There's a simple, partial solution to this problem but the US Congress won't go there. Why?
- every member in the US Congress is in the top 10% of richest Americans
- there is not much separation between being in the top 10% and the top 1%
- every member in the US Congress wants to move up
- any "income policy" affecting the top 1% will affect the top 10% and no one in the US Congress will go there
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The Other Side of the Story
Long essay on poverty in California. Link here.
ANTIOCH, Calif. —
Michael Tubbs writes in his notebook and stars a word in black pen for importance: “agony.”
It’s
impossible to wholly describe what he has learned about Californians
living in poverty during his tour across the state, but that word seems
to wrap it up.
The former mayor of Stockton, now the “economic
mobility and opportunity” advisor to Gov. Gavin Newsom, has carried a
gray notebook to 10 counties — and plans to visit the remaining 48 — as
part of his work for his new nonprofit, End Poverty in California.
His mission: to listen to Californians describe their struggles,
defeats and hopes and actually hear them — to end poverty “by elevating
the voices of people experiencing it.”
Tubbs, 32, is revered as a national expert on guaranteed income programs
for the poor. Raised by a single mother, he grew up in a low-income
household in Stockton, once the largest U.S. city to declare
bankruptcy, a place often judged for high crime and low literacy rates.
So what does he have to learn about poverty?
It turns out, a lot.
Along with “agony,” he has scribbled down broad thoughts and directives like “shelter is foundational” and “rewrite history.”
One note reads simply, “everyone is maxed out.”
He has had emotional epiphanies. He draws an arrow to how one woman
describes her life — “living just to die”— and adds his own reaction
beside it: “OMG!”
::
Outwardly, there’s nothing remarkable
about Tubbs’ notebook. There’s no title, no decoration. But for people
like Carmen Sierra, it holds a lot of power.
In August, Sierra joins nearly 30 of her neighbors in a circle of
folding chairs at the Antioch Senior Center, across from which a steady
stream of ships pass through the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta to
bigger cities.
Switching between English and Spanish, with her
white hair pinned back, she is there to plead for help from the state
with skyrocketing rent costs. She worries that she will never have
grandchildren because her kids say they can’t afford it.
Longtime
residents like Sierra are being priced out, they tell Tubbs, as
landlords try to seize on those willing and able to pay more to live in
California.
“There are 800 evictions in the pipeline,” a local official says. At
one nearby apartment complex alone, there are eviction notices on 18
doors, an activist adds.
Newsom isn’t here, but this could be Sierra’s only chance to get his ear — through Tubbs.
“He
promised us that if one day he became governor, he would work for our
community as much as he can,” she says. “I understand it’s difficult now
that he is at that table signing all the papers and new legislation,
but he has to keep his promises. If you can bring the message, I’ll be
so happy. We’re still waiting.”
Tubbs makes a note. He and Sierra agree that most of the folks in
Sacramento writing legislation and creating policy don’t get it — and
the notebook can help them understand.
Everywhere he goes, people ask him for help. But he asks for their help,
too, leaning on the grassroots, community-driven style that got him
elected mayor of Stockton in 2016 at age 26 — America’s youngest mayor
at the time. Among those cheering his rise were Barack Obama and Oprah
Winfrey.
“I have to put a report together for the governor, and I need you guys’
help,” Tubbs says in Antioch, casual in jeans and sneakers. “Sometimes
people think I just be talking, and it’s not really rooted in what’s
actually happening. So we’re spending this whole year going throughout
the state and actually hearing from people about solutions people have.”
He promises that he is a thorn in the side of officials and gives
Newsom “earfuls” on behalf of people across the state, but that’s not
enough.
“The answers can come on high, but really it’s in
communities organizing and building power,” Tubbs says. “I’m happy to
use my little bit of influence and political capital to annoy people and
have conversations, but I need you to push with me.”
Some
people are willing and interested in doing something to make change.
