Tag Archives: Kansas

Why do big tents so often fall down?

Posted on January 24, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Over the past several months, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some really committed advocates–super smart and dedicated people who are working extremely hard to protect their clients and the programs that serve them, in a climate of drastic budget cuts and an eroding social contract.

It’s soul-sucking work, and we’re losing many, many more battles than we win.

Lately, though, some of us have felt like we’re really fighting the wrong battle. Or, more accurately, battles.

It’s not just the old “divide and conquer” problem–the fact that social service advocates are vulnerable to intra-skirmishes that distract us from the real enemies and make it easier for those same opponents to play us against each other.

It’s also that we deliberately avoid taking on the real struggles, and even sometimes miss noticing them altogether, because we’re trying to contain debates that we can really only hope to dominate if we act collectively.

Here’s how it looks in real life:

In Kansas, advocates spent all last year fighting against budget cuts in different program areas–mental health, public education, child welfare, senior services. And all year, the Governor and some legislative leaders hinted that their sights were really set on a policy battle far larger and more fundamental to our state’s well-being: the revenue foundation that shores up (or doesn’t) all of those programs and far more. For the most part, they have not encountered much effectively organized opposition. From my conversations with at least some advocates, it seems that many hoped that not antagonizing the Administration on that issue would, somehow, preserve some access and influence that they could use to defend their work and serve their clients.

So, in essence, we’re sitting on the sidelines while our fates–for the next several years–are decided.

Because, of course, if the Governor and his allies are successful in eliminating the state income tax, they won’t need to legitimate their budget-slashing goals at all: there quite literally won’t be enough money to fund any of these programs, and so advocates will be fighting over crumbs.

If the failure to build a sustained, strategic, progressive coalition to take on these more global, structural issues was just a logistical one (getting people together across distance), or just jurisdictional (getting people to set aside their competition with each other), or even just a problem of capacity (people not having enough resources to take on a fight this big), then I feel like we’d know better how to start addressing it.

After all, those are the kinds of challenges that we overcome in our organizing every day.

But the real reason that building this kind of “big tent” is so hard, I think, is that too many awesome advocates think it’s a bad idea–that taking on these common concerns dilutes their influence and compromises their positions. And so we have to overcome not just inertia but entrenched resistance, and we’ve got to do it without being able to offer any guarantees that their concerns aren’t, in fact, totally well-founded: this Administration absolutely does box out those who oppose them.

But advocacy isn’t about tallying the numbers of wins v. losses.

It’s about how we can build movements that shape how people see themselves, and their worlds, and about how we can change even the debates about the policy challenges we confront. It’s about being in the arena, even if we emerge somewhat bloodied.

And so we can’t afford to sit out the really, really big fights, and we can’t presume that going it alone is ever safer.

There are some battlefields on which we just have to be willing to make a stand.

And there is solace in solidarity.

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Remember: We’re the Sunflower State

Posted on January 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

This Sunflower hangs on a gate at my house, as a reminder of what we must be.

These are tough times, Kansans.

The economy isn’t great (although we ended last year with a healthy balance, thanks to some pretty drastic funding cuts whose effects will be felt for generations).

We’re in the middle of redistricting, which is ugly in the best of circumstances and potentially explosive with a polity as divided as ours today.

We face battles in this new legislative session around Arizona-style “show me your papers” legislation, raids of the Children’s Initiative Fund, an attack on our revenue foundation, and more cuts compounding the cuts.

It’s a good thing we’re the Sunflower State.

Sunflowers were adopted as a symbol of the women’s suffrage movement by Kansas suffragettes, I think mainly to ensconce their movement fully within the social mainstream. It has been used in advocacy campaigns repeatedly since, according to my research, because sunflowers can take the heat.

And they always face the sun.

And that’s what we need today.

As advocates, we’ve never felt more heat. The stakes are high, and the threats are real.

But we know what our vision looks like, too, and that’s the promise, the sun, towards which we must set our sights, unwilting, unbending.

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The Legacy of Brown: We Must Not be Bought

Posted on January 16, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Not long ago, I stood with my oldest son at the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in front of a photo that contrasted a segregated school for African Americans in South Carolina (one-room schoolhouse with sagging shingles and missing boards) with a rather opulent school (large brick building) for white students.

