Numbers of poor increase while no Eleanor Roosevelt or Michael Harrington speaks for them

Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady and wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt

"There are a lot of poor people in Waianae," a journalist commented to a friend, who responded, "They probably like it that way.  They seem to be happy enough." The notion of the poor as choosing their condition has continued as a barrier against improving their situation.  What is the present status and who are the spokespeople for the poor in America?

The 'Other America' of the poor is the tragedy today with no Eleanor Roosevelt of the Depression nor Michael Harrington of the 1960's speaking for them.

Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, took special interest in the plight of the poor.  In fact she was known for the projects she created to enhance the lot of some of the nation's poorest people during the Great Depression of the 1930's.  She became their advocate, to the President and to the country. Hers was the voice that made a difference, as national projects were developed to provide employment and housing for families.

But today, despite the fact many women have arisen to participate in the politics of the United Nations, no one has used his or her Congressional position to speak specifically for the nation's poor.  Nor does Hillary Clinton's voice echo across the land as Eleanor Roosevelt's once did.

While the problems are diverse, and international issues often dominate the discourse in today's world, the fact is that internationally in the 1930's there were conflicts during the Depression, as Fascism and Nazism grew until they became the terrorist threats of the pre-World War II period.  Yet the poor remained Eleanor Roosevelt's concern. Indeed that concern remained with her throughout her public life.  Who takes the place of such a person, who was willing to face ridicule and rejection while putting the needs of poor first rather than political concerns?

In the 1960's, a young man named Michael Harrington spoke for the poor by penning a book entitled The Other America.  The book was mandatory reading for many political science students at the college and universities of the United States.  Michael Harrington said it was time to help the hidden in our midst, the poor, now with us in large numbers again.

The fact that Harrington,  was personally a socialist was not underlined in the offering of his text for information. He was viewed as a man with a conscience who wrote how many poor people were being ignored; and American needed to pay attention.

In 2014 the problems facing the poor seem only to be getting worse, as the middle class in America is shrinking and the gap between rich and poor increases.

America has a major problem of poverty once again, but this time it is not that dirty little secret that Harrington uncovered that politicians and liberal minds maintained was something they had not seen or understood before. That secret of the 1960's, of severe poverty, is now on downtown streets, clearly visible. In the 1960's the poor were described by Harrington as those who worked in the back kitchens, on the roads, in the bathrooms and the elderly who lived with little and needed much. Now the poor sit out in the open on benches, where men who worked regular jobs sit aimlessly, unemployed, waiting to be called for employment they can't seem to find, unless it is that occasional part-time service job that barely sustains a single individual let alone an entire family.

Why aren't people talking more about what can be done about something that's growing and deeply felt by millions of people?

 Just who are poor these days, what might be their future and what can be done to help them are the needed issues that need to be examined by folks visible and daring enough to make a difference, an Eleanor Roosevelt or a Michael Harrington, the kind who are willing to take risks of being unpopular or different in a world where too many people are worried about reputations or personal concerns.

Leo Hindery, an occasional writer for the Huffington Post, wrote a few years ago, detailing the plight of America's contemporary poor.   Hindery put up a microscope of his own to look at the problems facing the United States in the midst of the recession and how the problems particularly impact the poor.

In conversations with two of his friends, civil rights activist David Mixner and former U.S. Senator Don Riegle (D-MI), Hindery pointed out their observations are few folks are giving any real attention to who is really poor now and that too many government officials are missing the important concerns about the backyards of America, where people are hurting the most.

While Hindery agreed with Michelle Obama's interest in raising the nutritional standards for America's children, he points out how the plight of the poor is going unnoticed.

Where is Franklin D. Roosevelt among the new politicians in Congress? Where is the solution for the millions of people who don't have an "economic bill of rights" similar to that of the former President in 1944 and with the same intentions. Who now speaks for the poor, in the voice of an author like Harrington or a President like FDR and especially his wife, Eleanor? Hindery asked that question as Harrington asked it in the 1960's when Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey stepped forward and answered the call to help the poor.

Michael Harrington was credited with opening up America's eyes to the plight of the poor in the 1960's. His book, widely read by college students of the time, was part of the impetus for poverty programs under Lyndon Johnson,, that were shelved as the country became increasingly embroiled in war. Besides Harrington, a socialist, was discredited by those who equated his views with communism, although he protested, as did others, that his view was not totalitarian but compassionate towards the poor.

Peter Manicas, a professor from the University of Hawaii, pointed out in his assessment of Harrington:"Harrington was correct that no socialist revolution was on the agenda in the US. And he was not alone in suffering from the deep difficulty of reconciling a radical vision with the means available in American electoral politics. But it was not just socialism and the war on poverty that took a beating in the 70s and 80s. So did liberalism and perhaps also democracy."

Peter Dreier agrees with these precepts, finding America stuck on a solution to help the nation's poor.  He states that even though the poor are not as numerous as in the time of Harrington, the problems run deep and in need of resolution.  15% of the country are considered to be among the worst off, with his posing the question about whether or not America is ready for a new war on poverty of the kind Lyndon Johnson once espoused and Michael Harrington cared about.  Dreir observes that the war on poverty in the past did not fail, for had it failed the nation would have twice the numbers of poor that it has today.  Nevertheless the problems remain grave.

Hindery, FDR,Dreier and Harrington all acknowledged how poverty drags down those affected and the whole of the fabric of a culture as well. The world has lived with poverty throughout its history, but in the present world that poverty is complicated by complex disasters as well. Who speaks for these people today?

