"Busted" #1: The Poverty Tour

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You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out ODO at odo.com. That's odo.com. This year's girl's trip to tell you where I was the best. We went up ourselves with my Sapphire preferred card. And with five times points on Chase Travel plus three times points on vacation homes with top brands, we got this incredible cabin. It was a mansion. And with three times the points on dining, we ordered a Wagyu steak dinner. And that pistachio gelato was too good. So, where should we go next year? I've got ideas. Chase Sapphire preferred. The card that's preferred for a reason. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank and a member of FDIC, subject to credit approval, terms apply. I'm Brooke Gladstone. In the weeks leading up to this election, we decided to spend some quality time on an issue that wasn't getting much attention, poverty. Specifically, poverty myths. The rags to riches myth. The myth of the safety net and so on. We wanted to dig into the delusions that we hold dear, even if we're poor ourselves, because they've shaped our policies and the lives of the poor in America for centuries. As we head into a new administration, these issues seem even more urgent. We're proud of this series, and we wanted to make it easy for you to listen to all of it in one place right in your podcast feed. So here goes. The fact is, the latest research suggests that we're making economic progress. The richest, of course, still get richer. The middle class is mending, and even the poor are edging up a little. But the very poorest, they are poorer now than ever. How can that be? How can there be more social mobility in Canada and France? Over the course of this five-part series, you'll hear many stories. And one by one, they'll loosen the legs of the stool that props up our poverty myths. The conservative leg that blames social dysfunction in indolence. The liberal leg that decries government stinginess. And the third leg, the one we don't talk about. Us, we need to have a frank conversation about the way that our lives directly contribute to poverty in America. Matthew Desmond is a sociologist at Harvard and author of evicted poverty and profit in the American city. I remember hearing a dear friend and mentor of mine, Ruth Lopez-Therley, who's a sociologist at Rice University. She gave a presentation a few years ago and she said, "If everyone who is zoned to Houston Public School District went to that school, Houston Public School District would have a 40% poverty rate." And then she asked the audience, "Do you know what the poverty rate is? It's 80%. And then she said, "And then we have the audacity to ask why these schools are failing." In his book, Desmond makes the abstract real, telling the stories of complicated and compelling individuals in rich detail. And in so doing, he reveals poverty, not as a realm where the other half lives, not even as a lack of money, but as a process, a complex social and financial interaction that strengthens the positions of the comfortable. He notes that the word exploitation has vanished from the debate and believes it should be reinstated. Because it's a driver of poverty today, you know, poverty isn't just a product of joblessness. It isn't just a product of low wages. It's also a product of really high housing costs and for-profit colleges and predatory loan operations. And I think that we just have to be blunt and clear-eyed about the fact that some people are making a pretty dollar off the pockets of the poor. And I wonder, can we stop having a conversation about laziness or not? Can we stop that? And really have a frank, honest conversation about why we are weird in the world for this level of poverty alongside this much wealth? Conversations? How many have we had over the years on the causes of poverty? In 1795, founding father and political theorist Thomas Payne blamed civilization. He acknowledged that private property, though an unnatural construct, is the price we must pay for developing agriculture. But he wrote, "It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before." And so he proposed, not as a charity, but as a right, to create a national fund out of which they shall be paid to every person when arrived at the age of 21 years, the sum of £15 sterling as a compensation in part for the loss of his or her natural inheritance by the introduction of the system of landed property. And also, the sum of £10 per annum during life to every person now living of the age of 50 years and to all others as they shall arrive at that age. For some reason that didn't take. So we tell stories everlastingly to remind us of unfinished business. Here's what I learned doing the stories you'll hear in the next few weeks. Poverty means that you've slipped off the knife's edge, that a botched piece of paperwork or about a flu has cost you your job, then your home, and finally your kids. It means you sell your plasma for bus fare. It means you don't have the money to bury your mom. Most of us happen to clue what it means to live like that because most of us, even when the screws tighten and we gasp for breath, don't spiral down into a hell of loss upon loss because most of us have won the good luck lottery for a whole heap of reasons. Could be race or background or just being born in the right place. Research suggests that in Salt Lake City you have roughly an 11% chance