First Person

My Poverty, My Trauma

I have lived in Philadelphia, in poverty, for most of my life. I remember the smell of mold and mildew. I would watch as my most valuable possessions were destroyed by them. The smell of decay was all around me. I remember being cold and being in houses with no heat or hot water. My stepfather would use gray duct tape to wrap around the cords of the heaters when they burned out, so we could keep using it. Yes, it was a fire hazard, but who cared – the heater was keeping us warm. On occasion you would hear a sizzle and a pop from the heater.  Despite our efforts we were still cold.

My scars run long and deep – they will always be there. The long lasting effects of trauma stick with you.

We never had a working kitchen. My mom would cook food at her parents’ house and then we would take the food back to wherever we were staying at that moment. Most of the places we lived in had no running water and were very unsanitary. We would also go to my grandparents’ house to take baths and we got used to defecating in shoe boxes, putting it in plastic bags, getting on the bus and just throwing it out the window into a lot or something. People who are raised like this simply pass it on down the line. And you grow up thinking that it is ok to live like this.

As for food, we didn’t starve.  But we were hungry.  We ate whatever we could afford.  This is where the past affects the present. Today I’m somewhat of a food hoarder – I’m afraid of not having enough food for my family and me. I know what it feels like to be hungry but not have the food that you need or want. I have to constantly remind myself that I no longer live that way. But it’s the only way I’ve ever known. I don’t take showers, only baths, because I’m not used to it. If I do get cold or hungry I have learned how to deal with it. It’s like when you are being raped and you go out of your body to survive. That’s what it’s like when you are born into hunger and into a dirty, unhealthy environment.  This kind of living goes back in time, too.  If your parental figure is used to living that way, it’s likely because their childhood was the same way. You are stripped of your dignity. You are ashamed. Your soul feels like a bottomless pit. You feel less than human. The hell that I know came from the environment that I was born into. Now I am in my thirties, and I’m still haunted by the trauma and food insecurity.

My scars run long and deep – they will always be there. The long lasting effects of trauma stick with you. But I refuse to let my past dictate my future. My memories keep me humble. I’m shaped not by the commonly accepted “fact” that since I grew up in poverty I have to live in poverty now. Instead, I’m shaped by the idea that while you can’t change the past, you can change the future.

When I go into a market and see and smell food I feel bliss. It’s like I just won the lottery. To know that I can buy a steak if I want to or some seafood is a very priceless feeling. To be able to run hot and cold water is a blessing.

Today I am far from my childhood of mold, cold, and hunger. But even though I’ve healed so much and don’t have to live that way anymore, the effects of early poverty and trauma are still a part of my being. They shape me into the woman I am today. A woman who is motivated, and works hard to make sure that her daughter will have more opportunities than she had growing up. I take what I saw and experienced as a child, and use that to drive me to be a better person for myself, for my family, and for others who live through the trauma of poverty.

 

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First Person

It’s Time to #VOTEFOOD

I’m a chef, a food activist, an avid eater, and a healthy-cooking parent, though most people know me from my role as head judge on Bravo’s Top Chef. All of the above warrant my inclusion in what is known as the Food Movement.

So you may be surprised to learn that lately I’ve been asking myself this question:

Is there actually a Food Movement?

25 years ago, as a fledgling chef, I didn’t ask these sorts of questions. I started purchasing fresh food for my restaurant from farmer’s markets because it tasted better. Back then I could actually back my truck up into the market at Union Square and load up on root vegetables and fresh herbs from Guy Jones and the other early farmers who sold vegetables there.  I was buying local and organic — not because I was concerned about the environment or farm workers — but because it simply tasted better and my goal at the time was to be the best chef I could be. It was higher quality food, period.

Around the same time, I was invited to cook at a Share Our Strength Taste of the Nation Fundraiser. I was happy to support SOS’s mission to combat hunger, but frankly, I agreed because it meant I was invited to cook alongside the country’s most elite chefs that night, and I was flattered to be included.

The truth is that the great work of charities is being undermined by really bad policy, and until we face that truth, we’re deluding ourselves.

