Hunger, Homelessness & Poverty Task Force – SRRT/ALA

The Boise Weekly conducts an insightful interview with Henry Krewer, who sits on the board of Corpus Christi House, a homeless day shelter:

When you’re homeless, a lot of the development stops—emotional development, educational. And a lot of it’s because you’re in survival mode. It’s static. Nothing happens while you’re homeless. They’re all good people, but they’re kind of on hold. A lot of homeless people work. Most of them work. If they have housing and work, then they’re on their way. If they just have work, then they’re living day to day.

The News Leader in Staunton, Virginia, profiles the struggles of Darlene Keiper, who has lived in her car for more than a year:

After four years spent living in a Waynesboro boarding house, the Pennsylvania transplant fell on hard times last year when she tried striking out on her own in a new apartment. “I was struggling for six months to meet the rent, and I got evicted,” she said … Keiper spent a month at the Econo Lodge on Richmond Road, where she was employed but was sent packing in August when new ownership took over. She’s been living in her car ever since …

Whatever your opinion of Oprah may be, have a look at material from her show “Inside the Lives of People Living on Minimum Wage”:

Thirty million Americans who work full time are living in poverty … Why should you care? These are the very people we rely on every day. They are the teachers’ aides in your child’s classroom. They are caring for your aging parents in the nursing home. They make sure your hotel rooms, your offices and your schools are clean. They are security guards keeping buildings safe. They are paramedics who are there in your most desperate hour.

In 2002, the Common Dreams NewsCenter published a sixth-grader’s views on poverty and “What the American Flag Stands For”:

You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly and sheltering him from the rain.

The Onion offers a funny take on advocacy work in “Nonprofit Fights Poverty with Poverty”:

“Our crack team of anti-poverty activists is totally devoted to marshalling every resource at our disposal,” Lindstrom said as she stood under a flickering light bulb in the office’s bathroom and added some water to an old toner cartridge to squeeze every last drop of usable ink from it … According to Lindstrom, the organization recently acquired a stool with two fully intact legs and a 1987-model photocopier …

Submitted to WPL and others on behalf of the HHPTF …

The American Library Association provides guidelines for developing library policies, including access privileges. Founded on the Library Bill of Rights, the guidelines state that public libraries “should avoid arbitrary distinctions between individuals or classes of users,” policies “should not target specific users or groups of users,” and policies “must be communicated clearly and made available in an effective manner.”

An ALA document on economic barriers to information access notes, “Resources that are provided directly or indirectly by the library … should be readily, equally and equitably accessible to all library users.” ALA Policy 61 (Library Services for the Poor) calls for direct representation of poor people and their advocates in policymaking and for cooperation between libraries and social-service agencies.

Within these ALA parameters, and as reported by various media sources, Worcester Public Library is choosing to ignore its obligations to disadvantaged citizens. WPL’s two-book borrowing limit fails to provide equal access for low-income people. And bearing an air of classism, its incomplete “agency blacklist” brands them as thieves.

According to the U.S. Census, the percentage of people living below the poverty line in Worcester is higher than the national average. Is WPL attentive to this fact and responsive to those who struggle with poverty and social exclusion?

I am hopeful that WPL will rescind its prejudicial borrowing policy, and I am confident that there are more thoughtful ways to exercise “fiduciary responsibility.” In support of these necessary changes, I invite WPL staff, board members, and others to consult the resources available at www.hhptf.org.

Respectfully,

John Gehner, Coordinator
Hunger, Homelessness & Poverty Task Force (HHPTF)
Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT)
of the American Library Association (ALA)

During her recent guest-blogging stint with FreeGovInfo.info, Jessamyn West posted some great information about policies and programs for making use of unwanted or unused food.

The most common methods of food recovery are field gleaning, perishable food rescue or salvage (from wholesale and retail food sellers), food rescue (for prepared foods) and nonperishable food collection (food with long shelf lives). Some of these tactics are familiar to Food Not Bombs workers, food shelf volunteers or dumpster divers.

She points to the USDA’s A Citizen’s Guide to Food Recovery and the Food Recovery State Resource List, among other resources.

The complete post, with links, is available at http://freegovinfo.info/node/517.

On a similar note, FoodFirst has posted “12 Myths About Hunger,” to help people “unlearn” fictions and false impressions. For example:

Myth 1: Not Enough Food to Go Around

Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world’s food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,200 calories a day. That doesn’t even count many other commonly eaten foods – ­vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide … enough to make most people fat! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food. Even most “hungry countries” have enough food for all their people right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.