to rise from the bottom fizz income bracket to the top fifth. Whereas in Atlanta, you have a 4% chance, which means you don't really have a chance. But that said, if your reporter like me on the poverty tour, you don't go to Atlanta. You go to Ohio. Well, right now we're heading out around 50. I mean, in general, all this is part of the South Asian Ohio Appalachian region. Why Ohio? Well, I went because like me a poet in ice cream, you get the three main flavors of poverty in a single container. Appalachia for white, Cleveland for black, and manufacturing dead zones like Youngstown for the rust-colored variety. We've always had a higher rate of poverty in the Appalachian areas because even at its peak, back at the turn of the last century, when we had coal mining jobs and jobs in Timber, there were still more people than jobs. Jack Freck has spent his entire life battling to preserve aid to the poor, including 33 years' welfare director in an Appalachian county. Standing by his black SUV, he's gray-haired, bemused, verging, and skeptical. And yet still game, despite having escorted countless reporters, like me, on the Appalachian leg of their poverty tour, past rusted trailers and shocks, and a few creeks tinted a bright chemical yellow. When they were setting up coal mines somewhere, and they would throw up these wooden houses in a day, they'd either be, you know, four rooms in a box shape where they had to call shotgun houses, that were maybe three rooms in a line. When I came here in the early '70s as a caseworker, there were hundreds and hundreds of those houses out there, and most of them had electricity at that point, but did not have running water. You know, he said all this before, some 30 odd years, the same tour, the same story. In the last 20 years, the other thing that we've seen is families are doubling and tripling up in these old houses. Kids are sleeping on the floor, or three or four to a bed. He's trying to make the invisible visible. Unless you have some reason to take a state road out to a county road, and then a township road off the county road and a dirt road off another dirt road, you're not gonna see them because that's where they are. And I think it lends itself to this whole idea that things aren't that bad. - And he definitely disposes of that idea because now you see the hard part he explains as the day fades and we repair to his airy well-appointed home nestled in the woods. The hard part isn't getting the media to see how bad it is. It's getting us to understand why because we kind of think we already know. - You know, I think my first contact with the media and dealing with this really started back in the late '70s. Around the time I took the job as a welfare director and one of the things that you constantly deal with in this field is that people just, if you're not poor, it's not likely that you even know someone who's poor and you certainly know very little about their lives. People deal in misperceptions and share it. - Like what? - Well, I think the idea that poor people are lazy. There is no misperception about poor people that is greater. There needs to be a reason why are we unwilling to share with them? And the best way is to say they're poor through their own fault. We've gone so far in this country as to actually say that sharing with them hurts them. Giving them help creates dependency. But somehow we don't apply to social security on employment compensations, veterans benefits, tax breaks for mortgage payments, all the other things that everyone gets. I mean, Medicaid, which of course is welfare too. Almost everyone has to go on Medicaid. And yet no one looks down on them because they got old and had to go into a nursing home and could never possibly afford the cost to keep them there. So we're very specific about who we decide is on welfare and who isn't. And we overlook the fact that the average length of time of people on welfare is about two years. I mean, again, it's all in the matter of the way we label things. - So you talked about this prevalent myth within the context of your first brush with the media. Tie that together. - Well, I think for me, the way to advocate for poor people was to shine a light on them. To shine a light on them, to show that this could happen to any of us. I think though that as time went on, I became much more aware of how much of this had to do with racism, how much of this had to do with sexism, how much of this had to do with other issues that had nothing to do with someone's ability or how hard they wanted to work or didn't want to work. I mean, you can take almost the same stereotypes that we applied to poor people and get away with now. And you can see how for hundreds of years, we applied those same stereotypes to black people. - So he worked with big media to undermine those stereotypes over and over again. We see the autographed pictures of network news stars, the snapshots and thank you notes scattered all over his house. Watching the videos of Jack's network appearances, you can literally see him age, each time a little grayer, a little stouter, but always the same passion. In '94 with Deborah Ames on ABC News Nightline. - People here are able to find shelter in all kinds of places and garages and small campers and trailers and things like that. Some of the places don't have running water, some of them don't have electricity. - You might say that Jack Freck is an expert on welfare. - The director of human