Ch 1, 2, and the
appendix (data & methods) of my new book.
Forthcoming
American Sociological Association’s Rose Series in Sociology
Chapter 2: Policy Implementation as
Policy Making: The Case of
Chapter 3: Challenging Welfare
Racism: Cross-racial Coalitions to Restore Legal
Immigrants’ Benefits, P. 62
Chapter 4:
Battling the Welfare Profiteers: Campaigns Against the Welfare Privatization,
P. 96
Chapter 5: Confronting the
Chapter 6: But Who Will Watch the Children? State and
Local Campaigns to Improve Child Care Policies, P. 174
Appendix: Data and Methods, P. 260
Chapter 1:
Welfare Reform and Its Challengers
Many books on the politics of welfare reform in the
United States, provide a top-down perspective, focusing on the role of
political, cultural, or economic elites in pushing for welfare reforms and
shaping the design of the federal welfare reform acts, especially the 1996
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA).[i] Race-centered and feminist
scholarship on welfare reform similarly highlights the influence of hegemonic
ideologies; it emphasizes how racist stereotypes of the poor, expectations that
poor mothers work, the stigma of single motherhood and heterosexism shaped the
content of, support for, and implementation of federal welfare reform policies.[ii] Missing from most
accounts of contemporary welfare policy-making in the
Seeking to fill some of this gap, this book examines how welfare recipients and their allies shaped the implementation of welfare reform. Elites certainly dominated the development and implementation of welfare reform policies. They shaped and constrained national welfare reform legislation, which imposed major changes in the way the welfare system functioned, and justified new regulations by invoking all sorts of negative stereotypes of the poor. Nevertheless, elite influence over welfare policies did not go uncontested, and state actors’ views towards welfare were multi-vocal, varying across state governments and institutions. As Paul Pierson suggests, welfare state retrenchment was politically risky because it threatened to alienate organized interest groups that have developed around particular welfare programs.[iii] Along with such interest groups, newly formed membership organizations of welfare recipients and ad hoc welfare rights coalitions and task forces mobilized to defend the rights of those with little or no income. While these groups were largely unable to block the new national welfare reform policies, they were sometimes successful in reshaping them, altering or moderating the ways in which they were implemented, and challenging the terms of policy debates.
Welfare rights campaigns that emerged in this period of welfare retrenchment provide two important lessons about the challenges of improving our social safety net, and how those challenges can sometimes be overcome through mobilization and coalition building. First, these campaigns reveal how, even after legislation has been passed, activists can still reshape policies. As I argue in this book, in the case of welfare reform, policy implementation at one level was policy-making at another level. The implementation of federal welfare reform measures required states and local governments to redesign their welfare programs, creating opportunities for activists to halt or improve welfare reform policies and practices. Second, these campaigns reveal the importance of building coalitions to make change. When welfare rights struggles broadened their reach beyond the very poor and their traditional advocates and gained new allies, this helped to make policy gains. While the victories in this period of welfare retrenchment were limited, the alliances formed in this period could help to sow the seeds for further gains.
This chapter provides the historical and social context for the rest of my study. I first examine the way in which the 1996 federal welfare reform act and its reauthorization changed U.S. welfare policies, and how those policies and recent shifts in U.S. labor market conditions shaped poor people’s living and working conditions. Advocates of welfare reform have portrayed these policies as beneficial for both poor people and society at large, and most Americans have little detailed knowledge of these policies or their impacts. Reviewing the research on the impacts of welfare reform helps us to better understand the concerns of poor people and their allies, and why the welfare rights movement became reinvigorated in the late 1990s, and why this movement continues to be relevant today.
I then discuss my comparative case study methodology.
States and local governments had considerable discretion in how they
implemented federal welfare reform policies, and welfare policies varied
considerably across space, partly as a result of the uneven influence of
welfare rights activists. To capture this diversity, I examined similar welfare
rights campaigns in two states—
Fifteen years after their enactment, politicians
both within the
Compared to welfare systems in other wealthy
democracies, the
Using
Though shockingly high, official measures of the
Rather than expanding working class people’s access
to welfare, efforts to reform the
While
the public supported welfare reform in general terms, few knew the details of
the new policies. As Kent Weaver points out, Republican control of Congress
produced harder time limits and stricter work requirements than most people
supported.[xvii] Many states adopted even stricter time limits
than those required by federal law for welfare mothers, and developed systems
of full- and partial-benefit sanctions to enforce work requirements.[xviii] And, despite strong
public support for job training programs, most states implemented “work-first”
models of welfare-to-work programs. These models prioritize actual work and
initial employment over long term career development through education and
training.[xix] PRWORA also denied most legal immigrants
access to federal public assistance for their first five years in the country,
authorized states to contract out welfare administration to private agencies,
and authorized state adoption of “family cap” or “child exclusion” policies
that denied additional benefits to women who had an additional child while
receiving welfare.
