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MAIN
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A Joint Project of the Maine
Association of Interdependent Neighborhoods |
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Volume 7 No. 1 |
February 2003 |
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MAIN
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A Joint Project of the Maine
Association of Interdependent Neighborhoods |
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Volume 7 No. 1 |
February 2003 |
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I Have Only Just Begun...
A Story of Struggle and Activism
The following speech was given at the MAIN Conference on October 4, 2002. We asked Heidi Hart, a MAIN member, to share her story, and tell us how and why she is involved in working for the rights of low-income people. There were very few dry eyes in the room by the time she was finished, and many newly inspired people. We admire Heidi's courage and greatly appreciate her involvement. It is because of Heidi and other MAIN members like her that MAIN and MEJP are able to be successful in making changes that further our cause of peace, bread and justice! We hope she inspires you to be involved too.
I never intended to become an advocate or activist for those on welfare. It sort of just happened to me, became possible by virtue of my birth and my life experience. Good morning. My name is Heidi Hart. I am twenty-five years old and my daughter is nine. I became a mother two months after my sixteenth birthday. But my story begins long before then. I am the second oldest of five children, and I am no stranger to poverty. In the beginning, both of my parents worked and we barely got by with the aid of food stamps and government food staples. Some of my earliest memories involve large blocks of orange cheese, giant silver cans of peanut butter with an inch of oil at the top, and boxes of powdered milk, all of which you couldn't even pay me to eat then or now unless I was truly starving, which you can clearly see that I am not.
Other early memories involve abuse at the hands of my father. He was emotionally, physically and sexually abusive. He was a functioning alcoholic. He was in and out of prison for various offenses. He suffered from mental illness. He burned down our trailer when I was nine years old. There are many depressing details that I could share with you, but I will sum it up by saying that my early childhood years were not happy ones. They were chaotic and traumatic.
My father finally left for good when I was twelve. My siblings ranged in age from six to fourteen. My mother had always worked; at least when my father allowed her to, but no job was going to pay the bills for five children. So, we went on welfare.
My memories of being on welfare as a child revolve around feelings of shame. People treated my mother as if she were subhuman. They stood behind us in the grocery line and monitored the food that my mother paid for with those colorful and gaudy food stamps, that took an excruciatingly long time to rip out and count. Time after time, I watched my mother put aside her self-esteem and dignity in order to get what she needed to care for us. We were always without something that was necessary, be it food, heat, or even toilet paper. We wore secondhand clothing and relied on charity for birthdays, Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas presents.
What jumps to my mind when I think about growing up on welfare is the image of my mother crying at the kitchen table as she tried to budget for the month. There just wasn't enough money, and there never was. I hated it, and vowed that I would be different. I was going to go to college, I would never have children, I would never be poor.
Well, I have to say that it's strange how life throws us curve balls just when we think that we have our future all figured out. You see, all five of us were very messed up children. We had lived through years of abuse from our father and now he was gone. Despite my mother's best efforts, she just couldn't control five emotionally damaged children by herself. Some of my siblings acted out and got into trouble in school and with the law. We all began experimenting with cigarettes and alcohol, later other drugs. I tried to distance myself from my family, from the reality of my life. I pressured myself to maintain a façade of perfection in school. I denied that anything was wrong to the social workers, children's advocates and counselors. I was involved in sports and school plays. I was on the math team and the student council. I lived the dual life of a promising young student and a self-destructive and dysfunctional child. Every weekend I was getting drunk or high. I became sexually active at age fourteen, despite the emphasis in my family and church on abstinence until marriage. Every single one of us was looking for some type of escape from the misery of our lives.
I found out that I was pregnant in October of my sophomore year of high school. Abortion was never even a choice, because I had been raised in a fundamentalist church that believed it was murder. I believed that if I had an abortion, I was taking the risk of going to hell. Adoption was not a choice that I considered, partly because I felt that I had gotten myself into this position and now I would have to live up to the consequences of my choices, and partly because I couldn't dream of giving my baby away. I was afraid of what people would think about me if did.