services in Athens County, Ohio, the heart of Appalachia. He's been working with the poor. - In '95 with Chris Fury on Nightline. - Jack Freck in charge of welfare for a poor Appalachian County in Ohio says even less money will be available in times of recession when the welfare ranks inevitably grow. - I think it will have that desired effect. It will save money. It will be at the expense of poor people. - In 2006 on Good Morning America. - At this point in our county, there are almost no manufacturers left. The last three or four of them that offered relatively decent jobs with full benefits, they're all gone. - In 2010 with Anne Curry on NBC Date Line. Athens County Welford director Jack Freck sees many young mothers like Crystal and says state and federal programs just don't help them enough. - Our staff work their butts off to get these people every dime they can. But at the end of the day, we send them out of here knowing that it's very likely that the last couple of weeks of the month, they're gonna have to go to a food pantry to get enough food eat. - You sound a bit angry about this. - I'm very angry about this, poor people. - Like poverty, anger comes in flavors. And here, Jackson's tinged with a kind of smoldering heartache. But back in '93 on CBS's Ida Eye with Connie Chang, the experience elicited something closer to outrage. - Listen to this. Soon one of every three babies in America will be born to an unwed mother. The tragedy is, two out of three families headed by single mothers live in poverty. It's a crisis that's pumping up the crime rate and choking the taxpayer. - The angled pursuit in this segment was clearly shared by then correspondent Bernard Goldberg, now conservative media critic and Fox News contributor. Here's Goldberg in peace. - Connie, imagine in America with millions more poor people than we have now, you may not have to imagine long. - His peace featured author Charles Murray, ardent promoter of the idea that welfare leads to illegitimate children, which breeds more poverty and crime. That in fact, the best course was to root out illegitimacy and its source. - There is a feeling that this plan to end welfare for single mothers is not just a half big crazy idea. - I think it's dangerous, frightening prospect. - Jack Freck is in charge of the welfare system in Athens County. - We're justifying what essentially in my mind is an immoral decision by saying that we're doing this as a favor to them. Essentially, we would be taking millions and millions of dollars out of our poorest communities and we would see people suffer greatly. - But if they suffered greatly, that's precisely the point. They might not have these kids. Well, they might starve to death too. - That was Jack's worst media experience. His best, never to be repeated, had occurred nine years earlier in 1991 courtesy of ABC News. - Apparently, there was some concern by Peter Jennings and his producers that they were doing a considerable amount of coverage of the problems that Kurdish children were having as a result of the war. And there was this huge outpouring of people in this country wanting to help those people. They were concerned about this. - The crisis for Kurdish children simply reminded us that 12 million American children have a daily crisis as well, and that we should come and take a closer look at it. - Naturally, they chose Ohio. - Our unusual concentration on children in poverty is gonna last a couple of weeks. This week here in Ohio, because all the statistics in many of the situations match the rest of the country. - And naturally they call Jack Frack. - Peter Jennings came down and him and I spent the day. We went out and walked around. They shot a video of poor families, interviewed lots of people. They had correspondence in three or four locations in Ohio. And then throughout the week, it would lead the newscast and it would be something that happened that day. - When you get close to the poor, you recognize right away that very often the level of assistance which they get from government doesn't even lift them up to the legal poverty line, let alone above it. Which seems to say that your congressman and your state legislators have failed to recognize that children and families in poverty are a national disaster. In your name, they often argue about other priorities and welfare cheats, 12 million American children who cheat. - The overwhelming response they got was that we don't believe this. The pictures you're showing us of these poor families and how they're living, we don't believe this is happening in America. And we're horrified. - So that was their attempt to shine a light on this. I mean, this was not all sweetness and light, but I mean, they showed a drug addicted mom over I think a date in someplace where her baby was an incubator. They had some poor kid up in Columbus, a 10 year old boy and he was taking responsibility for a siblings and it was, I thought excellent reporting about what was happening. You're convinced that if people only saw this, if they only knew, it would make a difference. So you can imagine my perspective on this when Peter Jennings hearing him to a broadcast every night literally saying the words that I told him earlier that day about what benefits are, what problems are, what struggles are. Here's the most famous renowned newscaster at the time. - And a huge audience. - Huge audience. - You must have thought this is the moment. - Yes. - Absolutely. And