Poor-dom

Tonight's State of the Union address coincided with my newfound love and job in Philadelphia. I'm currently an intern for Representative Vanessa Lowery Brown in the 190th District in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Simply put, I work at the local legislative office for Representative Brown, a newly elected freshman in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. I learned on my first day that I am serving the third poorest district in the entire state. Some would think that this is scary, I see it as an opportunity to go where a helpful hand is needed.

The first day, they put me to work. The immediate needs of our constituents are the simple but very important necessities: food, shelter, and jobs. There are people who will come into the office who need help because they can't keep their heat on, and they have children. They have no food, but they have children, and the prospect of obtaining a job for the local community members is dismal. They're facing gentrification from University City, and getting pushed out of their communities without much support from the people that are pushing them out. I am determined to learn the key players and what they plan to do, because I don't think the long term option of pushing people into the suburbs is very fair. Why renew the community for people who aren't part of the community? Do they have a say in all of this?

Gentrification, as it stands now, is unethical. It also has an eerie semblance to colonialism, except instead of using guns, the powers that be are using money, and instead of hurting members of the community, members of the community are left alone to hurt each other, perhaps succumb to drugs, violence and a sub par education from local public schools that struggle to meet minimal mandated standards.

There is a diplomatic approach: support the people in the community, give them jobs, give them affordable housing, provide training for them to ascend to better positions and financial situations in their neighborhoods, create leaders and strong families. These are people who cannot put bread on the table without our help, and while providing food for them for the next week or month or year is an immediate concern, these other needs should be met with the same kind of urgency.

Here's my problem though. I was listening to President Obama's State of the Union address, and while I applaud his tenacity for the people that put him in office, there are some of us who are hanging on by a thread, if at all. The poor can no longer wait to be placed on the agenda as a high priority. Which leads to my next question: What happened to Obama's Department of Urban Policy? Mr. Shaun Donovan, did I miss a recent press release? What will we tell the women in these single parent households, with babies that they cannot place into childcare because they cannot find a job, because jobs are scarce, and because they may not be able to compete with the neighboring Ivy League kids at UPenn or pretty much any accessible school along the Market Frankford El line? What about the people who cannot go the hospital because they can't afford it, people without insurance? Mr. President, if we were to play a drinking game with the number of times that you mentioned the middle class tonight, things would get pretty interesting, pretty quickly, but what about the working poor? Or simply the poor? Have we neglected them?

We cannot disappoint the poor either.

It just makes me wonder what the heck "middle class" even means. But that's another topic for another day. Right now, I want to know what happens tomorrow when I am speaking to our constituents who need food, shelter and JOBS. Money for wars, but can't feed the poor. Isn't that what Tupac said? Didn't he say that almost 20 years ago now? Let us not count out the poor. They, too, need solutions now.