The “unequal” part was obvious, and even more glaring than the “separate”.

Looking at those pictures, I remembered a section of The Race Beat, a book I read recently about journalists who covered the civil rights movement, that described the efforts of some segregationists in both the North and South who were eager to spend more on schools for children of color, especially in the lead-up to the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Because they were willing to pay a lot to maintain the status quo.

That’s how much maintaining an oppressive system was worth.

Holding hands with my son, who started Kindergarten in public school this year, I was thinking about those brave parents, the ones whose names are on the collection of lawsuits that, together, became known as Brown v. Board. And wondering whether they were ever tempted, as I would have been, if my child had been in that rickety schoolbuilding, to take the money.

Even knowing what it cost.

Obviously, our entire country has benefitted tremendously from their refusal to be bought. They understood that separate could never be equal, and they knew that their little boys and girls deserved integrated schools and the access to power and full participation that only integration can bring, rather than a spiffed-up segregated school, with better-paid teachers and textbooks in the classrooms.

They were right, and they were patient in that impatient about injustice but amazingly able to wait for real solutions way, and their intransigence was a witness that sparked the greatest movement for social equality our country has ever seen.

And the next thing I thought, as my son’s attention moved on to the next part of the exhibit, was…

I hope we can be as brave. And as tough. And as smart.

Times are tough, these days, for social service nonprofit organizations and for many of those we serve. We’re perennially out of money, and in begging-mode, and we are confronting serious challenges in a political context that’s often impervious to our sufferings.

That’s a dangerous combination, because it can breed a desperation that can push us to accept compromises that we know take us backwards, concessions that violate our most honored principles.

I see it when private organizations join together to pay for public services that the state has abandoned–we’re reaching for a Band-Aid because the need is so urgent, but we’re excusing public abdication of responsibilities core to our social contract.

I see it when organizations scramble to align themselves with even objectionable programming opportunities (“marriage promotion“, anyone?), because they’re trying to find ways to stay afloat, and to curry favor with government officials.

I even see it in myself, when I’m reluctant to take an Administration on on one front because we’re still negotiating on another–no, it’s not money at stake, but something arguably more valuable–my integrity.

I’m sure Linda Brown’s parents wanted her to go to a nice school. They may have even been approached with offers of upgrades, if they would just “be quiet”.

We need to all be thankful that they did not.

And we must, in the words of the song to which my 3 oldest kids and I danced in the gallery of the Brown site, in what used to be a school only for children with a certain color skin, we must not be moved.

Or bought.

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Like a Horror Movie: Voter ID Laws…Coming After You

Posted on October 31, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Restrictive Voting Laws=Way Scarier than this Guy

You want to be scared on Halloween?

Really, really scared?

Like “a threat to all you hold dear and potentially the end of life (okay, democracy) as we know it” scared?

Then think about this:

In Kansas, and, increasingly in other states around the country, politicians have used the completely ridiculous (would be laughable if not for the end result) allegation of undocumented immigrants voting to push through voter identification laws that will seriously harm voter participation of low-income and marginalized populations, primarily through their effects on nonprofit and community-based groups’ voter registration and Get-Out-the-Vote work.

Because when these laws are fully implemented (which, in Kansas, won’t be until January 2013, largely because some senators felt guilty and so postponed it until after the 2012 elections), conducting a voter engagement drive in the community–at a festival, on a street corner, on a public bus, as people are leaving a rally–will be nearly impossible. Every new voter will have to prove citizenship upon registration, and who carries copies of their birth certificate with them (to be submitted with the registration)?

There are obvious obstacles to actual voting for some of these same populations, too, particularly that the rules for obtaining a free photo identification (yes, there absolutely are U.S. citizens without photo ID) are convoluted and involve considerable exertion on the part of the (by definition) indigent would-be voter.

Those barriers are real, and they fall disproportionately on low-income individuals of color, particularly the very youngest and very oldest in the electorate.

But what scares me the most is the way that these laws will completely take nonprofit organizations–social service agencies, health centers, senior centers, ethnic associations–out of the voter registration and civic engagement business. We know that we’re particularly good at bringing these often-marginalized groups into the electoral process, after all. We build on our relationships, connect people to the issues that affect their lives, and walk alongside them to ease their first voting experiences.