I was thrilled. I was 42 years old and I thought, that's it. We're done here, you know, we've solved poverty. - And then? - And then nothing, nothing. - Actually a report released around that time by Senator J. Rockefeller did spur legislation on child health insurance, but there was no effort to halt the decline in cash assistance to poor families in Ohio and elsewhere, not then and certainly not now. It's gone in the other direction. People are less sympathetic. They're harsher now. I mean, you know, you will see folks now, you know, begin to also rail against welfare. even though there's hardly anyone left on welfare. In Ohio, 75% of the cash assistance welfare cases are child-only cases. There's only 15,000 adults left on cash assistance in Ohio. We have eliminated cash assistance. We don't have these kids living in orphanages. We have them living with grandma instead because the families have fallen apart and we no longer support families and stay together. So the conservatives have won the day. They won, and we're still not happy about it. We still don't give them credit even when they go out and work, you know, they have to work off their benefits. They do, we still don't give them credit for it. We still think they're awful and terrible. So, you know, that's what I've seen evolve overall of this. And that's how I've kind of seen the media reaction to this or non-reaction at this point. There is some renewed attention now because of the 20th anniversary of welfare reform. I had a lot of contact with folks lately. People call me up, background information, whatever. Yes, well, I mean, you know, let's put it on a table. I have absolutely no expectations whatsoever that this will move the needle one eye out for a change no matter how much coverage we get of this. I'm not unrealistic about that. You know, but I also know this. When Jennings and these folks did it, no one I think could have done it better. But what they didn't understand is they were up against a population out there who did not want to hear this, who did not want to change their minds about poor people. So no amount of information they were giving them, no amount of controlling, no amount of, this is the logical, the right thing to do, busting the myths, all that kind of stuff. None of that was gonna matter. When basically you had a population that wanted to cling to those things because it justified them not sharing. - This is the first of a five-part series and I'm a little nervous because when the people I met in Ohio tell you their stories in the next few weeks, how will you respond with empathy? Maybe that's not such a good idea. - If what you mean by empathic is caring and kind and understanding, absolutely. But if what you mean by empathic is they should put themselves into our shoes, they should feel what we feel, definitely not. This sort of empathic engagement leads to burnout, at least the suffering and pain. Paul Bloom, Yale Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at last year's Aspen Ideas Festival. - There's a wonderful collaboration between Tonya Singer, a neuroscientist and Matthew Ricard, a Buddhist monk and biologist where they train people to feel empathy, to engage in empathic contact with other people. Then they trained another group to be compassionate, to care about other people, but not necessarily engage in the same way. What they found was the empathic group, they suffered more and they helped less. The compassionate group felt good and they helped more. So if you took away empathy, what would you replace it with? A sort of rather co-blooded, rational cost benefit analysis. Go not after what gives you the buzz, but what really helps other people. And then the second thing is we need some sort of emotional push. But the push need not come from empathy. The push can come from love, from caring, from compassion, from more distance emotions that don't swallow us up in the suffering of others. - So how to tell the story? The playwright Bertold Brecht soundly rejected empathy. When he depicted injustice, he did not want us to say, "Yes, I felt like that too. It's only natural, it'll never change. The sufferings of this man appall me because they are inescapable." No, Brecht worked willfully to undermine our empathetic tears so we could see more clearly. So instead we'd say, "That's not right, that's unbelievable. It's got to stop. The sufferings of this man appall me because they are unnecessary." As for me, I just figure if Jack Freck is still trying to shine a light just because, and you listen, just because, and if his Matthew Desmond argues and evicted the inhuman trap that his poverty is not so great as it once was, then maybe sustaining our gaze does work. If we can discern that what is appalling is in fact unnecessary. [Music] Busted, America's Poverty Myths is a five-part series produced by Mira Sharma and Eve Claxton with special thanks to Nina Chowdry. "Cat Your Rodgers" is our executive producer. The series was produced in collaboration with WNET in New York as part of chasing the dream, poverty and opportunity in America. WNET made a short film with me on the Poverty Tour with Jack Freck. You can see it at our website on themedia.org. "Major Funding" for chasing the dream is provided by the J.P.B. Foundation with additional funding from the Ford Foundation. On the media is a production of WNYC Studios on Berk Latt Stone. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]