RADICAL WOMEN

The following is a guest post by Margaret Viggiani

Poor and criminalized: a feminist scholar exposes the welfare-to-prison pipeline

By Margaret Viggiani
Freedom Socialist newspaper, Vol. 33, No. 5, October-September 2012 www.socialism.com

Talking to Rebecca Castner, one is instantly drawn to her intensity. A Ph.D. graduate from Women Studies at the University of Washington, Castner has researched how poor mothers, in particular women of color, are criminalized by the welfare system. As a single mom who supported her family on low-wage jobs, Castner knows firsthand the trials of the women she studied.

The myth.

Ronald Reagan emblazoned the stereotype of the Welfare Queen — young, Black, with too many kids — onto the American consciousness. This inaccurate and racist portrayal helped pave the way for George H. W. Bush's and later Bill Clinton’s devastating revamping of the welfare system. Welfare “reform” has forced millions of women and children off TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) by imposing time limits, family caps and sanctions. Castner argues that Clinton’s policies not only drastically shrank social services but also resulted in massive expansion of the U.S. penal system.

According to the Census Bureau, the poverty rate among women in 2011 was 14.6 percent, or almost 18 million females. Rates of poverty were higher for women of color — 25 percent for Blacks and 23 percent for Latinas. One in five children live in poverty and the majority of poor children live in female-headed families.

Making poverty a crime.

Given that the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) is charged with both helping families and conducting criminal investigations against them, Castner believes the frequent downward spiral from welfare to prison is not mere coincidence.

In fact, she hypothesizes that asking for assistance puts the needy at risk of being criminalized. Welfare doesn’t provide enough to survive, leaving its recipients in desperation. Following the mind-boggling and intrusive rules is nearly impossible. Breaking the rules can lead to criminal charges.

Castner reached her conclusions by reviewing in depth 13 cases of welfare fraud from the 103 files provided by King County. The cases occurred between 2000 and 2005.

One of her subjects, Lisa Bandy (a pseudonym assigned by Castner), was a mother of four living in Renton, Wash. To adequately survive without additional assistance, a family of two in that town needed an income of $2,862. But Bandy only received $1,018 a month in assistance.

Unable to afford housing, Bandy and her four children moved at least seven times and endured stretches of homelessness over a 31-month period. To gain welfare benefits, Bandy completed over 22 pages of questions. She had to provide additional documents including her car title, wage and bank statements, birth certificates and proof of who fathered her children. This paperwork is more invasive than alleged criminals are subject to. Castner aptly calls it “getting booked” into welfare.

In 39 months, Bandy was subjected to 45 additional requests for verification, on top of the routine paperwork she was regularly submitting. Failure or inability to provide requested information caused her benefits to be withheld or denied. This happened time and again.

Crime and punishment.

When signing up for food stamps, a recipient is warned that those who knowingly break a rule can be prosecuted and fined up to $250,000, imprisoned up to 20 years, or both. As Castner puts it, “using food stamps may lead to life in prison.”

Comparing the high penalty for food stamp “fraud” with leniency toward bank CEOs who stole billions and nearly collapsed the economy, Castner observes that being poor is about the worst crime there is in the eyes of capitalism.

In 2001, Lisa Bandy was convicted of a felony — Theft in the First Degree — for inaccurately reporting the date she started working and her earnings. She was found guilty of defrauding the state of $8,112 over the course of 13 months. Her punishment: 240 hours of community service, 12 months of probation and restitution of over $8,500. In 2002, she was given another 12 months probation because she had not paid any of her financial obligation. After four years, her case was still open.

During Castner’s years of research, only two of the 13 cases she followed were closed. She calls it “indefinite servitude to the penal system.” Since the debt will not go away until it’s paid, each of these desperately poor mothers live under the threat of imprisonment for failure to make restitution.

It’s no surprise the system is also rife with racial disparity. The majority of those convicted of welfare fraud in Castner’s study were women of color. They received more felony convictions and spent more time in jail. In fact, two Black women convicted of “stealing” the least amount of money spent the most time in jail.

The real cost.

Washington state spent countless hours to prosecute the cases Castner followed. The court files averaged 108 pages. At least 183 attorneys were involved. Three State Patrol officers were assigned to stake out a woman’s house to see if the father of her children was spending the night. Dozens of DSHS personnel were subpoenaed to build the cases. Despite DSHS claims that only major offenders are prosecuted, two of Castner’s cases involved sums of less than $500.

