10
he
Nation.
August
26/September 2 1996
JILL
NELSOlV
Apocalypse
Now
n
Thursday, August 1, the elevated platform
o
125th Street and Broadway is crowded with peo- ple waiting for the subway. It is finally a sunny day. It should be cool to sit on the platform and read the paper while waiting for the train. But the
e
of
The
ew
York
mes
reads, “Clinton to Sign Welfare Bill That
Ends
U S
Aid Guarantee and Gives States Broad Power,” and instead of sun and busy people all I can see is the devastation that is sure to come. This is the story the media did not convey. The a few dollars, or breaking and entering,
so
be it.
I
m
errified by what will likely happen. Here, we are already
on
the edge; there is no shoulder by the side of the road. Many of my neighbors are el- derly legal immigrants, long out of the work force and sometimes pensionless, subsisting
on
S.S.I. Many are families with children, who receive food stamps or Medicaid because, even working a
111-
time job, they can’t put quite enough food
on
the table or purchase health care. Some of the young women
I
can see coming outside with their babies superficial and dishonest coverage of the provisions and likely impact of the welfare bill-with a few exceptions-is yet an- other example of the media’s failure to inform the citizenry be- fore it is too late. With the announcement that he will sign the legislation, Bill Clinton has revealed himself
s
the ultimate political whore,
a
man who stands for nothing and lies down for anything. Listen- ing to his pollsters and not
his
policy-makers, he did what was politically expedient.
In
so
doing, he became the driving force behind the government-sponsored destruction of community. It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes only one immoral President to impoverish millions of them. For the government to shift the responsibility, but not the money, for welfare programs to the states and expect states to administer them adequately or fairly
or
let’s face it, intelligently, is absurd. Historically, the power of the federal government is necessary when the states will not do what is right. None of
us
should forget what the cry for “states’ righis” meant for black Americans living in the states of the old Confederacy before the Southern civil rights revolution of the fifties and sixties. You can see a good chunk of Harlem from the el platform
on
125th and Broadway, a few blocks from where I live. It
is
a
community populated by the poor, the working poor, the middle class. It
is
a community in which more than 250,000 people, citizens and legal immigrants, receive some sort of government subsidy, from Supplemental Security Income to Aid to Families with Dependent Children, to food stamps
and
Medicaid.
It is
a community in a delicate balance, and it will be devastated by the impact
of
the welfare bill. It is not ust Harlem that will be cruelly affected but communi- ties all over
this
nation. Those
on
the edge will either die or be shoved into the abyss of permanent economic exclusion. Those who thought they were moving away from the edge will be pushed onto
it.
The impact will be immediate
on
those most vulnerable: women, children, the elderly-but it will not stop there. Denied S.S.I. benefits, kicked
off
welfare after
two
years and told to find a nonexistent ob, denied food stamps-essential- ly told,You are expendable-few will roll over and die, disappear, just go away, as the House, Senate and President would prefer. In- stead, they will do what any of
us
would do: survive by any means necessary. If that means stealing food from the supermarket,
or
hitting someone over the head
on
their way home from work for as
soon
as
it
gets warm receive A.F.D.C. Then there are all the other people who get
no
direct benefits from social welfare pro- grams (although many, like myself, once did), but coexist peace- fully with those who do-beneficiaries of the fragile state of grace that suggests we are our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers. That
is
what community is fundamentally about. The welfare bill will destroy that state of grace. In its place
will
come massive and deadly poverty, sickness and all manner of violence. People will die, businesses will close, infant mortality will soar, everyone who can will move. Working- and middie- class communities all over America will become scary, violent wastelands created by
a
government that decided
it
has no obliga- tion to its neediest citizens. In such a landscape, each of us be- comes either predator or prey. We’ll all be fair game to one another, the ones who used to be
our
neighbors, back when we had a co&unity. The bill does not signal simply the “end of welfare as we know it” but the end of any idealistic notions of an America we thought could be. In stripping away society’s supports for the weakest-whether children born
in
poverty, or young mothers
in
need of a leg up, or legal immigrants who came here in search of a better life, or unemployed workers
in
a time of record corpo- rate profits and rampant downsizing-the government announces the death of a dream of America. Forget you heard the words engraved
on
the Statue of Liberty, written
in
the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
All
that is simply obsolete lip service. The only sound now
is
the death knell of any government-supported vision of an equitable, egalitarian America. Sitting
on
the el platform reading the paper,
I
want to shriek, grab my neighbors who wait alongside me, thrust the newspaper in their faces, scream, “Have you read
this?
Do
you believe
this?
We have to organize and do something ” Instead,
I
lean against the railing and look out over Harlem, prematurely nostalgic for the good old days of today, when things
are
bad enough, but inconsequential
in
the face of what is to come. When the train finally pulls into the station, the screech of wheel against track could just as well be a national howl of pain as this odious bill squeezes the life out of
us
ill
Nelson, who will be writiiig the next three “Media Matters” columns, is the author
of
Volunteer Slavery
Viking Penguin). Her new book,
Straight,
No Chaser,
will be published next year by Putnamk