For the complete list of hunger mythbusters, visit www.foodfirst.org/node/1480.

The Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts, in conjunction with the ACLU of Massachusetts, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of homeless citizens against the Worcester Public Library.

The library restricts borrowing privileges for homeless residents, limiting them to two books—versus 40 books for everyone else.

The Boston Globe reports (7/9/06),

[T]hree homeless patrons of the library filed a class action lawsuit in US District Court, alleging that the policy violates their constitutional right to equal access to public services. The plaintiffs include a homeless couple whose 8-year-old daughter seeks out the latest Lemony Snicket adventures, and a woman who fled a home where she was the victim of domestic violence …

The seeds of Worcester’s battle were sewn two years ago, when a city librarian noticed that many of the library’s missing books had been loaned to people staying in the city’s shelters. Unable to find the offenders, the librarian proposed the two-book limit to the board of trustees, which approved the policy. [Head librarian Penelope] Johnson said she did not have data on how many books had been lost over the years to homeless patrons, but said the policy had helped curb the problem.

According to Kate Fitzpatrick, an attorney with LACCM, “We tried to work with the library for over a year to modify or rescind the policy, but felt we had no choice to file the lawsuit when we realized the extent of the city’s inflexibility and its lack of good faith to truly understand the policy’s effects.”

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette found that “the public library system lacks any firm criteria it can use to determine who is subject to a two-item borrowing limit at Worcester’s three library branches.”

Rather than restricting the borrowing privileges of individuals, the library reportedly maintains a list of social service agencies and limits anyone that is a client of these agencies. The Telegram & Gazette says that the list is incomplete and that not all agencies are “aware of their status at the library.”

[L]ibrary officials were resistant to disclosing information about the policy. They still have not publicly disclosed exact losses from items checked out and not returned by what the library calls transient residents.

Worcester PL’s policy clearly contradicts the values outlined in ALA Policy 61, Library Services for the Poor and the Library Bill of Rights.

If you would like to write a letter in support of the Worcester area’s homeless citizens and their right to equal services, contact:

Michael V. O’Brien
City Manager
City of Worcester
455 Main Street, Room 309
Worcester, MA 01608

Jay Scully
President, Board of Directors
Worcester Public Library
3 Salem Square
Worcester, MA 01608

Penelope Johnson
Head Librarian
Worcester Public Library
3 Salem Square
Worcester, MA 01608

Letters to the Editor
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Worcester, MA 01615-0012
letters@telegram.com (in subject line write “Letter”; the email must include a mailing address)
Fax: 508-793-9313

Additional information is available via ALA and via Kathleen de la Peña McCook’s journal at LISNews.org.

A letter to the editor submitted on behalf of the HHPTF…

James Kelly’s “Barefoot in Columbus”—published in Public Libraries, May/June 2006—is a useful and well-written contribution to the literature on library risk management. Library directors can now sleep more easily at night. But not so the nine million low-income working families who struggle to get by.

The national discourse on library service to poor people is inordinately dominated by the specter of Richard Kreimer, concern with the “unruly homeless,” and attempts to police odor. Frustration and fear inform the ongoing conversation about homeless patrons, whose presence mortifies us like so many decomposing B-movie monsters.

ALA’s new president, Leslie Burger, maintains that “libraries transform communities.” Yet few librarians quoted in the news mention partnerships with social service providers, advocate for affordable housing and living wages, or express much interest in people who never come to the library—due to a lack of transportation, the burden of multiple jobs, inadequate child care, language barriers, unreasonable fees and fines, or simply because no one has ever invited them.

This is a far cry from the near-decade British information professionals have invested to study social exclusion, the systems and policy decisions that produce disparities, and the benefits thoughtful remedies deliver to all social classes. See The Network, for example: www.seapn.org.uk. While our colleagues across the pond engage poverty’s causes, we remain fixated on punishing those who display its symptoms.

Sociologists Dale Parent and Bonnie Lewis observe,

Social exclusion is not simply a result of “bad luck” or personal inadequacies, but rather a product of flaws in the system that create disadvantages for certain segments of the population. Therefore, the unequal distribution of power in society from which social exclusion is derived should be the primary focus of attention for researchers and policy makers. Everybody does not start the race at the same place.

