It's More Important to Occupy Trenton than to Occupy Wall Street

by: deciminyan

Fri Oct 07, 2011 at 10:58:17 AM EDT

Unless you have some sort of telepathic connection to the Internet, you are reading this article on a computer. Perhaps that computer is in your home – a place that provides you with shelter and comfort. Perhaps you are viewing this piece on a computer at work – you’re among the fortunate Americans who have a job. Or maybe you’re less well off, don’t have regular access to a computer, and are reading this on a system at one of the many struggling libraries in New Jersey.

Yet, there are hundreds of thousands of your fellow Garden State residents who don’t have the wherewithal to read this blog. They may be homeless or living in substandard housing. They may be too sick because they have no access to health care. Or they may be more worried about whether they can afford the bus fare to get to the food bank so their family can have a nutritious meal.

Reporting on poverty in New Jersey is not as exciting as following our well-to-do governor’s political rants or lamenting the Yankees’ performance. As liberals, we may be going through some self-satisfying self-congratulations about the fact that we are finally seeing activist protests on Wall Street and around the nation. But let’s remember what precipitated these demonstrations – it’s the growing chasm in our society between the rich and the poor – the extermination of the middle class. Hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens can’t even afford fare to these demonstrations or, if they’re lucky, can’t get time off from their minimum wage jobs.

Since the birth of this nation, there have always been poor and indigent. It has always been a civic and religious imperative to provide help to those most in need. But since the Bush Recession, the numbers of those in need have exploded, selfish politicians like Governor Christie have decided to cut aid to the poor while filling the coffers of their benefactors, and the numbers of shrinking middle class has been unable to help as much as they have in the past.

It is in this grim context that a number of civic organizations sponsored a forum this week “Fighting Poverty – What You Can Do About It.”

Zane Kratzer of the Poverty Research Institute was the keynote speaker. He presented PowerPoint slides slicing and dicing current and historical poverty statistics in New Jersey – broken down by race, age, and location. If you’re like me, you can only take in a limited amount of statistical data, so let me boil it down this way: Almost one quarter of our state’s residents are below 200% of the Federal Poverty Level, a commonly accepted definition of “poor.”  And this is not just an urban problem. While Passaic County has the dubious distinction of having the highest percentage of its residents classified as “poor”, Cumberland is in second place by a faction of a percentage point.

Kratzer was followed by representatives of advocacy groups for housing, hunger, and health care. Each told a compelling story about the plight of our fellow citizens and what each organization is doing to make inroads. Blue Jersey will focus on some of their efforts in the near future.

The key question from the audience went along the lines of “OK. We understand that despite the wonderful work that your organizations are doing, with the economy getting worse, progress is difficult. What can we do, other than writing to our elected officials, to help?” 

I thought the answer might something like raising more funds through contributions or soliciting more volunteers to help out. But the panel quickly told the audience that we are beyond that stage. The problem is too big for incremental steps, and only the government has the resources to help these organizations bootstrap themselves to a point where their services can be effective to take their clients out of poverty and transform them into healthy taxpaying citizens. They implored the audience to write to and visit their elected officials (who, to the best of my knowledge were conspicuously absent from this forum) to reverse the draconian cuts to human services imposed by the current administration.

So the next time you see a news report about Occupy Wall Street, be thankful and proud that the demonstrations have begun. But Wall Street is not the primary target. Sure, its greed and control of the politicians got us into this mess – a mess that impacts us all, but is a disaster to the poor. The real culprits are in Trenton and Washington, and that’s where we must covertly and overtly apply the pressure.

Until we assure that all of our citizens are receiving basic needs of health care, nutritious food, and decent housing, we will be stuck in the morass of crime, poverty, and a dysfunctional economy. There’s an election coming up – let’s make sure that those we put in power have the menschlichkeit to look out for all of us and that they are committed not just to the New Jersey elite, but to all of the state’s 8.5 million citizens.