Maureen Lane

The Welfare Monologues

We've all heard of the Vagina Monologues. Four college students I work with at Welfare Rights Initiative at Hunter College borrowed this format for their final project this year, and used it to document the experience of being a young woman on welfare. Some excerpts are below. Read it and weep.

But first, I think this cartoon from Paul Candelaria will help to set the stage:

Expelling the Myth of the Other
Written by Sana Fayyaz, Kerrin Hubbard, Mandeep Kaur and Rachel Morgenstern

Act I
Narrator:
We are gathered here today to present to you the "The Welfare Monologues". What you are about to see is not made up or created out of thin air. Instead it is a collection of real stories with real people with their very true words. All the material used is taken from the mouths of our very own politicians and from our beloved Welfare Rights Initiative (WRI) Alumni, courtesy of Dillonna Lewis, WRI Co-director. As we go along into the Monologues, you will find yourself able to relate to the experiences of past WRI students-all coming from different backgrounds sharing one important commonality: the struggle and pain of dealing with poverty and poverty-related issues and the strife to overcome and guide themselves towards success.

Without further interruption, we would like to commence "The Welfare Monologues" with a blast from the past...our very own, President Ronald Reagan.

Who is a woman receiving public assistance?

Ronald Reagan:
"She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 social security cards and is collecting veterans benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and is collecting welfare under each of her names."

Monologue One:
"I grew up in Connecticut as the youngest of three children and nine cousins. Our home was comfortable and we lived a privileged lifestyle because my father was successful as an entrepreneur. He taught himself to cook by spending time with his Italian aunts and opened his first restaurant the year I was born. The restaurant was a thriving business and our family was having fun and working hard at the same time. Unfortunately the success was both positive and negative for my family. With the money my father made he began to open other businesses. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but in reality he spread his energy too thin. The result was many failed businesses and insurmountable debt to show for it. My father first declared bankruptcy when I was 18. He still has not recovered from his financial hardships. He struggles to make ends meet and they rarely do; he can't often drive his car because he can't afford to insure it. I believe that my father cannot find the kind of job that would support him and my younger siblings because he does not have a college degree. I am determined to go to college and everyday I struggle with the task of supporting myself and going to school. Each week, I work over 35 hours while attending classes. It's well worth it to me, because my father's story reminds me that although money and success can be taken away or lost, education cannot."

Monologue Two:
" I was born in St. Mary, Jamaica and was a pretty frail kid. I remember being sick a lot when I was young but I also remember getting in trouble none-the-less...With stories, I found I could escape for hours and not come back until I felt like it or when the story ended. My Mom took my reading as a sign and had me tested when it was time to enroll in school and we found that I was able to move forward a few years but my Mom feared that I may not adjust, since I would be younger and from a different country compared to my classmates, so she took the option to only move me ahead by a year.

The rest is now history. I applied for competitive magnet schools and college seemed right on the other side of the horizon until my Mom got her divorce. This was the first time I had ever thought of my mother as a "single mother" and it changed my views of things from what I had heard happened to "single mothers" in America. I had a vision of single mothers as poor, sad, and raising five children in a small house or one bedroom apartment on welfare. After a few weeks of talking about my fears, I realized this was not the image and I got back on the right track.

According to my mother, she never saw any other option for me after high school but college. After her experience in college, she claims she would never had wanted me to miss out on it no matter how many jobs she'd have to work. It's hard to know that my mother has sacrificed so much for my education. She had to wake up at 5 in the morning to help me get ready for magnet schools that were an hour and a half away from where we lived. And even now, as I continue my pursuit of college and a better future, my mother has to work to make sure the bills get paid."

Narrator:
This quote was taken from Time Magazine's "100 Days of Attitude" written by John F. Stacks from April 10,1995:
"Nonetheless, the country is up in arms over welfare, convinced that while the middle class is struggling, the poor are getting something for nothing. The debate in the House on welfare was symptomatic of that anger. Representative John Mica of Florid's Seventh District compared welfare recipients to alligators and cautioned that "unnatural feeding and artificial care increases dependency."

His fellow republican, Representative Barbara Cubin of Wyoming, decided that the better analogy was to caged wolves: "When you take away their freedom and their dignity, they can't provide for themselves." In opposition, Representative Earl Hilliard, a Democrat from Alabama, concluded starkly that the proposed welfare cuts were "un-American."

One Actor holds up "Don't feed the Alligators" sign and re-enacts the argument.

Maureen Lane: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 6:57 AM, May 24, 2007 in Economic Opportunity | Education | Welfare
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