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"Biden’s pandemic response plans 'carry echoes of Roosevelt’s New Deal,'" write The Times’s Abby Goodnough and Sheryl Gay Stolberg. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/health/covid-biden-pandemic-plan.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20201015&instance_id=23153&nl=the-morning®i_id=131020632§ion_index=2§ion_name=the_latest_news&segment_id=41086&te=1&user_id=9ac44a2930cedf87fce77b198ebfa89a
Let me tell you something about The New Deal:
Let me tell you something about The New Deal:
First, let me say, as someone who has worked closely in poverty and who has lived her life in Appalachia: People do not want to be poor, and, in fact, many of the poorest people do not see themselves as poor.
For all that people fear welfare leeches, the system is not nearly as "abused" as some thing (anecdotes are not equivalent to evidence!), and actually, the system is extremely hard to break into.
In general, you have people who:
1. Would qualify for the system, but choose not to, because they see their poverty as temporary
2. Should qualify for the system, but don't, because it's difficult to manage and qualify
1. Would qualify for the system, but choose not to, because they see their poverty as temporary
2. Should qualify for the system, but don't, because it's difficult to manage and qualify
All this means is--if there is work available, my goodness, people want to do it. The majority of people would far rather have steady, gainful employment rather than deal with the system for "handouts"
But unless you live here, it's hard, often, to see how difficult it is to find work. Rural areas have their own set of problems--often ignored and often misunderstood by people who live in the city or who even live in rural areas that are different.
For example, my situation: my husband got a heart transplant just over a month ago. And as such is both immunocompromised and a HIGH risk of literal death from COVID. With the pandemic, my two higher degrees don't matter--I cannot get a second job outside home and care for him.
But...as some of you may recall, with the pandemic (which has overwhelmed and slowed down cell towers) I also cannot work online from home. I'm not exaggerating here: it's impossible. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/technology/parking-lots-wifi-coronavirus.html
It's a Catch-22. I have missed SO MANY opportunities this summer--for promo, for work, for needed paychecks--100% because high speed internet IS NOT AN OPTION. It's not that I can't pay; it's that IT DOES NOT EXIST. (Read @ceciliakang's excellent article for more details)
This lack of opportunity has obviously impacted by microcosm of my family's economy, but it's easy to see how it extrapolates into the larger picture, across my whole community.
But you know what would make living out here in the country worse than a lack of internet?
A lack of electricity.
And, until VERY recently, that was also a MAJOR problem
A lack of electricity.
And, until VERY recently, that was also a MAJOR problem
I don't have access to high speed internet in my community 100% because companies don't think it's profitable enough to run it. There aren't enough customers.
A few decades ago, there also wasn't ELECTRICITY, for the exact same reason.
A few decades ago, there also wasn't ELECTRICITY, for the exact same reason.
You want to know why the South is poor? That's part of it.
You want to know why it's so hard to break the cycle of poverty? That's part of it.
And the thing is, people didn't think about it, because they didn't have to deal with it.
You want to know why it's so hard to break the cycle of poverty? That's part of it.
And the thing is, people didn't think about it, because they didn't have to deal with it.
I still--after a prominent NYT article and after mentioning it on my social media often--I STILL get people who say, "What? You're still having to drive to parking lots to get internet?!"
YES MY DUDE. NO ONE RAN T1 LINES IN THE LAST FEW WEEKS, SO NO, I DO NOT HAVE INTERNET
YES MY DUDE. NO ONE RAN T1 LINES IN THE LAST FEW WEEKS, SO NO, I DO NOT HAVE INTERNET
Go back to the late 1930s, when there wasn't social media and quick communication. You think people who had become accustomed to electricity in northern cities thought about how the rural south just............did not........have.......ELECTRICITY???????? (spoiler: no)
It took Roosevelt's New Deal to:
1. Bring electricity to rural areas
2. Hire rural people to install it
It was a brilliant system--not welfare, but a way to get the people the services they need by employing them
1. Bring electricity to rural areas
2. Hire rural people to install it
It was a brilliant system--not welfare, but a way to get the people the services they need by employing them
No company would "waste" their money to build electric systems in the rural south. So the government solved the inequity and the unemployment and aided the poverty system, all in one fell swoop.
When Biden talks about a COVID system that's akin to the New Deal, you need to pay attention to just how good a system this could be. And it could apply to internet infrastructure in rural areas. THIS is a way to TRULY help.
Stipend checks are Band-Aids. A New Deal system to actively improve America in real, tangible ways?
My God, that's a game-changer.
And if you can't see that, you're not looking.
My God, that's a game-changer.
And if you can't see that, you're not looking.
One last thing.
If I could say anything to help others see what poverty does, it's this: Your normal is not the universal normal.
My mother, from New Jersey, grew up with indoor plumbing her entire life.
My father, from rural NC, didn't have a toilet indoors until he was 13.
If I could say anything to help others see what poverty does, it's this: Your normal is not the universal normal.
My mother, from New Jersey, grew up with indoor plumbing her entire life.
My father, from rural NC, didn't have a toilet indoors until he was 13.
My mother never realized this until I was an adult, and my father casually remarked upon how he remembered the family's first toilet being installed. Her normal childhood was not my father's normal childhood.
And if you think electricity is something that should be available to everyone, then you can thank the government for the New Deal that enabled that to happen.
And frankly, if you think that the right to access electricity in every home in America should exist, then you need to ask yourself why the same can't be true of health care, internet, and other resources that the govt can supply if you'd quit talking bullshit about bootstraps.
WE ARE ALL EXPERIENCING THIS PANDEMIC EQUALLY, BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.
(And, obviously, I'm speaking only from my experience as a white person in poor Appalachia. There are cycles within cycles--poverty spirals in many minority communities for different inequities than the ones I touch on, or in different regions.)
One more thing: Please don't make the mistake of thinking these system-wide, lack of access issues are bc people don't know how to use the system or are too ignorant to change. My great uncle worked on the Manhattan Proj and came to visit his mother in a house w/o electricity
We KNOW things aren't fair. We have found ways to work around the system as best we can (see: how I'm STILL going to parking lots for WiFi).
Just remember: we're not asking for a handout. We're asking for a CHANCE.
Just remember: we're not asking for a handout. We're asking for a CHANCE.