The dehumanizing effects of the welfare bureaucracy shaped the system’s view of these women long before they got caught up in the criminal justice juggernaut. In the 1,400 pages of documents reviewed by Castner, not one word originated from the women themselves. She says they were invisible, removed from humanity and reduced to a series of numbers (height, weight, age), characteristics (ethnicity, hair color, eye color, tattoos) and the negative opinions of others. Their lives were reshaped and retold by a mountain of paperwork in which others spoke for and defined them. They were no longer people, but constructs of a hostile system.

Castner decries the enormous costs to the women, their children (the unseen victims), and to society. They suffered severe long-term financial repercussions and profound emotional, physical and mental tolls. It would have been far more productive and effective for society to assist them with childcare, shelter, food and other necessary essentials, than to lock them up.

Instead her subjects, as felons, found additional doors closed to them: they were denied voting rights and access to public housing, tuition aid, and future public benefits. They were ground deeper into poverty and further away from obtaining jobs that paid a livable wage.

Why would any system permit such an expensive, pointless waste of human potential? As capitalism struggles to stay afloat, it drives down the living standards of the entire working class. Millions of women and men of color are specially targeted by the “new” Jim Crow, which uses the prison-industrial complex and the welfare system to try to crush those who historically have been the most militant fighters for economic and social justice. History also shows, however, that resistance to injustice is a human instinct that cannot be crushed. The day of reckoning is not far off!

Send your comments to vig37@hotmail.com.

A video worth watching: Miss Representation Trailer

ENTERTAINMENT/POLITICS - I highly recommend everyone watch this video. It will make you THINK.

The Truth about Feminomics

FEMINIST - A woman's work is never done.

And likewise trying to calculate the value of woman's work is infinite. Let me explain why...

When a mother teaches their children a skill and that skill is passed on to future generations, even if the skill changes over time, evolves, it ends up being of infinite value to the descendants who follow. ie. The ability to cook your own food, something which every human should know.

But how does women's work get calculated into the wealth (GDP) of a nation? In theory all that food that is grown, harvested and eaten at home has value that is being ignored when calculating the GDP of many countries, even European and Western countries.

Instead GDP is usually measured in dollars changing hands, like BP oil or the Alberta tar sands (and totally ignores the damage to the environment which will cost future generations billions to fix, let alone the damage to the health of people living near these environmental disasters).

GDP also ignores birthing, nursing, diapering, cooking, baking, nurturing and teaching that most mothers do (and if they don't then their nanny does it).

Political economist Marilyn Waring, a former New Zealand cabinet minister and now professor of public policy at the Institute of Public Policy at AUT University in Auckland believes we should be calculating the value of women's work. “The market wouldn’t survive if it wasn’t able to survive on the backbone of unpaid work," she says.

So its not just women's work we are talking about. Its also the value of being a father (teaching, nurturing and so forth) and even chores done by children. ALL UNPAID WORK.

Waring calculates that the largest source of unpaid work in any economy is performed by women.

In 1988, Waring’s book "Counting for Nothing" (known now as "If Women Counted" introduced the idea that the way we calculate wealth is flawed because it ignores the well-being of work done at home.

Lets take for example a person living in northern Canada. If they build, using their own two hands, a huge home made of stone and outfit it with a source of electricity from a local river and a waterwheel, what is the GDP value of the home?

Zero.

Because they didn't sell it.

Its like trying to keep track of barter, another source of "unpaid work". People perform barter on a regular basis without realizing it. Women's work is really just a form of barter. They cook, clean and nurture children in exchange for a roof over their head, food and spending money (we can ignore the love and intimacy factors that should be involved in such a relationship).

In 2005 StatsCan calculated that men perform an average of 2.5 hours of unpaid work per day while women do 4.3 hours. (This includes time spent doing volunteer work for the community.)

(Honestly I also wonder what does blogging count as... I am after all performing a free public service. But the value of informing other people of the worth of various truths is difficult to calculate.)

Feminomics therefore is a very tricky thing to calculate... but I'd argue trying to calculate it in dollars is a moot issue because its not paid in dollars. IT SHOULD BE MEASURED IN HOURS.