Woody Guthrie still musically relevant

Woody Guthrie

Carol Forsloff -  An Indie film called "Hobo with a Shotgun," shows an angry man with a shotgun as its message, but the contemporary hobo is neither a romantic hero nor sadistic bum but likely your neighbor's son or the street person of Guthrie's "Hobo's Lullaby." Woody Guthrie, music troubadour of the Great Depression remains musically relevant.

Even as the economic downturn that took the country down from 2008 to a slow recovery, it left thousands of ordinary young men without work.  Many still struggle to find full-time jobs.  The recovery has been long and lasting even longer for certain people whose work has either been down-sized or diminished as technology has replaced many jobs.

Young adults still live with their parents, as many did in the Depression years.  During that time young men rode the rails in search of work or just to find a place to call home.  Woody Guthrie identified with these stresses and wrote about them as he too rode the rails, writing and singing and continuing to express the feelings of his generation.

But this generation might also find themselves in the words and music of a man whose own personal miseries might be seen as reflecting those of others who still sit around campfires, but these on the outside of cities, as some hold signs looking for work.  

Still with commercial travel and train routes reduced but with ridership increased, the opportunities for catching a ride on the rails is not like it was in those days the Great Depression depicts as part of the lifestyle.  These days young people are more apt to find their ways to that somewhere better by car, hitchhiking along the road or finding a willing trucker to take them along for the ride.

But the modern hobo has a language and culture, in many ways different than the past.  At the same time the notion of banding in a brotherhood of sorts still remains.  Gizmodo tells us there is even a hobo code, with symbols  sent by electronic means about places to use wireless communication or find free fuel for cars.  The Modern Hobo Code  is said to have been put together by Rob Cockerham.

The Modern Hobo Code is defined by its creators as "a system of symbols drawn to aid one's fellow vagabonds and make life on the streets a bit more comfortable. The only trouble is that it didn't really take modern technologies into consideration much—until now.

The new "e-way" of communication allows young hobos to learn where jobs are, places to stay, and what areas to avoid, as opposed to the old methods of networks by rumors and stories that advanced the life as desirable with all its adventures and fun.  The life of the hobo of history meant having a trade to get by, a talent to sell, and a network of people who could provide work in exchange for some money or food.  According to hobo history,  many of the 500 or so a day hobos prior to World War II entered the service, got the G.I. bill and became settled in towns and cities across the country.  They were often aided by rural folk, many of whom had family members who took to survival by riding the rails.

The life was harsh, the independence, however, part of the narrative too:

"I be Hobo, I be FREE

So the love of freedom and the wonder or wanderlust of the Hobo as led them to explore the places the rest of the world did not go and often did not want to go, but also help them to understand real freedom.

"I did no justice to the Hobo, and I am just a traveler without a home. I appreciate their free spirit, but also understand the loneliness, and possibly the life of a Hobo with no future. There are lot of Hoboes in the world that neither can return to their homes, do not remember how to return home, and when they do return, find they must leave for the road calls, and they only feel complete when they are traveling."

Today's hobo is a different sort, a young person who gets caught up in drugs, human trafficking and living in cities where police and the populace move the street folks along, in some areas violently.  The average homeless person is now a child with an average age of nine, many of whom grow up without stability and get lost on the streets.  Others take to the streets because there is nothing else, according to a Stanford study in 2003, and get involved in drugs or become victims of human trafficking schemes.

The present-day hobo is not the same as great grandfather was years ago, but likely a lost and lonely young man and woman with simply nowhere else to go but the roads and the streets of our cities.  He or she, or the child you see, is the hobo of Arlo Guthrie's lullaby.  Arlo Guthrie is the son of Woody Guthrie, whose music painted a picture of America's plight, as Arlo Guthrie's song "Hobo's Lullaby" captures it still, a reflection of his father's musical relevance.

In post bin Laden era, 'nothing to fear but fear itself'

Editor - During the Great Depression, as people reeled from the impact of poverty and hurt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke to the nation with a reverential quality, as he declared, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," a message that experts tell us should be heeded in these days when extremism abounds and anti-government reactions mount.

[caption id="attachment_4112" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933"][/caption]

Anti-government zeal is rampant in the Middle East, as one by one people question their lives and the problems they face with poverty and social problems.  This same sentiment, however, is part of European unrest, from Italy to Great Britain.  In the United States it takes the form of disbelief in Barack Obama's birth in Hawaii or even the killing of Osama bin Laden, that some people now claim was staged.

This is the fear FDR spoke of then.  He warned the people as they faced an unknown future what dangers come from over-reaction to events.  He reminded people trust is important and that there are things that guide men in satisfactory ways.  He did not say that trust is blind or that folks should not question things.  He simply said to ask and doubt in fear, and let that fear then guide beliefs, was a dangerous, awful thing.

In the aftermath of the killing of bin Laden, experts remind us of the risks from extremist views, right or left, as wrong.  These security folks, like those in Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, remind us of how those living on the edge can easily be swayed in ways that are unhealthy for us all.

"Nothing to fear but fear itself" is the mantra FDR used to rally a nation in a war against poverty and eventually a World War against a terrible enemy, from Germany's extreme views then.  Perhaps it should be heard or read again, in the aftermath of the killing of bin Laden, so the real work can get done on combating the serious problems of food shortages, water pollution and potential environmental dangers that can impact the entire world.