What I learned that evening really made me start to think about hunger in this country.  At the same time, issues pertaining to our food supply and our fisheries became more important to me and I educated myself about them too, with the dawning understanding that my success as a chef rested on the viability of the ingredients at my disposal.

Around this time I started to feel uneasy about the great schism between the variety and quality of what I could offer my guests at restaurants, and the food available to millions of other Americans for whom a meal at Craft or Colicchio & Sons was not an option.  As a chef, it’s my job to feed people, and given my own humble roots, it didn’t feel right to only feed the luckiest few. That was the impulse behind ‘wichcraft – I wanted to offer great, high quality food at a more democratic price point. But that wasn’t enough to quiet my growing discomfort. A $10 artisanal sandwich wasn’t the answer to unequal food access.

Over the years I continued to cook for any group that was tackling hunger. I saw my role as a fundraiser, plain and simple.  When asked, I also lent my voice to groups who were pushing for more sustainable ways of farming the land, and to environmental groups bent on protecting our food and fisheries.

Then, about six years ago, my wife Lori began working on a movie that examined our nation’s hunger crisis.  She was determined to ask some hard questions about how the world’s wealthiest nation could have a massive hunger crisis – a crisis virtually unknown in other wealthy, developed nations.

Making A Place at the Table changed my thinking radically, because I learned a remarkable truth: hunger in the U.S. is solvable. We actually can end it, if we resolve to look honestly and critically at the policies that contribute to the issue.  Other nations have done that, and they are not faced with the same hunger crisis. We, on the other hand, comfort ourselves with charitable work that barely makes a dent in the problem. I was so used to raising money, I thought the answer was food banking. Food banks do really excellent, needed work, but they’re not getting us any closer to ending hunger.

To put it in perspective: The most successful fundraising gala I’ve ever attended raised $2 million dollars to support the food banks of New York City. Earlier this year, Congress voted to slash $8.8 BILLION dollars from SNAP. To make up for $8.8 billion dollars in cuts to food for hungry people, we would need to replicate the success of that fundraiser every single night.  For the next 12 years.

The truth is that the great work of charities is being undermined by really bad policy, and until we face that truth, we’re deluding ourselves. If bad policies — like cruel cuts to food stamps or a minimum wage so low that working people can’t afford food — are creating the problem, then it will take good policies to fix them.  And where do policies get written, decided and voted on? Washington, DC.

Marion Nestle once described a meeting she had on Capitol Hill where she used the term “The Food Movement.” The Congressman chuckled and said, “The food movement? What food movement?” As he saw it there was no food movement because Congress wasn’t hearing from them and they weren’t voting people in and out of office on the basis of these values.

Plain and simple, his point was: you might think you’re a movement, but if you’re not getting anyone elected, then your issues don’t matter here. Sorry.

So far, the food movement has been no match for the food industry, especially on Election Day. And, that’s why so many of our food policies benefit industrial agriculture and giant food processors at the expense of struggling families.

Unfortunately, the Americans most affected by policies that lead to hunger haven’t been able to move the needle on influencing our leaders for obvious reasons – when you’re struggling just to get enough food together for your kids each day, you’re unlikely to be able to focus on organizing a political movement.

For years now, food advocates and hunger advocates have been in silos – so focused on making modest gains that many times we are faced with bargaining between good food policy and reducing hunger.

The key to our success is impossible to ignore – we have to get out of our silos and work together as a political movement.  When that starts to happen, we won’t be in the kind of situation we were in during this last Farm Bill debate, which split people who care about hunger from people who care about healthy diets and organic farmers. We all share the same food values, but we were too divided to deliver the food system Americans overwhelmingly want.

That’s why I worked with food leaders from across the country to help create Food Policy Action.  Finally, we are uniting food leaders from across the country, and are holding legislators accountable. We can see whether or not they share our values. Because that’s what this is about. This is about creating a system that works for everyone. It’s about more than just food: it’s about justice.
Every year, Food Policy Action issues a scorecard that tracks how legislators are voting on the issues we all care about, issues like hunger, nutrition, food access, food and farm workers, food safety, local food and farming, animal welfare, and reforming farm subsidies.