We don’t do it nearly often enough, but, when we do, we make a difference–on individual lives and on how elected officials view those with whom we work.

But that’s all going to go away.

And what’s even scarier, really?

The way that such a totally invented risk, for which there is absolutely no evidence and which defies all logic to anyone who can imagine even any facts about immigrants, can frighten away the allies who should have stood with us, creating this specter of fraud that silenced too many voices. I mean, really? With voter participation dismally low among U.S. citizens, undocumented immigrants are supposedly risking felony convictions and permanent deportation to make their mark on our democratic process?

Really?

We’re at the point in this terrible saga when the huge blob, or scary ax-murderer, or ghastly ghoul is running for us, and we’re all kind of cowering behind the half-open door.

And we know enough about how these things turn out to know that we’ve got to come up with a different plan.

First, we need to register as many people as we possibly can before these laws kick in. Second, we need to educate our communities about these laws and what they will mean, and we need their help documenting the very real ways in which U.S. citizens are affected. Then, we need to take that information, along with a value-based appeal (justice, freedom, and democratic participation, anyone?) to legislators who knew better but voted for these horrible laws in the first place.

They can be undone.

We need a legal strategy that attacks the laws’ undue infringement on our core constitutional right to vote, a legislative plan that mounts the strong attack that was missing initially, and an organizing effort that recognizes this threat as what it really is:

Paving the way for all of the threats that are to follow, once the demographic shifts that could reshape the social contract in this country through electoral transformation have been thwarted by systematic disenfranchisement.

It’s time for the hand to reach up from the grave, or the girl to step out from behind the curtain (you know that I don’t watch many movies, so fill in the blanks here).

We can write a different ending.

But we have to open our eyes.

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What the new poverty data say about an old problem

Posted on October 18, 2011 by | Leave a comment

What they said...

I’ve spent the last few weeks buried in the U.S. Census Bureau’s new website, trying not to be paralyzed by the fact that the poverty statistics represent, of course, actual people who are poor.

A lot of them.

There isn’t anything truly surprising in the new data; poverty has gotten worse–dramatically so, in some cases–with people of color and children, particularly those in single female-headed households, especially vulnerable.

So, for me, reviewing these figures is not so much about gaining new insights, but about seizing an opportunity to focus our attention, once more, where it belongs–on how terribly our public policies are failing to effectively combat the scourge of poverty.

Because we’re failing not in explicable or unpredictable ways; we’re failing with tragic routine, reflecting much more a failing of political will than of technical ability.

And our failure is increasingly dangerous, as the numbers of people in poverty grow, and as we learn more about the lifelong effects of being poor.

Here’s what we know about poverty in my state in 2011. Now, what should we do about it?

  • Between 2009 and 2010, 20,000 more Kansans were added to the poverty ranks, and the percentage of those living in poverty rose to 14.3%. Kansans of color were disproportionately represented among the poor, with 28.6% of African Americans, 29.7% of American Indians, and 25.4% of Latinos living below the official poverty line.
  • Children are especially suffering in the current economic picture; nationally, 22% of children were in poverty in 2010. In Kansas, an alarming 23.7% of children under age 18 were poor in 2010, up from 18% in 2009 , a devastating decline in the fortunes of our state’s youngest and most vulnerable.
  • The poverty rate “gap”, then, between older adults (65+) and children has grown. In 2010, only 7.7% of Kansas seniors were poor. This is a triumph of the social policy innovation we know now as Social Security retirement; without Social Security, the percentage of Kansas seniors living in poverty would rise to more than 40%.
  • Work is no longer a guaranteed path to economic security. In 2010, real median household income in Kansas was $46,229, almost 5% lower than Kansas’ 2007, pre-recession median ($48,497). 27.8% of single female-headed households with children under age 18 had a householder who worked and yet, still, the family fell into poverty . In 12% of cases, these mothers were working year-round, full-time without being able to pull their families from poverty status, testament to the strains of low-wage labor and the difficult economics facing single parents raising children, particularly when they also experience the wage discrimination that still plagues female employment.
  • Our current poverty measure’s woeful inadequacy makes these statistics all the more alarming; if we used a more realistic threshold (such as those used to determine eligibility for means-tested programs–usually more like 125% of poverty), for example, more than 45% of single female headed-households would have been poor in Kansas in 2010. Similarly, if we accurately defined and measured unemployment (as in, people who wish they were working but aren’t, instead of only those not so discouraged that they haven’t given up or involuntarily taken a part-time job instead), our unemployment rate would hover around 12%–frighteningly high.
  • Appallingly, poverty in Kansas seems to be increasingly more rapidly than in other parts of the country, despite a job market that, in some ways, has not been ravaged as severely as that of other regions. While our overall poverty rate was slightly lower than the national figure, Kansas saw higher rates of child poverty and poverty in single female-headed households in 2010, and higher rates of growth between 2009-2010 in several categories.