At
the same time, General Relief programs, which provide assistance to indigent
adults not eligible for federal public assistance, were also under attack. Of
the 38 states that still had General Relief programs in operation in 1989, 27
enacted new eligibility restrictions by 1998, while twelve states eliminated
their requirements that counties provide General Relief.[xx]
In 2006, ten years after PRWORA’s enactment, Congressional
politicians not only lauded its success, they adopted even more stringent work
requirements for welfare mothers in the legislation reauthorizing PRWORA.
Promoters of welfare reform claim that tough rules and regulations are
necessary for disciplining the poor and encouraging self-sufficiency, and they
highlight stories about recipients who successfully made the transition from
welfare to work.[xxi] They also claim that welfare reform was
responsible for the dramatic decline in TANF welfare cases between 1995 and
2007, and the rising labor force participation among single mothers, from 58
percent in 1995 to 71 percent in 2007.[xxii] Yet, these trends were
partly the product of the employment boom of the 1990s, not just the change in
welfare policies.[xxiii] Indeed, as labor market conditions worsened
after 1999, TANF caseloads rose in many states, while recipients’ and former
recipients’ employment rates fell.[xxiv] As labor market
conditions continued to decline, TANF caseloads rose in thirty-seven states between
December 2007 and September 2009.[xxv]
Nor did all women who left welfare do so through work.
National studies of mothers who left welfare between 1995 and 1999, at the
height of the employment boom, found that between 40 and 50 percent were not
employed.[xxvi]
Welfare reform did little to address the structural barriers that keep people
in poverty, such as racial discrimination, the shortage of stable, living wage
jobs, and the lack of affordable child care.
As a result, it is not surprising that most former welfare-to-work
participants who found employment were still in poverty and most did not work
full-time or year-round.[xxvii] Indeed, many employed mothers suffered
hardships and were worse off financially than before leaving welfare because of
the loss of subsidized childcare, health care, and the increase of work-related
expenses, such as transportation. Problems with insecure employment and
insufficient paychecks contributed to frequent cycling between welfare and work
and the need for welfare to supplement low earnings.[xxviii] Researchers estimate
that, at most, only between 10 and 20 percent of former recipients of TANF will
permanently leave poverty.[xxix]
Advocates
of the “work first” philosophy argue that “any job is better than no job” and
will lead to upward mobility.[xxx] Unfortunately, these policies have
dramatically reduced welfare recipients’ access to secondary education and
vocational training. And, they did so despite research showing that educational
attainment improves employment and earnings outcomes significantly for most
Americans as well as most welfare recipients,[xxxi] and research showing
that forty percent of TANF recipients have not completed high school, while
only 5 percent of them have attended any college.[xxxii] In fact, work-first
models complement the needs of flexible, low-wage labor markets by ensuring “a
continuously job-ready, pre-processed, ‘forced’ labor supply for the lower end
of the labor market.”[xxxiii]
Across
the nation, employers benefited from publicly subsidized drug and skills tests
of job applicants, job training, and job fairs that were organized as part of
welfare-to-work programs. Employers also benefited from welfare-to-work (or
“workfare”) participants’ free labor as well as tax breaks for hiring welfare
recipients in unsubsidized jobs.
Welfare-to-work programs were especially popular among low-wage employers.
