Since childhood, 21-year-old Ashante Dickens has had a clear goal: "I want to be an elementary school teacher. That's my passion." She got good grades in school, and did well enough in high school to be allowed to take a few early enrollment classes at a nearby college in early childhood education. She was on the road to realizing her dream when a family problem changed her course. Now Ashante is a parent to one-year-old Tristan and lives in a Detroit homeless shelter where Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Julia Cass met Ashante and Tristan while on assignment for the Children's Defense Fund. Ashante is still desperately hoping to return to college and her teaching dream, but for now, the shelter offers women and children a home for up to two years while they "get situated," as she says.
Ashante calls herself a "back and forth child." Her mother disappeared from her life when she was six. She grew up in Georgia with her father and spent summers in Detroit with her grandmother. Ashante's father was an assistant principal and they lived in Cobb County in suburban Atlanta. "I had a good life in Atlanta," Ashante said. But when she was 16 her father had two strokes that affected him mentally as well as physically.
"He became abusive," Ashante said. "He wasn't really right in the head." By then she had reconnected with her mother and told her "about the situation I was going through where he would hit me." Her mother called the police who removed Ashante from the home. She was 17 then and the authorities allowed her to go live with her grandmother in Detroit.
One-year-old Tristan lives in a Detroit homeless shelter with his mother Ashante Dickens. Programs like Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, food stamps, and transitional housing are lifelines for them and millions of others.
Ashante graduated from high school there and began attending Wayne State University. "I didn't do well," she said. "A lot was going on in my grandma's house... My auntie and my brother stayed there too. It was hard to study and deal with the different personalities." She quit school and started to work at McDonald's thinking that she would save enough to be able to move into her own place and then pick up her education again. She stopped work when she became pregnant with Tristan and left her grandmother's house for a homeless shelter. After Tristan was born, they moved to a transitional living shelter for mothers and children.
Ashante began receiving cash assistance and food stamps. As soon as Tristan was a few months old she went back to work. "I don't think anybody wants to be on assistance. My motivation is to work harder so I don't need it."
For seven months, Ashante took a three-hour bus trip each way to work a $7.85 an hour job at a Target in the suburbs. This was her schedule: Take Tristan to day care by 8 a.m., take the three buses to work; work eight hours; take the three buses back to Detroit, pick Tristan up at 11 p.m. One of the buses ran just hourly and if she missed that bus, she would be an hour late. This happened enough times that her hours were cut back to just 10 a week.
Eventually she left that job and started seeking another. "I've done retail. I've done office work. I've worked in day care so my experience is broad," she said. Her goal is to return to college but she thinks she should work to get a place to live and a car first. In October, she got a job at a McDonald's which is an hour to an hour and a half walk and bus ride each way. The pay was $7.40 an hour. Temporary Assistance to Needy Families gave her a voucher for day care; otherwise she would have ended up making very little.
"If my dad hadn't had a stroke, I would be somewhere totally different right now," she said. "I'd still be in Georgia. I would probably be in my second or third year at Kennesaw State in elementary education. But I'm just going to work to the best of my ability to get back on track. I think I'm young enough to turn it around."
Programs like Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, food stamps, and transitional housing are lifelines that work when people fall on hard times. We need to preserve them for people like Ashante who are already working hard to get back on track but still need extra support to keep turning their difficult circumstances around. But that's not what the Ryan "reconciliation budget" just passed by the House of Representatives would do. Instead it would eviscerate the food stamp program, literally taking food out of the mouths of babies like Tristan, and also make deep cuts in health and social service programs. We all need to raise our voices and vote this year to make sure children like Tristan have the opportunity to survive and thrive and return hope to find America's vanishing dream.
Follow Marian Wright Edelman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChildDefender
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Society, since early civilization and even before, has perfected programs for assistance. They are called FAMILY. All of us have:
FIRST DEGREE RELATIVES: parents (two), siblings, grandparents (two sets), spouse, children
SECOND DEGREE RELATIVES: Cousins, aunts and uncles, in-laws.
COMMUNITY SUPPORT SYSTEMS
These are three protective circles for individal assistance. In fact the above three circles exsists even in animal society like lion, elephant, bird colonies, and all homo sapiens / primates. In other words, such a social arrangement is in our genes.
Genetically determined characters and behavior pattern and solutions CANNOT BE repeat CANNOT BE supplanted by govt programs, which are merely band aids and are bound to fail; especially when the band aid is used to supplant the real solution to the problem.
And so long as the poor suffer and starve quietly, they couldn't care less.
There is one place in particular I see a lot of tax-free church money going: Lobbying.Lobbying and influence peddling.Imagine that,certain churches using their tax-free status to act as political action groups in influencing and bribing our political system to push some specific social issue.,
Now,I'm sure almost all churches push some form of influence or opinion on others,but the Evangelical far right Christian churches have been hell-bent on spending on these culture wars.
Wouldn't all that money and effort be better spent actually helping the needy? Of course it would.
Anyways.I believe all tax-free entities that are actually political lobbying groups should be properly tax and labeled.And I am not ashamed to say that.
As for lobbying, I belong to a good size church and we don't spend any of our funds on lobbying efforts. Much of our money goes to assist the needy in our community and orphans. Not all churches and Christians are "hell bent" on spending on what you term as "these culture wars."
2. On another subject, why not use food stamps to address the huge problem of obesity in this country? Simply limit food stamp accounts to paying for fresh vegetables, canned vegetables, nuts, raw and canned meat, non-sugary cereals, paper products, toiletries and a few other essentials. Most processed foods (pizzas, etc.), sugary cereals, candy, ice cream, desserts, deli items, etc. would not be allowed. The end result would be much healthier population and a more efficient food stamp program.
Imagine the smug grin of confidence on his face as he greets guests and shows them his latest toy.Plus,consider the boost of confidence this will give him with regard to his speaking skills...
"Going down I presume"...that's like,what? Four words? Kind of hard to stammer and stutter your way through that.
Of course,he could even surprise us,by saying.." Going up?..but then,we might accuse him of being a flip-flopper........
the baby daddy here?) and you have insufficient education, and little in the way of resources, you are in for a bad time. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
Having a society,a social compact,comes with a price tag.You might have already know this,and just made the conscious decision to make stupid statements....
I hope she (eventually) makes it.
Get rid of them and there would never be a need to cut the safety nets for the poor.
Or let them place bids for thing like after school programs instead of handing the millions to set and run those programs.
Let them be private enterprize.
All these Non Profits and Charities are doing is increasing the cost of welfare.