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?

Small towns offer potential for ethical and spiritual resolutions to government inertia

Crowd at annual food festival in Natchtioches, Louisiana

While people nationwide in the United States are annoyed with the inertia of the federal government, often it is at the grassroots where problems can be resolved and true mediation occur.  Two towns, one in the South and one in the West, are examples where that might be able to take place, as other areas of the country can examine their connections that could serve to ignite a new direction for government to function more responsively to the needs of ordinary people.

census rally in La Grande, Oregon - CF

Local communities have close common interests because there are fewer degrees of separation socially.  People have long-standing relationships and marriage among families that fosters permanent bonds.  Social connections and spiritual bonds are formed at church.  This means there is a strong platform for discussing community problems.

Political problems do occur in small towns, but that dissension ordinarily only goes just so far, because an angry tongue unleashed against a neighbor is felt not just in one's immediate neighborhood but reverberates across town.  The higher up the food chain of government, however, the less personal and direct the relationships are, making it easier for people to become hostile in prominent and more long-lasting ways than occur in small towns.

In local communities like Natchitoches, Louisiana and La Grande, Oregon there are not just long relationships but some "bad blood" between individuals and factions, the town politicians know that helping to effect resolution of problems will help the overall community interest.  It is difficult to side with one faction over the other because overlapping relationships too. 

The process of having good things begins with grassroots coalitions that support the growth upwards of benefits that exist for everyone.

Sometimes that mediation and reconciliation takes place in simple ways, when two people from diverse groups agree on a problem that affects the greater good.  It is easier to talk things out in small towns over a cup of coffee at the local coffee shop or on a park bench where two people can overlook the town and speak of the good things while sorting out the problems.

Can reconciliation and mediation truly take place in ways that work?  It did during integration in Natchitoches when quiet negotiations took place among black and white business and community leaders who had never been schooled together but knew each other by reputation or in passing at large gatherings, usually involving immediate physical needs.  These negoitations allowed integration to occur between the Steel Magnolia ancestors and those of Uncle Tom's cabin with little violence or recrimination.  Ben Johnson, a prominent African American businessman and Arthur Watson, the town's most high-profile attorney were two of those taking leadership in days where other places had serious violence during integration.  These men helped keep the town intact, the voices of hate and dissension down, that allowed black and white children to begin attending school together in relatively peaceful ways.

La Grande, Oregon developed from the settlement of various factions of predominantly European groups into Indian territory under harsh conditions.  Out of this settlement came negotiations that remain part of the town's underpinnings, the type that can serve the nation at a time it needs this type of effort the most.

In La Grande, the mediation with Native American groups made a difference in the life of the town, so that Indian blood in one's veins became valued, not denied as a way to succeed.  Sacajawea, who was the famous Native American woman accompanying the Lewis and Clark expedition on the Oregon trail that bonded Louisiana and Oregon in the Louisiana Purchase, is widely revered in La Grande where an apartment building, and once an old hotel, were named after her.

It is that type of movement that works towards mediation among individuals, small groups and small towns that is now required to move the larger community forward, when people of good faith, regardless of political view or religious affiliation, sit down together and examine the issues that are common to most folks in their daily lives.  These resolutions support the potential of a movement up the chain where major government entities now sit so far removed from ordinary folk they seldom understand the local community plight.

That's the root of anti-government feeling at a time when the nation needs better bonding as a shield against outside attack and the breakdown of the culture from within from drugs, crime and acts of hate.

With grassroots bonding and the work of coalitions that cross racial and political groups,  small towns like Natchitoches and La Grande will be able to take great steps in maintaining their economic base and likely can improve it by accenting their values in getting things done.  These are solutions of the spirit that many people understand because they live and work closely together.

Grassroots mediation and working together on common issues can improve local communities, but this process can also form the basis of improving government at the national level where it doesn't seem to work.  As Hillary Clinton wrote in a book with reference to the raising of children, "It takes a village."  In this case that village might mean small towns making a difference in getting people to communicate amicably so they are able to take the message to the state and national levels and restore civility to government.

Marital survival: the exceptional side of adultery

[caption id="attachment_9500" align="alignleft" width="134" caption="Kathie Lee Gifford"][/caption]

Carol Forsloff - They celebrated their birthdays together on the Today Show recently, as Kathie Lee Gifford and her once-philandering husband Frank prove once again there’s love after an affair, something folks wonder about and discuss their own potential ability to forgive and go on.

