Stretching It: Surviving on AFDC. - book reviews

The "outpouring" of support for Republicans during the new congressional elections reflects the growing power held by means of narrow constituencies (for example, the fire-arm lobby or evangelical Christians) within the evacuated realm of what passes for electoral politics today. Given that alone 30-40% of eligible voters smooth bothered to pull the lever this time around, small on the contrary ideologically coherent groups were able to exercise an inordinate amount of power in determining the result of elections. One of the lock opener functions of these groups is to provide specific voting bloc with carefully builded hermeneutic grids through which to interpret their declining class status and the ongoing economic recession. Typically these grids function by dint of displacing a symptomatic reading of economic decline onto a perceived decline in American tillage and "values." This decline is embodied in the actions of particular, racially-demarcated clusters whose (morally depraved) behavior is understood as the cause behind a whole series of interrelated economic conditions.

The sum of two units primary targets of this discursive proces in the new elections were migrant workers (particularly Mexican migrants in border states of that kind as California, Texas, and Arizona), and single mothers (implicitly African American) upon welfare. In each case the pariah make subordinate is understood to have violated a moral economy and to be demanding entitlements that should be "earned" in the marketplace. Within this words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following "welfare" has emerged as the nucleus of a highly compounded and imbricated set of cultural myths generated primarily through conservative ideologues. The climate of debate upon welfare has moved so far to the right that a new New York Times (November 13 1994) reported that there is now wide bipartisan support in Congres for cutting back, if not eliminating entirely the popular "welfare system." The focus of greatest in quantity attacks on welfare is the Aid to Families with hanging Children (AFDC) program, which provides support primarily for single mothers and their children. Of the 143 million race currently on the AFDC turns over nine million of them are children. Republican plans for dismantling welfare include the elimination of all support for children, the use of welfare stocks for the construction of state-sponsored orphanages, and the establishment of work programs for young mothers.

Given the social stigma and absurdly depressed levels of support provided by the agency of AFDC only a complete idiot (or a millionaire congressman) could seriously move that someone would choose to live upon welfare were there any other reasonable alternative available. Judith Hopkins's novel pamphlet, Stretching It: Surviving upon AFDC, provides a useful corrective to the mythologization that encircles welfare in general, and the AFDC program in particular. Hopkins's pamphlet paints a vivid picture of the vicissitudes of life upon AFDC. It opens with the chilling story of Roxanne Jone a woman driven to desperation by means of the frustrations of poverty, who chose to kill herself and her children rather than "fail" as a mother. As Hopkins writes:

As a welfare mother, Jone was trying to raise her children upon an income well below the straitened circumstances level. How many times had her welfare check been wound or delayed for not filling on the outside a form correctly? How many hours did she wait in shire offices in vain? She had no marketable skills to obtain a decent paying job. Besides, she already had a piece of work raising three kids. What would childcare have require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergone her?

The pamphlet features repeats from interviews that Hopkins leadershiped with welfare recipients that give evidence of the interrelated question at issues of domestic abuse, lack of piece of works or extremely low-waged jobs, and the unresponsiveness of the AFDC bureaucracy along with facts about AFDC derived from the Western Center upon Law and Poverty in Sacramento, California ("people don't impel to California for welfare," "tax fraud is more widespread than welfare fraud," "half of all AFDC overpayments are caused through administrative error"). The pamphlet is illustrated with photographs taken by means of Hopkins of public housing interiors, day care center playgrounds, AFDC offices, and other environments that characterize the daily life of welfare recipients. The pamphlet also includes sections from an interview that Hopkins guidanceed with Johnnie Tillmon, the first chair of the National Welfare Rights Organization, describing her efforts to organize women upon welfare in Southern California during the early 1960 In addition, Hopkins has listed the names, addresses, and phone numbers of various organizations in observes Angeles that offer programs and service for AFDC recipients.

Stretching It: Surviving upon AFDC was produced in conjunction with an exhibition entertainered by the National Council of Jewish Women in looks Angeles. It is being distributed end the Harbor Interfaith Shelter in San Pedro and by dint of Nivia Bermudez through the beholds Angeles Coalition to End Homelessnes The City of beholds Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, which capitaled the production of Hopkins's pamphlet, has a track record for supporting interesting and innovative publishing shoot forwards (see "Taking Out the Trash," a review of The Big Sweep, another throw out funded by the Cultural Affairs Department, in Afterimage 22:1 Summer 1994 pp 15-16) Given the manifold difficulties confronting public arts funder today the Cultural Affairs Department should be recommended for supporting projects such as this. For copies of Stretching It: Surviving upon AFDC, send a check for $500 plus $200 for postage and handling to Judith Hopkins, 1324 N Occidental Blvd beholds Angeles, CA 90026.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Visual Studies Workshop

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group