We shouldn’t need new statistics to remind us that poverty is a dire and growing threat to community and individual well-being. We don’t need statistics to connect the dots about those we see living in homelessness, or our own coworkers’ concerns about their mortgage payments, or, even, our own fears about the precarious nature of our employment.

But we can, and, indeed, we must, use the release of these new data on poverty and its shadow–the economic insecurity that is nearly ubiquitous in today’s economy–to dedicate ourselves anew to developing public policy structures and investments that harness our considerable powers to improve people’s lives, individually and in the aggregate.

Because when the next set of poverty data is released, I want some surprises.

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Social Workers and the Politics of Budget Cuts

Posted on August 11, 2011 by | 2 Comments

*I’m still on maternity leave and, so, revising and republishing some of my favorite posts from the past two years. This particular post jumped out at me; our Kansas state budget, of course, is in just about the same place, in terms of the depth of cuts on the table, as it was when this originally ran in 2009 and, now, there’s a somewhat surreal conversation about the federal deficit, and how to reduce it (a conversation which, in Congress, centers almost entirely around spending cuts and fiscal chicanery). Social workers still need a louder and more outraged voice about the options that we’re walking away from, and about the very real implications of those default decisions. In the intervening two years, the lives of those we serve have mostly gotten harder, and that means that our resolve must, too.

The economy is bad. It is. And that means that some pain, including not only that which is visited upon the people we serve directly but also that endured by our nonprofit organizations, is inevitable.

But inevitability is vastly overstated.

Social workers run the risk, I believe, of depoliticizing the current battle over investment in our nation’s future and commitment to the most vulnerable by brushing away important questions and needed outrage with a white-washed, ‘the economy is really bad’ explanation that, really, doesn’t explain anything.

There is nothing inevitable about budget cuts when state revenues are declining. There are, obviously, other alternatives–raising taxes chief among them–and the fact that those alternatives are not chosen says a lot more about the political decisions being made (and the people making them) than it does about the state of the economy. We could be choosing to invest more heavily in programs for people living in poverty (which would make sense because more people are poor), in education (because it’s the most direct link to future economic development), in infrastructure (because it puts people to work while meeting our needs).

And the fact that we’re not, that we’re slashing spending in ways that mean longer waiting lists for Medicaid waivers, more kids in every classroom, less outreach for children’s health care, fewer supports for vulnerable seniors–that is a fact that is much more political than economic.

So the next time that you find yourself (or a colleague) bemoaning cuts and their impact and then blaming that vague nemesis–the economy–ask instead about the choices that determined, when presented with a couple of different forks in the road, which one to take. Find out who is responsible for choosing that path, and hold them accountable. Use it as an example that our clients can understand: tough times come into everyone’s (and every state’s) lives, and when they do, we have choices. We can’t control the situations in which we find ourselves, but we can control how we respond. And, when we respond in ways that are harmful to others, there will be consequences.

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The Sunflower State Needs Reseeding!

Posted on January 26, 2010 by | 6 Comments

Kansans, we’ve got problems. And it’s not just that the budget is tough. We’ve known that for a long time.

Our biggest problems are the failure of many Kansans, including many of those elected officials charged with representing us, to recognize precisely how bad it is, and what that means about the options that are and are not really viable at this point; and a lack of political will and strategic vision to make the hard choices that must be made.

This certainly isn’t unique to this year or to our state. Moral courage, is, in general, in short supply throughout public life–NOT just among members of the state legislature. We’d all like to get as much as we can with as little pain as possible and, writ large, that can lead to some pretty appalling public policy decisions.

But, still, as I head to Topeka this week to work with a few dozen bright, aspiring student journalists as they challenge our elected officials to think of the future, I’m hopeful.