While divorce remains a frequent happening among American couples, infidelity is at the top of the issues people discuss as that awful something they wouldn’t do or abide in a spouse.

Research shows that since Alfred Kinsey’s sex research of 1953 the percentage of unfaithful husbands, found at the time to be one-half to two-thirds who had had at least one extramarital affair, hasn’t changed much. On the other hand,  while Kinsey assessed women’s unfaithfulness at 6 percent to 16 percent, the figure now ranges from 21 percent to 54 percent.

 Studies show that during the last 30 years, the percentage of men who have been unfaithful has remained steady: One-half to two-thirds indulged in at least one extramarital affair. The number of philandering females, however, is on the increase. In 1953 sex researcher Alfred Kinsey concluded that 6 percent to 26 percent of married women had been unfaithful. Now the figure is way up, ranging from 21 percent to 54 percent.

A movie entitled Heartburn starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson explored the world of cheating, through the lives of a couple where the wife learns her husband has been unfaithful. The film is based on a book by Nora Ephron, an account of a four-year marriage to Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, who co-wrote All the President’s Men, that ended as a result of Bernstein’s affair with Margaret Jay, who at the time was married to Peter Jay, the British Ambassador to Washington. The heartbreak, accusations and sadness resulting from marital betrayal is played out in the bedrooms of America on a regular basis, often resulting in divorce.

A Gallup poll found in 2008 that 62% of those asked what they would do if their spouse had an affair said they would leave and get a divorce if they found they had been betrayed.  6% say they would publicly stand by their spouse, but according to additional statistics, this percentage reflects more women than men, as most men have trouble forgiving the sexual part of the adulterous relationship, while wives will be more interested in whether the husband loved the other woman or not. Apparently in the case of Kathie Lee, Frank’s pronouncements of continuing love have been enough to continue to share the marriage and a birthday celebration, theirs being an exception to what most couples do after an affair.

Seasons changing for women in politics for 2012 elections

Every election women's vote is talked about as valuable;  and with the potential lineup of women as well as men for the 2012 ballot, the likelihood increases that women will make even more of a difference in election outcomes.  What might that be?

Time was when someone asked a woman how she was going to vote, she answered that was her husband's business. That time wasn't long ago either; I remember women making that statement in the 1960's as women still had the goal of getting married young, having babies, and working in between, as teachers, secretaries or nurses. 2012 will be another time when women's voice will be heard, and what they say might make a difference in the future of America.

There wasn't much for women then to do or dream about in much of America's past. The notion of running for political office wasn't something most women thought of at all. They still looked to their guys to figure things out.But things change, and after the 1964 Civil Rights legislation, expanding women's rights, women started to look for new things to do.

Many women, whose dreams were thwarted, are voting now; and their ideas will be part of the mix with young women who have realized theirs.  Views on abortion differ by age group as does politics in general.  But women historically have voted sympathetically as well, so their divisions might not be as absolute as when they are sorted out with the votes of men.

Now, as we look to the future, we can look to a possibility of a woman for President one day.  Hillary Clinton came close to holding the banner of victory.  Regardless of political persuasion, women loved it. She symbolized achievement, and it was hard to see her not the finalist women hoped.

We have other women these days, although some would argue not the same in terms of standing nor of style.  But how they fare will depend on what they say and how they manage themselves, even as men are now judged.  The sadness is our  hearts and the knowledge how divided we've become. Women's longed-for dreams for a woman in the White House have materialized into a nightmare for many, even as those who never caught up continue following husband's leads into a world where women might lose a lot if the wrong kind of woman wins, a woman who doesn't support women's progress over the years.

2012 is on its way, and two women, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin have been mentioned as Republican Presidential contenders.   How will that impact the women's vote.   Pollsters say the votes of women will count a lot in the next election. Both the Democrats and Republicans pursue women's votes, using the words they believe will move us to one side or the other. So with mixed feelings women will go and make that difference. Who knows what the difference will be, but given the controversies among women about Sarah Palin in 2008, it might be women themselves might not be ready to vote for a woman, if the woman does not measure up.

Michele Bachman, potential contender for President