Libraries may be operating within the law when wielding appearance and hygiene policies. But without a simultaneous effort to engage poverty—to reach out to men, women, and (increasingly) children who suffer it daily—librarians deliberately perpetuate inequality by withholding the knowledge, resources, and power they possess.

John Gehner, Coordinator
Hunger, Homelessness & Poverty Task Force (HHPTF)
Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT)
of the American Library Association (ALA)

The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law offers two important new tools for advocates of low-income people.

“Rebuilding America’s Lower Ninth” is a campaign to frame a national dialogue on poverty in late summer:

When Katrina devastated the Gulf States last year, the hurricane alerted the nation to a state without borders, a state whose geography extends beyond the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans—it is the State of Poverty, America’s undeclared disaster area. As part of our State of Poverty initiative, the Shriver Center is coordinating media outreach events between August 21 – September 1, 2006 in a campaign called Rebuilding America’s Lower Ninth …

Our efforts are improving the lives of low-wage workers, helping families advance toward economic security, and preserving communities of opportunity throughout our country. However, we know that we are not alone. As we look to constructive policies that move people from poverty to prosperity, we are asking you to lend your voice and your solutions to this week of outreach and public education.

The newest issue of Clearinghouse Review “focuses on what the federal government must do to end poverty in America.”

The jam-packed May/June 2006 edition features topics ranging from arguments against a “small and passive federal government” to ways to combat adult illiteracy and improve public housing.

For more information about these and other Shriver Center projects, visit www.povertylaw.org.

If you are in New Orleans for ALA, be sure to check out the following program (forwarded by Isabel Espinal):

“Race, Poverty, and Aging Baby Boomers”

Sunday
June 25, 2006
10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Morial Convention Center (MCC) Room 393

Sponsored by:
AFL-CIO-ALA Library Service to Labor Groups, RUSA

The tragic aftermath of hurricane Katrina has laid bare the race and class disparities in this country like no other event in recent history. Twenty-eight percent of the residents of New Orleans lived below the poverty line prior to Katrina and 84% of them were African-American. Katrina demonstrated that along with race and class, age matters in America.

While many aging Baby Boomers will be healthier and wealthier than their parents’ generation, the number of older adults in poverty and at risk will increase significantly so that by 2008 there will be 6.7 million persons aged 55 or over below poverty, a 22% increase from 2000. This panel will present findings from recent research, explore implications for librarians, and provide an update on efforts to clean up and rebuild New Orleans.

Speakers:
Andrew Sum, PhD, director, Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University; Monique Harden, Esq., co-director, Advocates for Environmental Human Rights

The House of Representatives recently passed a pay raise for itself but just killed a bill to increase the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour.

CNN’s Lou Dobbs today offers some choice criticism of these actions:

Raising the minimum wage … would positively affect the lives of more than 8 million workers, including an estimated 760,000 single mothers and 1.8 million parents with children under 18 … Don’t you think these families just might need that cost-of-living increase a bit more than our elected officials who are paid nearly $170,000 a year?

With no Congressional action on raising the minimum wage since 1997, inflation has eroded wages. The minimum wage in the 21st century is $2 lower in real dollars than it was four decades ago and now stands at its lowest level since 1955, according to the Economic Policy Institute and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Also, since the last time Congress increased the minimum wage for our lowest-paid workers, buying power has fallen by 25 percent. Yet over that time our elected representatives have given themselves eight pay raises totaling more than 23 percent.

For more information about living wages, check out the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign: www.letjusticeroll.org.

The minimum wage is where society draws the line: This low and no lower. Our bottom line is this: A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it.

The Campaign conducts an ongoing educational program to inform people of the severity of conditions facing low-wage working people and what must be done to bring about constructive change. It is organizing actively at the federal level and in selected states to raise the minimum wage.

To contact your Representative, visit www.house.gov/writerep.

According to the Associated Press, the Porter County (Indiana) Public Library System has revised its access policies with respect to homeless people.

Changes were enacted May 10th in response to reported material losses worth $4,000, attributed to temporary shelter residents. Assistant director James Cline considers the new policies “fiscally responsible to the taxpayers.”

Homeless children will not be allowed to check out material from [the] northwestern Indiana library system, which also has limited adults living in shelters to taking out three books at a time …

The policy allows adults living in shelters to receive a renewable library card on a three-month basis. Children 17 and under who live in the shelters will not be eligible for a library card …

Rachel Jamieson, 26, and her three children have been living at Spring Valley [Shelter] the last week and a half as they seek permanent housing. She called the policy unfair.

