'Stop kicking people when they're down'

If we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.

Stop the institutional harassment of those who turn to the government for help or find themselves destitute in the streets. … At least we should decide, as a bare minimum principle, to stop kicking people when they’re down.

That’s from Barbara Ehrenreich, founder and senior pastor of Saddleback Church, an evangelical megachurch in Lake Forest, Calif. She …

Wait, sorry. That’s wrong. Rick Warren is the founder and senior pastor of that Orange County megachurch and, well, he’s been known to disagree with Ehrenreich about that bare minimum principle she recommends.

Ehrenreich is actually a liberal journalist and author of the best-selling book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. That book evidences a deeper empathy and a more Christlike concern for the poor than we’ve seen yet from anyone who bears the title of “senior pastor” at a megachurch.

The quote above is from her recent essay “Turning Poverty Into an American Crime.” Here’s a bit more from Ehrenreich:

When the Parentes finally got into “the system” and began receiving food stamps and some cash assistance, they discovered why some recipients have taken to calling TANF “Torture and Abuse of Needy Families.” From the start, the TANF experience was “humiliating,” Kristen says. The caseworkers “treat you like a bum. They act like every dollar you get is coming out of their own paychecks.”

The Parentes discovered that they were each expected to apply for 40 jobs a week, although their car was on its last legs and no money was offered for gas, tolls, or babysitting. In addition, Kristen had to drive 35 miles a day to attend “job readiness” classes offered by a private company called Arbor, which, she says, were “frankly a joke.”

Nationally, according to Kaaryn Gustafson of the University of Connecticut Law School, “applying for welfare is a lot like being booked by the police.” There may be a mug shot, fingerprinting, and lengthy interrogations as to one’s children’s true paternity. …

… Anyone can fall into debt, and although we pride ourselves on the abolition of debtors’ prison, in at least one state, Texas, people who can’t pay fines for things like expired inspection stickers may be made to “sit out their tickets” in jail.

More commonly, the path to prison begins when one of your creditors has a court summons issued for you, which you fail to honor for one reason or another, such as that your address has changed and you never received it. Okay, now you’re in “contempt of the court.”

Or suppose you miss a payment and your car insurance lapses, and then you’re stopped for something like a broken headlight. … Now, depending on the state, you may have your car impounded and/or face a steep fine — again, exposing you to a possible court summons.

“There’s just no end to it once the cycle starts,” says Robert Solomon of Yale Law School. “It just keeps accelerating.”

At the very minimum, can we at least stop kicking these people when they’re down?