So I made the agonizing and courageous choice to become a teenage mother. Everything that I read told me that I was in for trouble but I had no idea of just how hard it would be. Suddenly, my mother's worries about money and making ends meet were mine as well. I started thinking about what kind of life I could provide for my daughter and became terribly depressed. People treated me differently. Teachers who had previously encouraged me as though I had a bright future ahead now treated me as if I was a lost cause. I began to feel as though any hope I may have had of breaking free of poverty was now gone. I almost dropped out of school, just so I could get a full-time job. I also thought of suicide as a way out and was eventually treated for severe depression and anxiety.
Slowly, I began to feel better. I started thinking about my future in a positive way and I began to get angry instead of depressed. This was key to reclaiming MY life and MY future. I was angry that I had grown up poor in the richest country in the world. I was angry that some of the same politicians who didn't want me to have an abortion also didn't want to help me care for my child. I was angry at the insinuation that somehow I wasn't a good mother just because I was young and poor. I became determined to prove it to them, to anybody that said I couldn't make it. I was going to surpass even my own expectations.
I ended up getting my GED after my high school told me that I'd have to repeat my senior year for all the days that I had missed as a result of depression if I wanted my diploma. There was no way that I was about to do that. When I got my scores along with a note from the adult education director saying that they were the best Westbrook had seen in ten years, I knew that I was going to college. I applied to USM and was accepted in the Spring of 1996.
During that time, the country was in an uproar about welfare. It felt as though every time I watched or read the news, someone who had never lived on welfare was complaining about the stereotypical lazy welfare mother. The rhetoric around work included a belief that poverty was related to a person's unwillingness to work, or inability to be "responsible." If I had been able at that time to find a job that would have paid enough for me to support my daughter and myself, I might not have gone to college. But the reality was that I did not have the skills, the education or the work experience to get a job that would support us. I was afraid that I would be forced to drop out of school. I was a nineteen-year-old single mother. The chances of me being hired full-time at a living wage were slim to none. If I had lived in any other state during welfare reform, with the exception of Wyoming, I probably would have been forced to quit school. 48 states went with the idea that any job at any wage was better than welfare. Maine and Wyoming decided that education was the best way to ensure that people not only left welfare, but that they stayed off. I signed up for the Parents as Scholars program as soon as I learned about it.
Over the next five years, I struggled to go to school full-time, work part-time and raise a child. It was a daunting task. I don't remember sleeping much while I was in college. I followed an intricate schedule that included: caring for my child, class time and studying, working, all the while negotiating transportation so that I could be where I needed to be. Anyone who has relied on a bus to get to where they need to go knows how much time it can eat out of your day. I often thought of just quitting, just giving up. But all I needed to think of to keep me going was the alternative: dropping out and working full-time just to continue to live in poverty. I also had a voice inside telling me that those who believed I couldn't make it would win, and that was more than I could stomach. All of my life I had dealt with the judgment from others that I was nobody, that I would never be anything. I certainly wasn't about to agree.
In May of 2001 I received my Bachelor's degree from the University of Southern Maine. My then eight year-old little girl walked across the stage with me. It was the proudest moment of my life. I started a job two days later where I work to help other parents. I went off welfare and have not received anything since. What a relief to be able to support my daughter and myself without government assistance. What a victory to get that degree and finally be able to prove the naysayers wrong. I had done it. I could finally take care of my daughter and myself. I thought I was finished with welfare, that it would never again be a part of my life.
Soon after I graduated, however, the calls began. Would I be willing to talk to this reporter about my experience? Could I comment on the Parent as Scholars program? Would I mind being interviewed for a policy paper by Maine Equal Justice? Of course I said yes. It was certainly the least that I could do after I had been given this opportunity and support. I was excited that maybe, just maybe, I could change people's minds about those on welfare. I started learning more about the pending TANF reauthorization. When I heard that the President's proposed bill would halt the progress being made and further penalize the poor, I began thinking about all of the other parents who weren't being given the same opportunity that I had received. Parents who were struggling every day to be able
to secure food, clothing and shelter for their children. To add fuel to the fire, the House agreed with the President's proposal and passed it. How could these people who were supposed to be representing me be so blind? I wanted them to live on a welfare or even minimum wage for at least a month.
