Warren: Chicago’s Hidden Hungry in Comparison to Nickle and Dimed

Article found here: http://www.chicagonewscoop.org/warren-chicagos-hungry-hidden-in-plain-sight/   

  This article discussed issues about hunger and poverty in Chicago and the lack of concern for it in local government. Chicago is trying to make improvements on giving the Chicago Transit Authority a better appearance. However, the number of ill fed and hungry individuals in Chicago has increased significantly. According to the article,  about 11 percent of people in LaGrange are hungry or ill-fed, while the figure is 15 percent in Elmwood Park, 6 percent in Burr Ridge, 14 percent in Wheeling and 5 percent in Kenilworth. The underlying theme is that Chicago continues to ignore poverty and the hungry even though their numbers continue to rise.
       This article relates to the overall theme of Nickle and Dimed. The U.S. ultimately ignores hunger and poverty issues though both are on the rise. Living costs remain greater than minimum wages making life ever more difficult for the lower and middle classes and furthermore, increasing poverty. Tax money is spent on ways to benefit the wealthy as opposed to being used in social services and other areas where it is most needed.

Ehrenreich Text

       One of the jobs the author discusses is being a waitress at the Hearthside.  At the Hearthside she is scheduled to work from 2:00 in the evening until 10:00 at night for $2.43 an hour, plus tips. It only takes her two weeks to soon realize that she will need a second job to sustain her life. Her experience as a waitress quickly proves to be miserable. Her co-workers express their disdain for working there and she is treated poorly by management. As she is trained, by Gail who works at the restaurant, she is made to feel somewhat useless and incompetent of taking care of even the most basic tasks. She quickly bonds with her co-workers as they find common grounds over time. Ehrenreich discovers the difficulty of being poor and is eventually forced to pick up a second waitress job at another restaurant. She quickly discovers that living in a hotel is actually more expensive than renting an apartment and that many people are forced to do so when they cannot afford the deposit on an apartment. Gas money and money for nutritious food is also more difficult to come by on a low income.
       After doing some research I found that the cost of living in Florida as a whole is $9.03/hr. That is more than the minimum wage set at $7.25/hr and still more than Ehrenreich was making at either of her jobs alone. This shows that a second job is almost necessary when your current job starts you at minimum wage. Ehrenreich also shows us the severe disadvantages the poor have when having to deal with a second job or a low income in general.


The information on the cost of living and minimum wage for Florida can be found here:
http://www.livingwage.geog.psu.edu/states/12

Rank Chapter 8, Future Discussions

       In Chapter 8 of One Nation Underprivileged by Robert Rank, he discusses several strategies that would ultimately help eliminate poverty. One of the first strategies he discusses is the creation of adequately paying jobs. Some of the key features of this strategy are raising wages of currently existing jobs, raising and indexing minimum wage and implementing earned income tax credit. Currently in the United States, minimum wages of basic jobs do not typically meet the requirements necessary to be above the poverty line. Often, multiple jobs and or low income alternatives to housing and cost of living are required to get by. Low wages are based on corporate policies to capitalize and make profit. The result is a greater stratification in the distribution of wealth nation-wide. By raising wages, corporations would have to reduce profit margins (though profits would still be relatively high) to create a balance for the lowest workers of that organization. Low paying jobs also lead to increased poverty. When an individual struggles to meet the cost of living, they incur debt, which, in the United States, tends to increase at an exponential rate. Debt usually results in borrowing which ultimately leads to more debt until more poverty is created.
       Raising the minimum wage would force other wages up as well, better equipping middle class workers with the resources necessary to sustain day to day life. Rank describes using earned income tax as beneficial to lower income workers. The EITC like raising minimum wages and other existing wages would damge high profit margins for large companies. However, equalizing pay would greatly reduce poverty levels and only mean that the wealthy would only make several hundred million in profits as opposed to breaking a billion.
       I feel that this strategy is the first key step in eliminating poverty as it equalizes the playing field for the most important resource in today's society: money. Greater access to money would create better living conditions, better health care, better education, increased value of housing in poorer neighborhoods and generally just more access to other resources that would increase living conditions. For those who do not strive to gain a high level of education or a prestigious career, it would at least provide them with the financial resources they would need to sustain a normal life through a regular job. Increasing wages and better paying jobs is ultimately one of the most important factors in eliminating poverty across the nation.

Student Blog Critiques

       Today, I looked at some of the blogs created by my fellow classmates. The first blog I looked at was created by Mark V. The information found on this blog was very credible and the entries themselves were powerful. However, though ultimately its a great blog, there are a few aspects of the blog itself that can be improved upon to make it even better. Uniform text may make it easier to read. Using the same highlight color as well as same font size may make the blog look more professional. Also,  though blogs tend to encourage personal opinions, more factual information from scholarly credible resources may help greatly reinforce those opinions.
       I saw similar issues on Jordee Y.'s blog. Also, on this blog in particular, it was somewhat bland in visuals. It was all black on white text with almost no imagery or design. by adding some visuals, this blog can attract more attention which would ultimately help spread awareness on the issues being projected in this blog. Despite these few aspects, the blog itself is still very well organized.

The blogs I reviewed can be found here:
http://thatsjustthewayitislovewins.blogspot.com/ - Mark V.
http://yato7.wordpress.com/ Jordee Y.