According to Welfare to Work Partnership, "businesses like Burger King
franchises… swear by it.”[xxxiv] In
Most
welfare-to-work programs were not as work-oriented as expected however. Because states received credit for reducing
caseloads and because many recipients could be exempted from work requirements,
only 31 to 34 percent of adult recipients of TANF in the nation were actually
working between 2001 and 2006.[xxxix] Nevertheless, even when employers did not
hire welfare recipients directly, work requirements, and the arguments used to
justify them, help to degrade welfare receipt and reaffirm the work ethic in
the wider society, which helped to protect employers’ supply of low wage labor.[xl] Restrictive welfare
policies also increased competition at the bottom of the labor market, putting
downward pressure on wages.[xli] For all of these
reasons, business lobbyists and corporate-sponsored think tanks, actively
promoted work-based welfare reforms.[xlii]
Welfare policies, like criminal justice policies
which also target the poor, have become increasingly punitive.[xliii]
New eligibility criteria, such as time limits on receiving welfare, tougher
welfare-to-work requirements, and restrictions on legal immigrants’ use of
federal public assistance, have disqualified millions of poor people from
public assistance.[xliv]
Other barriers to welfare access were long-standing, including the stigma
associated with welfare and the low income ceiling used for determining
eligibility. In order to qualify for TANF, a family must be extremely poor. As of 2006, twelve
Yet, even those who still qualified for welfare were
using it less frequently after federal welfare reforms were implemented. By 2005,
only 40 percent of people eligible for TANF were receiving it, down from 84
percent in 1995 under AFDC. Likewise, while 62 percent of poor children
received AFDC in 1995, only 21 percent of them received TANF in 2009.[xlvii]
According to the Director of the U.S.
Education, Workforce, and Income Security Department, 87 percent of the
caseload decline between 1995 and 2007 was due to the decline in participation
of eligible families as welfare rules became more restrictive, the real value
of welfare benefits declined, and diversion programs were implemented.[xlviii] The
loss of welfare contributed to a rise in extreme poverty among single parent
families within the few first years of federal welfare reforms, even though overall
poverty rates were then declining.[xlix]
Low participation in TANF helped to slow the growth
in the TANF caseloads after economic conditions worsened after 2007, despite a
growing need for economic assistance among female-headed households. While the
TANF caseload rose 11 percent between December 2007 and June 2011, Food Stamp
cases increased 55 percent in this same period. Similarly, between 1994 and
2003, TANF participation rates declined while participation in other means-tested
public assistance programs, Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, and the
Earned Income Tax Credit rose. [l]
And, even as participation rates in other welfare programs were increasing,
many eligible families were still not using them. One study found that, as of
2002, only 7% of “working poor” families received benefits from all four of the
core programs serving them: the Earned Income Tax Credit, Food Stamps, Medicaid
(subsidized health insurance), and the State Children’s Health Insurance
Program.[li]
Federal housing assistance and subsidized child care are also not fully funded,
creating enormous waiting lists for these programs. Poor outreach, the
complicated bureaucratic maze of different categorical welfare programs,
onerous application procedures, and the stigma associated with receiving
welfare, all discourage low-income people from getting the help they need.
Qualitative research provides a clearer picture of
some of the devastating impacts of welfare reform than is conveyed in survey
statistics. One such study was conducted in
Perhaps most alarming are indications that the loss
of welfare has contributed to the rise of homelessness. State surveys suggest
that between 5% and 8% of former welfare recipients were forced to rely on a
homeless shelter.[liii]
These surveys probably underestimate the extent of these problems as they
frequently rely on phone surveys that exclude former recipients with the
greatest housing problems. Nationally, families with children made up as much
as 23% of the urban homeless population in the
The denial of welfare has also contributed to the
break-up of families because it denies parents the means to take care of their
children. Follow-up studies also find that as many as 4% of “timed off” welfare
recipients had a child removed from their custody.[lv] Other surveys indicate that, among all former welfare
mothers, between 5% and 10% lost custody of their children.[lvi] Quantitative studies also
indicate that, compared to states with more lenient time limit policies, states
with shorter time limits experienced greater increases in reported child
maltreatment, the number of children in out-of-home care, and the foster care
population.[lvii]
Even when low-income people receive it, federal
public assistance does not provide enough money to lift a family out of poverty
or even to pay for all of a family’s basic necessities. Because most states did
not increase benefits to keep up with inflation while 20 states froze or
lowered benefit levels, the real value of TANF cash benefits, adjusting for
inflation, declined in 48 states (including DC) between 1996 and 2010. As of
2010, TANF benefit levels for a family of three were less than half of the
federal poverty line in all
As more poor mothers were denied welfare and pushed