Shortly after I learned the details of the legislation, I was asked to speak to the University of Maine's Board of Trustees. I told them how this program changed my life. I wanted them to become invested in it, to realize the positive impact that higher education could have on parents and children. The next day, I learned that Senator Olympia Snowe had introduced an amendment to the Senate version of the TANF reauthorization bill that called for a national model of the Parents as Scholars program. I was asked to speak to her about my experience. It was thrilling and overwhelming. Here I was, a child raised on welfare, a teenage parent, a statistic, being asked to talk to a United States Senator about my experience! I was fired up. I told her that without this program, I believed that I would be in a very different, very desperate place. I told her that because of this state's investment in my daughter and myself, we were now self-sufficient. But even more than that, we were empowered. My daughter has learned about the value of education through direct experience. I have grown to learn the value of my own skills and talent.
It seemed as though I was always talking to someone about my experience with Parents as Scholars. I was interviewed for a story in the Boston Globe. I was asked to speak on a panel about welfare reform at the annual conference of the Association of Capital Reporters and Editors held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. I was at a meeting with U.S. Representative and potential governor John Baldacci to tell my story, to talk about the importance of maintaining and expanding this program. Most recently, I was asked to speak here today.
I think the message that I most want to get across to you is that I never believed that I could have an impact on public policy. I never intended to become an activist, but I find that now I can't shut up. I believe that we are facing formidable political and economic opposition. The current policies regarding welfare are punitive, dangerous, and arbitrary. They are based on stereotypical assumptions about those on welfare. And considering that 90% of welfare households are female-headed with children, they constitute an attack on poor women. Now the feminist in me just can't stand that. Likewise, all across the country are stories from women who have been discriminated against on the basis of race or disability, denied services, sanctioned, or made to endure sexual harassment in order to keep a job. I am angry that instead of offering a lifeboat to poor parents and children, this country's welfare policies are throwing them overboard to the sharks. I hold a strong desire for social justice and have learned that I can truly have an impact.
I have also discovered something about the poor, the disenfranchised, and those who are discriminated against. I have found that we are resourceful and that we survive because we practice what I would call a caring ethic. I have experienced first-hand how people get what they need and help one another. I never could have made it without the support from my family, my friends, and my community. I have witnessed how people trade services such as babysitting and transportation, or borrow and lend food or food stamps. I believe it is this caring ethic that tells us that if we help someone else out, we will receive help when we need it. This idea of mutual support is what I would like my government and society to be shaped by. I believe that every human being deserves dignity, and that everyone should have a right to food, safe and warm shelter, clothing, education, and a job that will pay the bills. At the end of the day, the rich are not without their basic needs being met; in fact, the gap between rich and poor is so astronomically high that I'm quite sure they have plenty to spare. Corporations are stealing retirement savings and lobbying against restrictions, while children go hungry and people live in hazardous conditions. We are the richest country in the world and we have the resources to ensure a better standard of living for everyone who lives here. I will spend the rest of my life fighting for these ideals.
I urge all of us to be involved in any way that we can. We must vote for candidates that will listen and act. We must inundate their offices with phone calls and faxes and letters and e-mails. We must protest injustice. We must tell our stories. We must work toward a vision of hope, of equality and of social justice. I believe that the deadliest threat to democracy is apathy, and that in order to launch an assault against those who would take away our freedom, our hope and our vision, we must be a social movement. We must get enough people engaged in the political process and enough people to voice their displeasure with the state of our nation. When you go to vote next month, bring a carload of friends. Thank you so much for listening to my story this morning. I hope that I have been able to express my gratitude for all of the hard work that everyone is doing to make this world just a little more caring and fair. And to those who actively work to oppress the poor, I must say: Beware, I have only just begun!