Action Service Project

       At the beginning of November, I began my volunteer work with the St. Vincent de Paul Center. The center has an outreach program with three primary goals. Their goals are children's services, services to the elderly and disabled and services to the homeless and those who are severely struggling financially. The first day I simply met the staff and toured the facility. I officially began my volunteer work on November 10th. As I showed up the the gymnasium in the center, I was not exactly sure what to expect. All I knew for sure based on what the staff members had told me was that I would be assisting in the set up for a luncheon for the homeless on November 12th. On the 10th and 11th I spent a great deal of time doing physical work. Setting up tables, organizing classrooms, folding clothes and moving boxes. Once we got everything set up, we got an orientation from the coordinators on how the luncheon event would actually be run.
       On November 12th, I arrived early in the morning and by 9:00 AM a line had formed at the front door of the de Paul center that looped around the corner into the parking lot. The head coordinator, Katy Murphy began organizing volunteers in the main lobby. According to the sign in rosters, there were approximately two hundred volunteers that morning and many of them had recently signed up to participate. School groups, church organizations, social workers and even a group of workers from the Starbucks across the street had come to participate in serving the homeless. We were assigned jobs by groups and throughout the day, supervisors rotated volunteers into different positions to ensure everyone go the full experience of working with the outreach program. That particular day, I spent some time directed traffic in hallways to serving food to escorting homeless guests. Though we were organized to somewhat systematically move through the facility, we were encouraged to sit down and eat with the homeless guests we were ushering. From that particular experience, to me, it seemed as though the homeless I directly worked with were happier to sit down and have a conversation with someone over a warm meal. Many of them were surprised to receive sleeping bags and winter basics such as new coats and thermal underwear. Many of the homeless went straight for the hygiene services, and many of the homeless men waited anxiously for haircuts. The experience of this luncheon was an eye-opener, in that it destroyed many of society’s stereotypes about the lower class and homeless. Though, statistically, mental illnesses, drug and alcohol problems remains a prevalent problem among the homeless, it most certainly does not represent all of them. I personally feel that the most important feature of this experience is understanding that many of the homeless are regular people like anyone else who now suffer poverty.
       My last day at the St. Xavier de Paul center, I worked in the gymnasium helping organize leftover food and clothes to be donated to other organizations or to be distributed at following events. Though I did not participate in the next event to provide aid to the homeless, I do hope to participate in the future. The outreach program has a lot of resources for assisting the needy and it was truly a rewarding experience to have participated in volunteering with them.

The St. Xavier de Paul center is located at 2145 N. Halsted St. at the southeast corner of the DePaul campus. If anyone is interested in volunteering there, this is their website: www.svdpc.org

The St. Xavier de Paul Center, 2145 N. Halsted

Reflection to the Broadway Youth Center Speakers

       A couple weeks ago, our class was visited by several speakers from the Broadway Youth Center in Chicago. As they began they began they're session in a unique fashion of introductions that included astrological signs and gender preference in the form of pronoun preferences, I knew it was not going to be what I had originally expected. The speakers spent over an hour setting up abstract rules for discussion, often laughing and yelling over each other. They're supervisor who sat among the students did little to maintain a focus on the topic at hand. Though the presentation was largely disorganized, the last 15 minutes or so provided us with some basic information about what the actual youth center is and does. The final few minutes of the presentation also provided valuable insight to the personal experiences of each speaker and gave us an accurate  representation of the hardships homeless youths have to face.
       Though it is understandable that the presenters were doing this as a project to help them get jobs, it may be beneficial to both them and us as the audience if their supervisor had done more to prepare them to speak or at least intervened during their tangents to keep the focus on an appropriate topic. Also, if the speakers had some sort of outline or structure to their presentation, it would have ultimately been more beneficial to us. I believe the goal of these events should be to raise awareness about the seriousness of these issues regarding homeless, not to laugh and joke for over an hour in front of an academic audience. However, again, the end of the presentation did provide valuable insight on the social issues as well as what the Broadway Youth Center strives to accomplish.

Reflection to the Hunger Banquet

       For our class last week, we participated in NEIU's Hunger Banquet on the second floor of the Student Union. Upon entry into the conference room, we were each handed a ticket which determined where in the class we would sit and ultimately, what kind of meal we would be having for dinner. Upper class students were directed to sit at an ornate table where they were served a full nutritious meal. Students assigned to the middle class were directed to sit at regular tables where they were served pasta and bread. Finally, students assigned to the lower class such as myself, were directed to sit on the floor and were served a cup of water and an even smaller cup of broth as their meal.
       The banquet opened by a reading by the host in regard to many of the hunger statistics the world faces daily. She juggled a few people into different classes giving stories of upward and downward mobility experienced by those who were being moved. Though the experience was simulated, I felt the reactions of the students in each group was appropriate. Though we all worked together in a normal academic situation, the stratified room caused different reactions. Upper class students seemed to "innocently" giggle at those in lower classes, especially those in the poorest class. The middle class seemed neutral, almost apathetic to both other classes.
       What I found most surprising about the banquet is that almost almost everyone acted out their stereotypical role. The upper class admit to feeling awkward when leered upon by the poor but ultimately ignored them and many refused to make eye contact. No one who had a real meal offered to share with anyone else which reflects almost perfectly on how our society as a whole reacts to these situations. The banquet was a good experience though, for us in the lower class ultimately left hungry. It showed us how mobility in class really works and how large the economical gaps between classes really are.