This kind of accountability is crucial to our ability – as a movement – to promote the policies that will change the way we eat and how our food is grown.  Right now, we have a Gun Rights Movement that votes expressly on Second Amendment Rights.  We have a Pro-Life movement that votes entirely based on Reproductive Rights. It’s time we have a Food Movement that votes on a good fair food system for all.

Now is the time for us to band together with people working on all food issues to make food matter in elections. We can work together to introduce tax incentives that promote the right kind of behavior from industry. We can raise Americans’ awareness of how their leaders are voting on issues that directly impact the quality and availability of their food. We can call out our leaders who show disdain for American eaters by voting for bad food policies and force them to defend those votes in primaries, talk to SNAP recipients, and stare down the 17 million kids who routinely go hungry through no fault of their own.  We can start to vote for good food not with our dollars, but with our votes.

As soon as one legislator loses their job over the way they vote on food issues, it will send a clear message to Congress: We are organized. We’re strong.  Yes, we have a food movement, and it’s coming for you.

Join me, #VOTEFOOD.

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First Person

Time for Collective Action (and Other Lessons from Duck Run)

Growing up, I lived out in the country in southern Ohio on a road called Duck Run. It was sort of a secluded upbringing.  There was no city, no town—not even a small town nearby.

The first house I remember living in was a big farmhouse.  It probably wasn’t really all that big but things always look larger when you’re a kid.  When I was maybe 4 or 5 years old, I woke up in the middle of the night, my sister was carrying me out of the house.  It was on fire.

My Dad was working at the steel mill on the midnight shift.  The rest of us—there were nine of us kids, I had four brothers and four sisters—we stood on the other side of the road with Mom and watched our house burn to the ground.  When Dad got home there was nothing.  We weren’t able to get our clothes out, or anything else.  And there was no insurance.

So what to do?

We had a chicken house up on the side of the hill.  My older brothers and my Dad took cardboard and used it as plaster board.  And so we lived there in the chicken house for a while—that’s where I had whooping cough.  Down over the side of the hill we had what we called a smokehouse—which was basically a cellar with a little structure on top of it.  We used that as our kitchen.  Eventually, my Dad and older brothers took our barn and made a house out of it, and that’s where I grew up.

It was definitely tough times.  My Dad probably had a 5th grade education, my Mom—I’m not sure how far she went in school.  I had a tenth sibling who didn’t survive childhood.

Dad drank a lot, and wasn’t always kind.  But my mother was just the opposite—she was like the sponge that absorbed all of the incoming fire, so to speak.  She was the protector.  And I always felt secure, sure that my Mom and Dad would be there for us.

I know there were times my parents went without what they desperately needed in order to make it possible for us kids to have what we needed.  We all cared for each other.  I remember times trying not to eat too much food.  We ate a lot of mush—oatmeal, basically.  But we always had pigs, and chickens, and cows.  We had a lot of vegetables—my Mom canned a lot. We grew a lot of potatoes and tomatoes and beans.  We always had horses, I remember plowing behind a team of horses with what we called a turning plow that would dig deep into the earth.

Things got a little better as some of my older siblings left the house and got jobs.  Three of my brothers became construction workers—cement finishers.  We got indoor plumbing in our barn house when I was in high school.

I had no thought whatsoever of going to college—never knew anyone who went to college.  But I enjoyed school.  I stuttered badly at times during that period, but I had teachers who saw potential in me.  Mabel Keller taught me during 1st through 4th grades in a one-room school. I remember standing outside with her one day and she said to me, “Teddy, I wish you were my little boy.”  I remember the pride I felt.  When I was a senior in high school, another teacher, Frankie Edwards, took me to visit a small liberal arts college in Kentucky, Asbury College.  On the way home she told me if I wanted to go to college I could, there were people who would help me afford it.

So I went on to further my education and got two Masters and a PhD.  Other than myself, only one of my siblings finished high school.  And some of them were truly much more capable than I—and I mean that.  The only difference between my brothers finishing concrete—and it’s an honorable thing to do—and my ability to become a psychologist and a Congressman and a Governor, was opportunity and education.  Because I came a long later in the birth order it was possible for me to have opportunities they just didn’t have.

