Food Stamps

I just finished filling out an application for the Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship.

Part of my application required me to write a narrative autobiography (don't even get me started on the fact that it could only be something like 1500 CHARACTERS). I wound up writing about how my current work and my academic interests (international affairs, peace and conflict resolution, etc.) have largely been shaped by the suffering I have witnessed throughout my lifetime: from the soup kitchen my parents brought us to volunteer at when I was 5, to the Zambian village of Nkwazi where I spent a month living and working my first year doing Habitat International.

The other night, while tossing and turning in bed, I realized that while I touched on my AmeriCorps*VISTA experience, I did not correlate it to this larger idea of suffering. And, what good is such an experience if you do not bear witness and open perspectives. So, I'd like to tell you about what it's like to be on food stamps.

I think I made about $5 an hour after taxes when I was in my AmeriCorps year. If I hadn't gotten food stamps I pretty much could not have payed for groceries, rent and utilities. If I hadn't convinced work to pay for my monthly Bus/Train pass, I wouldn't have been able to get to work.

So, what is it like to get food stamps? Well, first you have to go to the Office of Transitional Assistance, which no matter where you live is pretty much impossible to get to. You have to take hours out of your work day to go, because they're only open until 5pm every evening...and it's a government office, so they shut down as soon as the hour strikes. Then, whether you had an appointment or not, you get a number and wait and wait and wait.

If you have no money and no income, getting accepted for food stamps is fortunately not all that difficult. BUT when they decide how much you'll get, they don't care about your medical expenses, or your mortgage, or your car payments. For me, that was ok; work would pay for my T pass and I don't have kids and a mortgage. I had loads of dental bills, but they didn't care. (And by "they" I of course mean "the man").

Using the food stamps isn't all that difficult, or at least isn't supposed to be. You get a swanky little debit card that, I believe, is supposed to make the act of paying with food stamps more conspicuous and less embarrassing. Great if it worked out that way. First of all, I'm pretty sure that the debit card was a dual "poor person alert" card, because as soon as I put it in my wallet I just "happened" to set off the theft alarm every time I walked into a grocery store. Secondly, paying with the debit card was never as discreet as it was intended. It seemed like the computer NEVER successfully read the card; and, each time it failed to go through, the cashier would declare "are you paying with food stamps?" or "swipe your food stamp card again" or something else that completely worked in opposition to the card's intended discreet nature. My favorite was the time my card was out and the woman literally yelled "You're out of money on your food stamp account. What do you want to do?" Ok, maybe this doesn't seem all that bad. And it was never all that bad to me. BUT what if I was someone who was not just on food stamps for a one-year trial run? What if I was someone on them indefinitely, with two kids by my side, perhaps whose classmates were standing directly behind us and heard everything?

But the thing is, they don't just give you food stamps indefinitely. No, no, no. One must be reevaluated at least every half a year. For me, this meant no more food stamps. Why? Well, after originally obtaining my assistance, I moved. This meant that I was now under the jurisdiction of a different Office of Transitional Assistance. And this meant that my "file" had to be transferred from the first office to the new one. When I called the old office to find out how this should be done, I got an answering machine. When I directly called my "agent" I got her answering machine telling me that it was full and she could therefore not take messages. When I was able to leave them, I left them, and left them, and left them, for weeks. Finally, I reached someone, who told me I merely needed to go to the new office. So, on a rainy day, I walked a few miles down into the unsightly region of Mass Ave where the Boston OTA is. Within 5 minutes I was leaving again, told that I had to have my agent send them electronic notification that my file was closed with her. So I called her again. And again. And again. All she had to do was return my phone call and press a button. But she didn't.

Fortunately, I was about to transition into a decently paying job. And, again, I have no kids. No mortgage. I hadn't yet been to the emergency room and racked up my $3,000 bill for a band-aid. I was livid. But really, I wasn't angry on my own behalf. I was angry on behalf of those individuals who were going through the same thing and did have kids, mortgages, bills and weren't about to start earning a decent wage. I understood that the OTA is incredibly busy. Unfortunately, they are in high demand by the vast numbers of people in need of their very important services. However, business is no excuse for leaving people in need in even greater need.

I'm not really sure where to go with this. Or if I painted an effective picture. But hopefully I did at least a little.