“I don’t think we should be responsible for other people’s mistakes. It doesn’t mean everybody is like that,” she said.

While the educational rights of homeless children are well established, public libraries are not apparently governed by this legal framework (i.e. the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act).

The HHPTF encourages Porter County officials to review the work of groups like the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) and study their materials.

A good place to start? “Homeless Education: An Introduction to the Issues” (PDF).

UPDATE: According to American Libraries, on June 21 the Porter County Library board voted to rescind its problematic access policy.

“Yes, we did jump and made conclusions,” board President Scott Falk said, according to the June 22 Gary Post-Tribune … Assistant Director James Cline, in turn, apologized to shelter representatives at the meeting for not consulting with them first.

After an impressive six-year run, Kathleen de la Peña McCook’s Community Building column in Reference and User Services Quarterly will be coming to an end.

The column—which Kathleen wrote, co-wrote, and edited—has routinely featured articles on the needs of low-income people and other socially excluded groups. With editorial changes at RUSQ, the journal is purportedly moving in new directions.

The HHPTF applauds Kathleen’s work and wishes her continued success in her professional pursuits. Among other recent projects, she authored Introduction to Public Librarianship and teaches a University of South Florida course titled “Librarians and Human Rights.”

RUSQ Community Building columns to date:

Volume 40, Number 1
“Librarians and Comprehensive Community Initiatives”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 40, Number 2
“Service Integration and Libraries: Will 2-1-1 be the Catalyst for Renewal?”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 40, Number 3
“Community Building and Latino Families”
Marcela Villagrán, Guest Columnist

Volume 40, Number 4
“Community Indicators, Genuine Progress, and the Gold Billion”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook and Kristen Brand, Guest Columnist

Volume 41, Number 1
“Collaboration Generates Synergy: Saint Paul Public Library, the College of St. Catherine, and the ‘Family Place’ Program”
Carol P. Johnson, Ginny Brodeen, Helen Humeston,
and Rebecca McGee, Guest Columnists

Volume 41, Number 2
“Authentic Discourse as a Means of Connection Between Public Library Services Responses and Community Building Initiatives”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 41, Number 3
“Service to Day Laborers: A Job Libraries Have Left Undone”
Bruce Jensen, Guest Columnist

Volume 41, Number 4
“Cultural Heritage Institutions and Community Building”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook and Marla A. Jones, Guest Columnist

Volume 42, Number 1
“The African-American Research Library and Cultural Center
of the Broward County Library”
Henrietta M. Smith, Guest Columnist

Volume 42, Number 2
“Alaska Resources Library and Information Services: Building Community in the Forty-Ninth State”
Juli Braund-Allen and Daria O. Carle, Guest Columnists

Volume 42, Number 3
“Sustainable Communities and the Roles Libraries and Librarians Play”
Frederick W. Stoss, Guest Columnist

Volume 42, Number 4
“Using a Homeless Shelter as a Library Education Learning Laboratory: Incorporating Service-Learning in a Graduate-Level Information Sources and Services in the Social Sciences Course”
Lorna Peterson, Guest Columnist

Volume 43, Number 1
“Suppressing the Commons: Misconstrued Patriotism vs. a Psychology of Liberation”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 43, Number 2
“Transformations of Librarianship in Support of Learning Communities”
Eino Sierppe, Guest Columnist

Volume 43, Number 3
“A Passion for Connection: Community Colleges Fulfill the Promise
of Cultural Institutions”
Carmine J. Bell, Guest Columnist

Volume 43, Number 4
“Community, Identity, and Literature”
Elaine Yontz, Guest Columnist

Volume 44, Number 1
“Public Libraries and People in Jail”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 44, Number 2
“A Digital Library to Serve a Region: The Bioregion and First Nations Collections of the Southern Oregon Digital Archives”
Mary Jane Cedar Face and Deborah Hollens, Guest Columnists

Volume 44, Number 3
“The Homeless and Information Needs and Services”
Julie Hersberger, Guest Columnist

Volume 44, Number 4
“Building Lead-Free Communities”
Frederick W. Stoss, Guest Columnist

Volume 45, Number 1
“Human Rights and Librarians”
Kathleen de la Pena McCook and Katherine J. Phenix, Guest Columnist

Volume 45, Number 2
“Poverty, Poor People, and Our Priorities”
John Gehner, Guest Columnist