My family was strongly Democratic, primarily because of what my folks experienced during the Depression.  So I grew up hearing about FDR and the importance of social security and other programs that helped people in need.  We were also a strong labor family—my Dad worked at the steel mill, my brothers were members of the Cement Mason’s Union, and I belonged to the Laborers’ Union during my graduate school days when I worked in construction.  This, and my family’s experience when I was growing up, as well as the teachings of my faith—have always caused me to feel a responsibility to look out for those who have fewer opportunities in life.  And I’ve always tried to stay close to the people I want to represent—primarily because of my own need to stay in touch with where I came from.  I’ve always felt that if you’re not careful when you’re in public life you can start thinking of yourself as being other than the people whom you represent.  I’ve always tried to consciously make sure that that didn’t happen to me—I’ve seen it happen to too many other people.

So when I was in Congress and in the Governor’s office I never accepted any subsidized healthcare coverage, because there were a lot of people I represented who had no access to health care.  In terms of combatting poverty, I’m very proud of the work I did in Congress on the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provides health insurance for millions of children nationwide who can’t afford private health insurance.  A small group of us in the House regularly met over a long period of time to formulate what became the CHIP legislation.

But I look back over my tenure as Governor, and I talked a lot more about the middle class than I did about people in poverty, or near poverty. And, yes, it was a difficult time during the Great Recession— just trying to keep things together, keep things from totally falling apart.  But we don’t hear as much concern expressed about low-income people as we did 20 or 30 years ago, and I believe that we’re regressing as a nation in that regard.

I think there is a tendency on the part of people who are not struggling to survive every day to assume that the safety net programs are there and helping the people who need help.  But then you talk to people who operate food banks, for example, you find out that there are a lot of hungry people and the food banks can’t meet the need.  And more and more, you find people who used to donate to the food banks are now turning to them every month in need.

It’s un-American, frankly, that you can work and work and work and not get out of poverty.

The excuse we hear too often from political leaders who don’t talk about poverty is that budgets are too tight and you can only do so much.  But there is a reason budgets are tight—we have cut taxes!  If we had a progressive tax system that was anywhere near the levels it was before Ronald Reagan became President, we would have the resources we need.

This is one area where I think we can do a much better job—talking about the link between tax policy, decreasing revenues, and cuts in programs that people need to have a fair shot at the American Dream.

We also have to do a better job talking about work and shared prosperity.  It’s un-American, frankly, that you can work and work and work and not get out of poverty.  And I think something that is sometimes missing from progressive consciousness—and something that certainly benefited my family—is an awareness of the importance of organized labor.  We became as egalitarian as we did as a nation because working people gained power and influence by banding together and bargaining for better wages and benefits and safety conditions.  And as economic disparities have increased over these last few decades, the influence of organized labor has decreased.

So whether it’s the same paradigm or not, we’ve got to find some way for people to act collectively in their self-interest.  And that’s a challenge that I think is facing organized labor but also all of us who care about giving everyone a fair shot and a fair chance.

We simply can’t get where we need to go as a nation through individual efforts.  It’s got to be through collective action.

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Announcement

The TalkPoverty.org Story

For two years, I had the privilege of working as the poverty correspondent for The Nation magazine.  Contributing to the oldest political weekly in the country—one with such a storied history of covering issues that are too often ignored—was a real honor.

In January 2012, we created a weekly blog, This Week in Poverty, because we felt that media coverage of poverty was woefully inadequate.  The blog focused on people living in poverty, solutions to poverty, and ways for people to get involved in the fight against poverty.

I felt honored that so many people shared their stories with me—stories that really exposed the vulnerability of the people telling them.   The most vulnerable of all, of course, are the people actually living in poverty—46.5 million people now, more than 1 in 7 of us—living on less than about $18,300 annually for a family of three.  They are vulnerable to the stereotyping and venom that they so often receive from society; to the huge stakes involved in policy decisions that deeply affect their lives; and especially vulnerable to the daily challenges of their own lives—just finding a time and place to talk is a challenge, and doing so with a reporter they didn’t even know was a real leap of faith.