Others don’t believe that change is up to them, and it’s on people like
Tubbs and Newsom. Who has time to agitate and lobby? For those dedicated
to simply surviving, activism is a far-off luxury.
An Amazon
warehouse worker in Fresno who is struggling to support her children and
elderly mother says she has stopped going to City Council meetings
because she doesn’t see the point. They aren’t listening, she tells
Tubbs.
“All I do is pray and pray and pray. I’m tired,” she says.
“When is it going to be enough, you know? We’re just pretty much
working, working, working, working.”
::
Tubbs’
own story connects him with the people he meets on his tour. His mother
was 16 when he was born. His father has been serving a life sentence
since 1996. He has lost friends and family to gang and gun violence.
On
the tour, he talks less about his personal life than he did when he
campaigned for mayor, when he told his story over and over again. But
the same thing happens: A recognizable stillness comes over his audience
when they realize he is one of them.
His life was not supposed to go this way — to success, he says. His options should have been “prison or death.”
A question he has been asking since he was a preteen lies at the heart of the purpose of this statewide voyage.
“How in the world did I make it? And how do I empower other people from backgrounds like mine to upset the setup?”
::
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 11.6% of Americans live in poverty. In California, it’s slightly more: 12.3%. In Tubbs’ hometown of Stockton: 16.3%.
In
Fresno, a woman clutching a purse that has an image of Frida Kahlo
sobs about losing her house because she and her husband, a farmworker,
could no longer pay the mortgage.
“My American dream is over,” she says through a translator.
In
Los Angeles, women recount how poverty landed them in jail and how
poverty was waiting for them when they got out — an endless cycle of
suffering.
“The moment you come up, you get set back,” one says.
In
Oakland, fast-food workers allege wage theft and dangerous conditions.
One woman says she’s afraid to go back to work — a co-worker’s face was
cut by an angry customer who said his order was wrong — but needs the
job.
Another group knowingly nods and applauds when a mother
details avoiding a second job because a dollar more of income will kick
her off much-needed housing aid.
Each stop on the so-called poverty tour is different, but common themes emerge.
Poor
people aren’t lazy, they are exhausted; being poor is often a full-time
job, where one miscalculation can lead to homelessness in an instant.
Navigating the state’s support systems is confusing, and eligibility is
precarious. In California, the line between the haves and have-nots is
vast, while the line between needing help and qualifying for it can be
razor-thin.
At nearly every stop Tubbs makes, there are desperation and tears. And everyone has questions.
“Do I have to be out on the streets to get help?”
“How can you leave the permanence of poverty?”
“What do I do now?”
With a furrowed brow, Tubbs offers up answers.
He directs people to existing programs, like legal aid for tenants
fighting landlords. He promises to push for a solution to barriers to
public assistance.
“What is working?” he asks.
Sometimes he can’t hide his shock.
“That’s wild to me,” he says when someone shares that they got only a three-day notice before being evicted.
Sometimes he needs a break.
“I’m
sorry, could you just rewind?” he says. “Let me just pause and sort of
reflect back what I’m hearing so that I make sure I leave here with an
accurate understanding.”
Other times, he has nothing to say. Too often there are no answers.
“I’m enjoying not talking right now.”
A
woman who tapped her 401(k) to pay rent says she plunged into a
never-ending loop of referrals when she tried to get financial
assistance to avoid eviction. They led nowhere.
To illustrate the
disconnect separating people like her from the politicians claiming to
tackle poverty, she points out that when she recently sought housing
assistance, she was offered a free backpack for her child.
“How can a kid go to school with a backpack [but] without a roof over their head?” she asks, dumbfounded.
Tubbs doesn’t tell people to calm down or that things will be OK; he joins them in their anger.
“Your
blood should be boiling, because we have all the tools we need to end
poverty in California, yet we have so much of it,” he says at an event
in Sacramento.
But sometimes, anger is pointed at him. At each stop, people want to know: Now what? What makes Tubbs different from the others?