Because history shows that sometimes the most amazing things happen when our backs are against the wall, when everyone knows that the only avenues left are pretty bad, and when there’s a collective sense that we’re in this together, as much as we wish that we were somewhere (anywhere!) else.

Here’s how bad it is. At a legislative forum I attended two weeks ago (so, yes, this is tardy–ear infections in young children are evil!), I had this exchange with a senior senator closely involved in budget negotiations:

  • Kansas, as currently laid out, has a $5.3 billion budget in state general funds (which excludes those special-use funds, as my advanced policy students remember) for this year. That’s AFTER a cut of approximately $1 billion last year. With a “b”.
  • Despite those cuts from last year, to just keep everything going this year (with absolutely no program growth), we’ll still run $250-350 million short this fiscal year.
  • Okay, so that sounds like, “we need to make some cuts, but not as much as the year before, so…you know, we knew it was going to be a tough year, but everyone needs to tighten our belts and…”
  • Wait. That ~$300 million needs to get cut out of the ~15% of the budget that’s really in play. Here’s the deal. We can’t cut K-12 education anymore without having to give back the stimulus dollars that are tied to our commitment to keep school funding at at least the 2006 levels, which is where we are now. We can’t afford to give that stimulus money back, so we can’t cut K-12 education any more. And Medicaid costs are essentially out of our hands; Kansas is doing very little optional with Medicaid right now anyway, and the federal government determines eligibility and the level of state responsibility.
  • So, then, we’re left with a reality of needing to cut that $250-350 million out of approximately $800 million. And WE CANNOT. We’d have to close courts, release violent offenders, dismantle remaining safety net programs, leave dangerous roads unrepaired, lay off thousands of state workers…you can’t pretend to still have a state if you eliminate almost 40% of what the state does, especially when that’s on top of 17% cuts just the year before.

    And all of this brings us back to this question of vision and will and courage.

    Because we desperately need a restoration of our tax base. No one wants a tax increase. I know.

    But I don’t see another way out, that doesn’t include the decimation of the public infrastructure that, really, makes us a civilized society. Taxes are the price we pay for that, and we forgot that all too easily, and too often, in the boom years of the late 1990s…it’s time to rebuild.

    And you know what? My hopefulness is warranted, I really think. In the last two weeks, I’ve had conversations with 7 members of the legislature, from both political parties, who have admitted that many of the past tax cuts were mistakes, called for a revision of exemptions, and offered some specific ideas for possible tax increases. Several have even referenced that this session feels a bit different, because of the desperation, and that, by April, we could start to see a deal emerge.

    But, as that senior senator pointed out, those of us whose work depends on a strong tax base need to get working. Not one of the nonprofit legislative agendas I’ve seen has included a call for increased revenues, even though that’s undoubtedly the most important policy position the legislature could take this session.

    We need to talk with our grassroots base about the need for more revenues, and the need for tax justice. We have to build pressure to undo the excesses of the past decade. And we have to be in the process, stressing that all tax increases are NOT created equal, and articulating a vision of what tax fairness looks like.

    Things will get better (first, they’ll get worse, because we won’t have that stimulus money in FY2012!). But they won’t get as much better as they should if we don’t take advantage of this political opportunity to get the impossible done.

    Ad astra per aspera, right?

    Let’s go.

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    Should be required reading for all Kansans

    Posted on August 16, 2009 by | Leave a comment

    Check out this great article that a terrific statehouse reporter, Tim Carpenter, wrote in today’s Topeka Capital Journal. Tax breaks eroding budget | CJOnline.com

    This should become a major public policy issue. Social work advocates and others concerned about where our state will get the money we need for essential services can’t continue to just fight over how that pie is divided up. We’re obviously not using enough ingredients, to extend the metaphor, so then we can’t be surprised when there’s not enough to go around.

    The continuation of these tax breaks is a reflection both of a broken process–relatively little debate on the tax side of budgetary policy–and an inadequately strong lobby for the strong public expenditures our social contract requires.

    I will raise this issue with my state senator and representative in advance of the 2010 legislative session, asking them specifically if they are willing to support a full review of sales tax exemptions and other tax ‘loopholes’, and which tax exemptions they are willing to repeal. If we can win on this issue, our debates over appropriations will be much less painful.

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