into the low-wage labor force through welfare-to-work programs, they faced
deteriorating labor market conditions. Even before economic conditions worsened
in 2008, a combination of factors undermined the position of most
The
net result was that workers faced, what Steven Greenhouse aptly calls, “big
squeeze.” While worker productivity rose by 60 percent since 1979, the wages
for most workers were stagnant or declining: “Since 1979, hourly earnings for
80 percent of American workers (those in the private sector nonsupervisory
jobs) have risen by just 1 percent, after inflation” as of 2005. A decline in
the real value of the minimum wage contributed to this wage stagnation.[lxiii] Meanwhile, “corporate
profits have climbed to their highest share of national income in 64 years,
while the share going to wages has sunk to its lowest level since 1929.”[lxiv] The share of the labor
force in contingent jobs (part-time, seasonal, or contract jobs) also rose,
increasing job insecurity among workers, and leaving fewer workers covered by
collective bargaining rights. Along with declining unionization and rising
health care costs, the rise in contingent employment contributed to a declining
share of workers with employer-provided benefits. By 2008, more than 50 million
Americans, representing about 16.7% of the population, lacked health insurance.[lxv] Given the decline in
workers’ real wages and rise in contingent work, it should not surprise us
that, as of 2005, most adults receiving TANF were working, with one third
engaged in full-time employment sometime in the past year. Moreover, among the
welfare parents meeting TANF work requirements, the majority participated in
unsubsidized employment.[lxvi] While critics of
welfare demonize welfare recipients and contrast them to good, hard-working
tax-paying citizens, the vast majority of welfare recipients are tax-paying
workers, often with long work histories.[lxvii]
Conditions for
The current economic crisis has helped to broaden concern
around the failures of
Concerns about the limits of federal welfare reform
policies have long been raised by community and labor activists, especially in
the wake of the 1996 welfare reform act. Many of those facing the hardships
associated with welfare reform and its shortcomings suffered silently or
engaged in individual-level forms of resistance, but some poor people mobilized
collectively.[lxxiii]
The implementation of the 1996 federal welfare reform act reinvigorated the
Examining Welfare Rights Activism through Comparative Case Studies
This book provides in-depth case studies
of welfare rights campaigns taking place in the aftermath of PRWORA’s passage
within two states,
Wisconsin
Works, or W-2, was the culmination of a series of restrictive and work-based
welfare reform programs that
Thompson was a
relentless campaigner for his welfare reform agenda. This was manifest in each
of his statewide election contests, his legislative negotiations, his national
policymaking roles, and his extensive interaction with the media. His message
was so consistent that a Chicago Tribune
Magazine cover story dubbed him “Governor Get-a-Job.”[lxxvii]
Wisconsin historically
had been a relatively generous welfare state when compared to other U.S. states
and conservative politicians sought to reverse this pattern, claiming that it
had become a “welfare magnet,” despite lack of clear data supporting that
claim.[lxxviii] Conservative,
corporate-sponsored think tanks also actively promoted the “
Advocates of W-2 also promoted the program as
a model for other Western industrialized nations, many of which were actively
seeking ways to reduce their rising welfare caseloads.[lxxxi] In 1997, the Hudson
Institute promoted the virtues of the Wisconsin model of welfare reform through
an international conference that drew experts and policy-makers from
While
[Table
1.1 about here]
Table
1.1 illustrates some of the main differences between the two states’ welfare
reform programs. The sanction policies in
The broader context in which welfare reform policies
were implemented in these two states, and their two largest cities, also shaped
the opportunities for welfare rights activists to mobilize and make gains. Wisconsin’s
more restrictive welfare policies, coupled with Milwaukee’s smaller labor
force, and lower poverty and unemployment rates, produced a smaller welfare
population there than in Los Angeles, for example (see Table 1.2). Compared to
[Table 1.2 and Table 1.3 about Here]
To structure my comparisons of welfare rights struggles in California and Wisconsin and their two largest cities, I focus on the rise and outcomes of four different types of welfare rights campaigns: (1) statewide campaigns to restore public assistance benefits to legal immigrants that were denied at the federal level, (2) local campaigns to improve welfare-to-work policies, (3) local campaigns to oppose the privatization of welfare services and to improve the regulation of welfare contractors, and (4) state and local campaigns to improve childcare services. These four campaigns were chosen because they represented significant lines of conflict around welfare reform, and because they help to reveal how the local politics of race, class, and gender shaped welfare rights activism. Comparing similar campaigns in these two contrasting settings helps to illuminate the complex interplay between popular mobilization and the policy-making process, and how these dynamics were shaped by local demographic, economic, and political conditions. Most importantly, these comparative case studies reveal how the actions of welfare rights coalitions altered state and local welfare policies, and under what conditions.