“What
are you going to do with the information that you’re taking away today?
What exactly will be the end result of this?” a woman in San Bernardino
County demands.
He has carved out a unique role. He’s no longer a politician, after losing reelection
for Stockton mayor in 2020 to a Republican. But he has connections. He
is invited to places that the people he’s trying to serve would never
be. Still, he admits his limitations.
“If I was a governor, I
could tell you what I’m going to do, but I’m not,” he says. “I advise
the governor. So what we’re going to do is put together a summary for
him and his economic staff.”
At EPIC, the nonprofit he founded in 2022, Tubbs has outlined an ambitious plan to end poverty
in the state. Before he set out on the tour, his ideas included a
reformed safety net that makes it easier for people to get the help they
need, higher wages across the board and “housing as a human right.”
After his first year of listening sessions, he’s adding to the list.
His
next big idea is a sort of sovereign wealth fund, “where we capture
some of the wealth in California and make sure everyone gets a piece.”
He knows that will drop jaws, but he maintains that it shouldn’t.
“We’re
not asking for anything crazy. We’re not asking for anything radical.
We’re not asking for anything more than what is our God-given right to
just be able to live in this golden state with dignity, to live in this
golden state and be able to provide for ourselves and our children,” he
says.
The tour was necessary to give his bold plans texture — to make them real, Tubbs says.
“I
wanted to make sure I knew what I was talking about and that it was
rooted in people’s experiences actually living it today — not the
poverty I was in 30 years ago,” he says. “My experience isn’t a moat but
a bridge to other experiences; it gave me a willingness to listen.”
Even with his lived experience, he has been surprised by what he has heard on the road, calling it “heart-wrenching.”
Tubbs
knows what it’s like to be poor as a Black man in Stockton. He doesn’t
know what it’s like to be a young Latina juggling a job and child care
in Fresno, or what it’s like to be denied help because of your
immigration status in Los Angeles.
He was taken aback by how common it is for working people to be on the brink of homelessness.
“I learned so much, particularly in the way poverty intersects,” he says. “It was really jarring for me.”
But many of the stories he has heard are familiar.
“What I wasn’t surprised by was how intelligent and resilient and hardworking folks living in poverty are,” he says.
He
knows what it’s like to worry about food. He remembers his mother
crying, just like women he has met on the road, about how to make ends
meet.
He knows how the sound of gun shots makes for bad sleep.
Reading
through his notebook, Tubbs seems obsessed with the frustrating
existence of “the two Californias,” and he has managed to live in both —
from Stockton to Stanford, with stints at Google and the White House,
back to Stockton again. From voter to mayor to special advisor to the
governor.
He
is frustrated by a troubling juxtaposition: the stories he has heard
this past year, and the practices that even progressive state leaders
herald as best-in-the-nation poverty policy.
“Folks complain
about poverty all the time, even though they don’t use the word
‘poverty,’” he says. “Any community talking about housing security and
homelessness, you’re talking about poverty. When you’re talking about
violence, you’re talking about poverty. When you’re talking about
educational attainment and reading scores, you’re talking about poverty.
Many of the things that frustrate us about our communities — at its
core, poverty is the issue.”
Jessica Nowlan, executive director
of the Young Women’s Freedom Center, in June hosted the first stop on
the tour and set the tone. Her California — where young people work in
the “street economy,” selling drugs or sex to get by, is the real
California, she says. There is no suitable policy without voices like
hers, which focus on “community-based solutions.”
“The
young people we work with are figuring out how to make money every
night on the streets, because there’s no other options,” she says. “And
you’re next to the Twitter headquarters, and everybody has iPhones and
Teslas, and there’s absolutely no onramp. There’s no ability to get
there.”
Nowlan wonders if Tubbs can help people get there.
Sometime
after that first stop, Tubbs wrote in his notebook a question. From the
wording, it’s hard to discern who posed it — if someone asked it, or if
he was asking himself.
“If you give up, who is left?”
