­ber she began receiv­ing $130 per month because she couldn’t afford to buy food after pay­ing for rent, col­lege loans and her cell phone.

“It was never, ever my inten­tion to rely on pub­lic assis­tance in any way,” said Clark, who is black and unmar­ried with no children.

Clark was recently enter­tain­ing a guest in the Bronx apart­ment she shares with her uncle when the din­ner con­ver­sa­tion turned to food stamps. The guest emphat­i­cally stated that his tax dol­lars should not feed peo­ple who pre­fer wel­fare over work.

She asked the guest if he had enjoyed the pasta with home­made pesto sauce. He had. “Do you find me a lazy per­son?” Clark asked. Not at all, the guest replied.

“Well,” Clark said, “you just ate a din­ner that was pur­chased with food stamps.”

Posted by AP News on Jan 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.