Overview of this Book
My comparative case
studies in the chapters that follow show how, and under what conditions,
activists built successful coalitions and impacted four types of state and
local welfare reform policies in
Chapter 2 puts my book
into the context of prior scholarship on the
Chapter 3 focuses on state-level campaigns to replace
the public assistance benefits for legal immigrants that were lost through
PRWORA’s passage and how their outcomes were shaped by racial politics. These campaigns forged new coalitions among
traditional welfare advocates, immigrants, and the larger ethnic communities to
which they belonged. In
Chapter 4 focuses on labor and community campaigns against
the privatization of welfare services that took place in
While many state and local governments established
public-private partnerships to administer welfare services, the extent of
“mixed governance” and the terms of it varied by locale, creating different
conditions for influencing the implementation of welfare reform.
In
Chapter
5 examines the efforts of community and labor activists in
Chapter 6 examines the political threats and opportunities
for expanding and improving subsidized child care programs in the context of
policy-makers’ interest in putting more poor mothers to work. Forcing thousands of welfare recipients into
the labor market significantly increased the demand for childcare services,
putting further strains on programs already stretched beyond capacity. Yet, it
also increased political support for expanding publicly subsidized childcare programs
within state and local governments. In
Chapter
7 draws conclusions about the lessons learned from welfare rights activism in
this era. I argue that the implementation of federal welfare reforms became an
opportunity for policy-making, but only under certain conditions. The welfare
rights movement was generally small and its influence was very limited,
especially in rural areas and conservative states, and at the national level. Policy victories depended upon activists’
ability to mobilize welfare recipients and to forge broad alliances both inside
and outside of the state. Consistent with welfare-to-work goals, state and
local policy gains made by activists often involved expansions of work-based
entitlements, such as improvements in subsidized childcare or the authorization
of new transitional jobs programs. Other policy victories were mostly defensive
ones that prevented the implementation of federal or state cutbacks, rather
than expansions in welfare rights. Although limited, these policy gains
represented significant victories for those who benefited from them.
The
book ends with a discussion of the challenges and prospects for the welfare
rights movement in the
Chapter 2: Policy Implementation as
Policy Making:
The Case of
The passage of PRWORA, justified through all sorts of negative stereotypes of the poor, represented a massive defeat at the national level for welfare rights advocates. At the same time, the provision of state and local discretion over the design and implementation of welfare reform policies, directed energy towards state and local campaigns. Thus, while federal welfare policies have historically provided elites with “multiple veto points” through which they limited welfare rights,[xcvi] the decentralized and institutionally complex nature of welfare policy-making also provided multiple routes and flexibility for welfare rights activists in their efforts to reshape federal welfare policies as state and local governments implemented them and to challenge the demonization of welfare recipients. In the post-PRWORA period, welfare rights activists “jumped scale,”[xcvii] in light of uneven political conditions and interpretations of welfare policies and rights; they were able to move welfare rights struggles into federal, state, or local governmental arenas, private welfare agencies, and even into different branches of government in order to maximize their influence. Their campaigns reveal how policy implementation is policy making.
This chapter lays out my theoretical perspective and
puts my research into the context of prior research on the
Policy Implementation as Policy Making
As S.M. Lipset documented long ago, seldom are laws implemented simply as their original designers envisioned them.[xcviii] Scholars identify at least four kinds of interacting, but analytically distinct, phases of the policy-making process. In the agenda-setting stage, problems needing policy solutions are identified. In the policy design and adoption phase, particular policy solutions are chosen from a range of options through the enactment of legislation or through administrative decisions. In the third phase, government officials or judges interpret the policies and determine their specific meaning through administrative rules and regulations governing operational procedures or through legal rulings. In the fourth phase, agents authorized to enforce the policies, such as welfare case workers or other kinds of government bureaucrats or private contractors, apply the policies in terms of actual situations or cases.[xcix] The policy-making process is seldom a unidirectional linear process. Instead, it is on-going and complex, involving a “series of feedback actions or recursive loops” between phases[c] and “multiple, interacting cycles” occurring at various levels of government.[ci]
Much of the scholarship on the