Suzy's Feminomics Value of Women's Work (or FV)

FV = Hours per Annum per Capita.

ie. In 2005 Canada the FV was 1569.5 hours / Capita.

But if we went to a country where most women don't have careers, like Afghanistan, the FV might be closer to 3000 hours / Capita.

The idea here is that if we actually want to calculate women's work that we need to be using a different yardstick.

What are YOUR feminist truths?

Do you have something really profound you'd like to share with the wider feminist community? Here's your chance to say something.

Leave a comment or email me at suzannemacnevin[at]gmail.com (all comments will be kept anonymous by default).

Also, if you have a topic you'd like me to write about, let me know about it.

Cheers!
Suzanne MacNevin

Examples to get you started:

1. Poverty is the main deciding factor in abortion. If anti-abortionists really wanted to stop abortion they'd fight poverty first.

2. Weightlifting doesn't make you look like a man. Steroids do.

3. There is no excuse for laziness. Don't make being female an excuse for why you can't "Just do it!" yourself. This applies to everything.

4. If you start telling yourself you can't do something because you're a woman then you need to go out there and prove to yourself that you CAN do it.

5. Don't do something because its "the feminist thing to do", do it because its the right thing for you to do.

6. Even men ask for advice. There is no shame in it.

7. Womens sports have a long way to go. Be patient, but always strive for more.

8. Unpaid "women's work" is the backbone on which our economy survives. If it wasn't for women teaching their children, child rearing, making meals, etc. our economy would collapse over night. But that doesn't mean every woman is destined to be a mother. Some women just don't have the maternal spirit, or they choose to delay that aspect of their life until later so they can better provide for themselves and their children.

9. Feminomics is the Future, the Past and the Present.

10. When push comes to shove most women choose love first. Your feminist beliefs are not about restrictions. Its about the freedom to choose what YOU want to do.

Canadian Feminists divided over Prostitution

SEX - Prostitution is legal in Canada, but there are a lot of things which restrict how a sex worker is allowed to ply their trade in Canada. Recently Justice Susan Himel of the Ontario Superior Court struck down the following sections of the Canadian Criminal Code:

Section 210, which prohibits maintaining, owning or being a member of a “common bawdy-house.” The result is that brothels are no longer illegal in Canada.

Why is this important? Because brothels are safer than walking the streets or answering outcalls. With brothels comes security and bouncers for kicking out the rowdy men who don't follow the rules.

Section 212(1)(j), which affects those living “wholly or in part on the avails of prostitution of another person.”

With this struck down, prostitutes are able to support dependents, including children and partners. It also means that if they run a brothel they can pay to have a bouncer, an accountant, desk clerks, etc.

Section 213(1)(c), best known as the “communicating law,” which prevents street prostitutes from screening clients before putting themselves at risk.

With this gone prostitutes can now screen individuals they choose to have sex with, often because they don't feel comfortable with the person. Examples: Too creepy, scary looking, is a member of the NRA, or even just plain ugly.

The constitutional challenge was made by members of the Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC) because they felt these laws were unfair and dangerous to the lives of sex workers, regardless of their intent.

Justice Susan Himel agreed and these laws were struck down because they endangered the health and safety of sex workers.

There are those feminists out there that argue that allowing brothels and screening will lead to an increase in pimping (which is still illegal in Canada) and organized crime / trafficking of women.

In major Canadian cities prostitution is not only common, its easy to find. Just open a NOW magazine in Toronto, flip to the back pages and you'll find advertisements for both male and female sex workers. You can also go to Craigslist or Kijiji. Or you can walk down one of the less reputable streets in the middle of the night.

For feminists however there is a huge ideological gap.

In the right corner we have the anti-sex-trade feminists, who believe prostitution should be completely illegal and that prostitutes should essentially be rounded up, forced to go to university and get decent jobs like the rest of us.

In the left corner we have the pro-choice feminists, who believe prostitution is going to happen regardless of what laws we implement because women sometimes just get desperate and are in a bad situation. They believe sex workers need to be protected, given more options for their personal safety and given choices so they can decide for themselves what they want to do with their lives.

Its actually very similar to the whole "women have the right to a safe abortion" argument. On the right side we have people who oppose abortion entirely. On the left side we have people who believe abortions are going to happen regardless and thus we should try and make it as safe as possible.

This isn't so much about "right and wrong", its about ensuring the safety of women who make those decisions, because they're going to make those decisions anyway regardless of what laws are out there. They're desperate enough to try anything.