The people who dedicate themselves to fighting poverty are also vulnerable.  They are often ignored or even mocked; sometimes struggle with a sense of isolation, or a feeling of powerlessness, or burnout; and many feel a frustration that readily apparent solutions—solutions that could dramatically reduce the number of people living in poverty—are not even on the radar of most elected leaders and the general public.

I think that’s why the response to This Week in Poverty was so strong—because we valued the experiences of people living in poverty and we weren’t doing “gotcha” coverage; and we valued the work of people engaged in the issue.  We also valued getting the facts on poverty straight.

We developed a real community—people who were knowledgeable and passionate about this issue, and wanted a way to speak up.  At no time was that more clear than when we ran a series of blogs called “#TalkPoverty: Questions for President Obama and Governor Romney” during the presidential campaign.  We profiled low-income people, advocates, and researchers, and gave them a chance to ask President Obama and Governor Romney the questions that they wanted answers to.  In the end, the Obama campaign responded to our questions, the Romney campaign didn’t, and now we all know why there is no President Romney.

While that might not be true, what is true is that #TalkPoverty took off and continues to thrive on Twitter today.

After two years, any separation between my work as a poverty reporter and my desire to work as an anti-poverty activist had disappeared.  I started pitching ideas to advocates (they used at least .000003% of them!).  Additionally, while the decision about what to write every week wasn’t hard, deciding what not to write was.  There are so many stories out there that need to be heard—whether about low-income workers; people with barriers to employment who can’t receive assistance; segregated schools; the demonization of people in poverty; the cradle-to-prison pipeline; Native American poverty; the costs of continuing education…. and though there are a number of very dedicated reporters who now cover poverty, there aren’t nearly enough.  I felt that no matter how hard we worked, we were barely making a dent in telling the story of poverty in America and what we as a nation can do about it.

So I got to thinking, what if we didn’t have to wait for media to tell the stories that need to be told?  What if we went directly to low-income people, and to people working on poverty, and they told the stories themselves?  Some could write them, some could do video or audio—couldn’t we create a single website where people would be able to find more stories about poverty than are currently available?

When I decided to leave reporting, approaching the Half in Ten Education Fund for this project was in some ways like coming full circle.  I’d discovered Half in Ten in 2007 when I worked as a researcher for my friend Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor and Publisher of The Nation.  I was very impressed with the campaign’s ability to demonstrate in a concrete way that we could in fact cut poverty in half over ten years with the right policy choices.

In 2011, as we prepared to launch This Week in Poverty, Melissa Boteach, who ran Half in Ten at the time, was an invaluable adviser.  She introduced me to incredible grassroots groups like Witnesses to Hunger, and strong national organizations like the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) and the National Women’s Law Center; great researchers like Donna Pavetti and Arloc Sherman at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; and stellar advocates like Debbie Weinstein at the Coalition on Human Needs.  Not to mention, Half in Ten clearly understood the importance of story—to give people in poverty a platform to speak out; and to make policy debates less abstract and more human, in order to affect change.

This past December, it took me, Half in Ten Associate Director Erik Stegman, and Melissa—who now runs the poverty team at the Center for American Progress—less than a cup of coffee to realize that we were all passionate about this idea. Not only could we have a home for the stories of people living in poverty and people working on the issue, we could also provide data to raise awareness and counter misinformation, and link people with groups that are fighting poverty all over the country.

And so here we are today with the launch of TalkPoverty.org. We want this to be your community—a place where we build bridges with one another, grow the movement, and work to dramatically reduce poverty.  We want your ideas and your involvement, so reach out.

Right now, more than 46 million people are living in poverty in America, including more than 1 in 5 children; another 60 million people are just a single hardship away from falling into poverty.  The Talkpoverty.org community is dedicated to them: with our words, our actions, and our shared commitment.

Greg Kaufmann is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Editor of TalkPoverty.org.

 

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