She was standing at the bus stop when I got there. Both of us looked very tired. It had been a long day in an even longer week, and it was already past midnight. The buses were running late.
We began to talk, first about how long we might have to wait. An hour went by until our different buses finally came. A little conversation to pass the time turned into a long talk about life and the topic of the week--politics.
New Orleans is her home town. I was there to cover the Republican National Convention, and that had been its last day. My feet were tired from four days of almost constant walking and standing. Her feet were tired from being on them nearly all day, every day. She is a cook in a local restaurant, and this week she had been making food mostly for Republican delegates.
Her hours were long but this middle-aged black woman obviously didn't make enough money to avoid having to wait for a bus to take her home. The Republicans had spent a lot of money and she was grateful for that. "They've got the money," she said. Earlier in the day, a handful of well-scrubbed Republican youths had earnestly assured me that the reason people are poor is because they don't want to work. And George Bush had just told the nation, in his nomination acceptance speech, that we were enjoying both peace and prosperity. But my friend at the bus stop knew why her feet were sore. She would vote Democrat, but with Jesse Jackson gone, she wasn't filled with confidence about that party either. I told her that I had seen just as many stretch limousines in Atlanta as I had in New Orleans.
Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young swept up all his city's homeless people before the Democratic National Convention began and put them in temporary housing to keep them out of sight. During the convention, the poor were mostly invisible. Normally taking shelter under bridges and viaducts, some right across the street from Atlanta's Omni and the World Congress Center where the convention was taking place, entire homeless families would have been in plain view of convention delegates and the world press.
Atlanta's "beatification project" drew the attention of the city's homeless advocates. Tim McDonald, of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said, "If we can house people for one week, why can't we do it year-round?"
A new and innovative restaurant for the homeless called Cafe 458 drew some press attention during the convention when Kitty Dukakis decided to pay it a visit. On the morning of the day she was to come for lunch, along with her press entourage, city trucks pulled up to Cafe 458 with huge sidewalk planters full of beautiful flowers, which were placed outside and along the entrance to the restaurant.
Rev. A.B. Short, who helped start the project, asked the city workers what they were doing. "Just giving the place a little color," they answered. "Well, you can put them here," said Short, "only if you promise to leave them after today!"
As the woman at the bus stop and I talked, a homeless man huddled in a store entrance just a few feet away. Apparently, New Orleans hadn't been as creative as Atlanta in solving these "problems" during convention week.
Time magazine recently did a cover story on the growing number of urban "beggars" and focused the moral dilemma around the question, "To Give or Not to Give?" What few want to explore very far is the question, "Why are so many people living on the streets in the richest country in the world?"
"THE ECONOMY"--that's what they call the issue. But what we are really talking about is the survival of poor and low-income people in our country--a population whose numbers are steadily multiplying. Jesse Jackson was the only candidate who made economic justice a primary issue in this campaign (see "Signs of the Times," page 14).
Dukakis and Bush have mostly been trading charges trying to convince middle-class voters that each really has their best interests at heart. And with all the numbers and statistics being twisted and beaten into political swords, the voters have become quite confused.
On September 1, the U.S. Census Bureau released its latest economic figures, which are quite disturbing. They showed that the poverty rate had risen to 33 percent for blacks and 28 percent for Hispanics, while 10 percent of whites remain in poverty. Altogether, 13.5 percent of all Americans--32.5 million people--live below the government-established poverty line, which was $11,611 for a family of four in 1987.
The top 40 percent of the population is indeed doing better, but more people are living in poverty than in any year since the 1970s. And the poor are getting poorer. In 1987, the fifth year of the much-heralded "economic recovery," one out of every three black Americans, and one out of every two black children, were living in poverty. The upper 40 percent of American families now have a higher share of the nation's wealth than at any time in 40 years, while families in the bottom 40 percent have the lowest share in four decades.
The so-called economic recovery has been painfully selective. Tax cuts and income gains for those in upper-income brackets have indeed made the rich richer. But for those at the bottom end, the past eight years have been a plague.
What's troubling to many voters is how the middle class has been losing ground. Manufacturing jobs have been lost, and the much-touted numbers of new jobs reflect positions at the bottom of the service sector where wages are low, about one-half of them at the poverty level.
When a plant closes, jobs are exported to Asia and replaced by jobs at McDonald's. It now takes two jobs to support many families that were once sustained by one. And with the cost of items such as housing rising so quickly--the median price of a house in the United States is now $91,600--working- and middle-class people are feeling more and more insecure.
The number of high-paying professional jobs is up, as is the number of lowest-paying service jobs. It is the middle-level jobs that are being lost and the working class that is getting squeezed into poverty. We are rapidly entering a two-tiered economy of rich people and poor people, with the middle class steadily weakening.
The problems we face are both structural and moral. The solutions must be more far-reaching than any yet offered by the two parties' standard bearers.
I'm glad I took the bus that night. The reasons for tired feet had more to do with current political realities and biblical priorities than most of the speeches heard at either political convention this year.
Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!