Justice Susan Himel of the Ontario Superior Court struck down as unconstitutional the bawdy house provision, which by preventing sex workers from sharing premises that ensured their common safety, increased their risk of exposure to violence.

The “living off the avails” section, which criminalizes those being supported by a sex worker, was meant to target pimps, it also affects a prostitute's live-in family, including partners, parents and children, as well as security guards or bouncers who might protect her.

The communication law was declared unconstitutional because experts all agree the greatest danger to street sex workers is their inability to safely screen johns before jumping into their cars.

“For me it's not complicated to understand why there's a divide: it's two visions,” says Diane Matte of Montreal's Coalition Against Sexual Exploitation, who has a street-level view of the sex worker industry. “The SPOC women do not hide the fact that they want to open brothels,” says Matte.

That much is certainly true. SPOC wants to open brothels and make prostitution a lot safer through government regulation and private security. The brothels would be owned by the prostitutes themselves, not by pimps.

Matte wants a Nordic model, such as the laws currently in place in Iceland and Sweden, which has decriminalized sex workers while criminalizing their clients. But all that does is cause prostitution to driven further underground, where violence is more likely to happen.

“As a criminologist I can guarantee you that that doesn't work because it doesn't remove the criminal element from prostitution,” says O'Doherty, who teaches at the University of the Fraser Valley. Making demand illegal only serves to drive sex workers underground, she says.

As the world's oldest profession prostitution will never be eradicated until we've eradicated poverty entirely. And even then we will have another problem, women who don't have sex for money but instead just "slut themselves around willy-nilly for kicks". (For reference being slutty isn't a sin per se, but doing so without regard to personal safety, the safety of others, and ignoring the feelings of others is a cause for concern.)

And lets face it, there's way more sluts than there is prostitutes.

The primary difference however is that sluts have the option of screening their sexual partners and can have sex in the privacy of their own homes if they choose to. They can be safe about it.

Which is what sex workers want to. Safety.

Eventually they will hopefully find a different job, go back to school, etc. There is no pension plan when you're a sex worker. Eventually even sex workers have to start thinking about retirement.

The Toronto Women's Bookstore in Crisis

CANADA/FEMINISM - The Toronto Women's Bookstore at 73 Harbord Street in Toronto is near financial collapse. 2009 was a very bad year for bookstores in general, but the hardest hit are independent vendors.

The TWB released the following statement to their regulars:

Dear TWB community,

The Toronto Women's Bookstore is in crisis and we need your help!

Independent businesses and bookstores have been closing their doors this year, and after 36 years it is possible that we will have to do the same if we are not able to raise enough money to survive. TWB is one of the only remaining non-profit feminist bookstores in North America, but despite all of the events, courses, workshops, community resources and additional services we offer, the fact that we are a store means that we do not receive any outside funding and rely entirely on sales and the support of our customers to stay in business.

Over the past few years, our sales have not been enough to sustain us and this is why we are coming to you, our community, for help. If every one of you donated $10 we would raise enough to keep going for 3 months, $20 each would keep us in business for 6 months, and $30 each would be enough for us to keep our doors open, hopefully for good. All donations will go directly towards covering the bookstore's costs, and are a part of a larger plan of action and structural change to make the business sustainable in the current economy.

In the past, when feminist bookstores were closing down all across North America, the support of the community is what kept TWB alive. You are the reason that we are still here today, and we believe that with your help we can once again work together to save this organization where so many of us as readers, writers, feminists, artists, and activists have found a home.

You can make donations over the phone, on our website www.womensbookstore.com (a paypal link will be available soon), or in person at the store. As a non-profit store we are not eligible for charitable status and cannot offer tax receipts, but we are hoping to be able to offer tax receipts for donations over $100 in collaboration with a non-profit charity who shares our mandate, and if that can be arranged we will have that information available on our website and in store as soon as possible.

You can also help by spreading the word to your friends and community, contacting us if you know of any funding we might be eligible for, promoting this fundraising drive in your paper or on your blog, website or radio show, organizing your own save the bookstore fundraisers or just passing the hat at your holiday parties, giving a TWB donation as a gift, and of course, coming in and bringing all your friends to the store for some holiday shopping!

Thank you all for your support,
The Toronto Women's Bookstore Board, Staff & Volunteers