Much of race-centered and feminist scholarship on the welfare state likewise examined the selection and design of national welfare policies. Their historical research has highlighted how racial and gender inequalities and traditional gender roles, were reinforced through the development of the “two-tiered” welfare state. As a result, white men were more likely than women and racial minorities to qualify for Social Security, Workmen’s Compensation, or Unemployment Insurance, which provided relatively high benefits, had comparatively few eligibility requirements and regulations, were viewed as entitlements, and administered through national agencies. In contrast, women and racial minorities were more likely to receive public assistance, which was more stigmatized, more tightly regulated, and administered through state and local governments. Public assistance for poor mothers was designed to “shore up” the family wage system, reinforcing the patriarchal expectation that mothers’ primary responsibility was to care for their children. Historical research shows that state and local “mothers’ pensions” and, in its early years, federal Aid to Dependent Children benefits were almost exclusively given to “worthy widows” and white mothers however.[cvi]
More recently, scholars have examined the national backlash against welfare on the rise since the 1980s, highlighting its racial and gender dimensions. As they have shown, attacks on welfare mainly focused on the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program and its adult recipients, by then mostly single mothers and women of color.[cvii] Along with corporate-sponsored think tanks and business groups, politicians, keen on capturing or maintaining the support of white voters, stepped up their attacks on welfare.[cviii] At the same time that politicians touted tough new welfare rules in the 1980s and 1990s, they also championed “tough on crime” policies, leading to a significant rise in the nation’s incarceration rates. Whereas restrictive welfare rules mainly targeted single mothers and women of color, tough new criminal justice policies mainly targeted low-income men of color. These twin policies were similarly justified through long-standing racist stereotypes of poor people of color as lacking discipline and in need of greater state regulation. Whereas champions of “tough on crime” policies appealed to racist stereotypes of black and brown men as dangerous and prone to crime, critics of AFDC appealed to long-standing racist images of poor black women, portraying them as lazy and promiscuous.[cix]
Research has, of course, contradicted many of these denigrating stereotypes of welfare recipients. For example, research findings show that, even before the implementation of the new federal work requirements, most able-bodied welfare mothers were not avoiding work, but combining work and welfare, actively seeking work, or cycling between welfare and low-wage jobs. Research also showed that between 80 and 92 percent of adult recipients of welfare were employed prior to receiving welfare. Contrary to the myth that welfare encouraged poor women to have children, most welfare mothers also had fewer children, on average, than their non-poor counterparts, and the longer a woman received welfare, the less likely she was to give birth.[cx] In justifying rules denying public assistance to legal immigrants, politicians and other welfare critics appealed to racist stereotypes of Latino and Asian immigrants; those immigrants were portrayed as overly dependent on welfare and as purposefully immigrating to gain access to welfare. Again, research contradicts such myths, showing that immigrants actually have similar or lower rates of welfare use as their native-born counterparts, and contribute more in taxes than they cost.[cxi]
Along with racially charged images, anti-tax sentiment and the notion that welfare programs fostered dependency contributed to public support for several national-level welfare cutbacks in the 1980s as well as the spread of restrictive state welfare reform policies.[cxii] The rise in maternal labor force participation in the 1980s and 1990s also broadened public support for work requirements for welfare.[cxiii] Blaming welfare recipients for their own poverty was also politically strategic, as it displaced attention away from the role of structural barriers to poor women’s mobility, such as racial discrimination by employers, the devaluation of women’s work, and the lack of living wage jobs and affordable child care. Few politicians sought to tackle such problems since doing so would be expensive and would challenge elite’s interests in minimizing state intervention in the economy.
In addition to demonstrating the influence
of elite interests and hegemonic ideologies on the design of welfare policies,
historical research has also uncovered various organized groups’ and advocates’
efforts to shape
This book focuses on struggles to shape
the implementation of welfare reform policies at the state and local levels.
Focus on national legislation overlooks the tremendous variability of
States’ increasing propensity to contract out welfare and social services to private agencies (or engage in privatization or voucher programs) further complicates the analysis of policy implementation; implementation increasingly involves a network of state governments and private (non-profit and for-profit) agencies. Political economy approaches that focus on national legislation tend to neglect “the space between policy making and policy outcomes.”[cxxii] Along with lower levels of government, private agencies that implement national policies establish the everyday contexts through which recipients experience and perceive the welfare state.[cxxiii] This trend has been various described by scholars as “mixed governance” or the “mixed economy of welfare.” Indeed, the welfare state is increasingly an “enabler and animator of private action for public service.”[cxxiv] Empirical scholarship on the “mixed economy” of welfare emphasizes variation in welfare state restructuring. While many nations and sub-national governments have pursued “public-private partnerships” in an effort to reduce public spending or decentralize services, the extent and forms of privatization varied due to differences in regime type, policy discourses, and institutional legacies.[cxxv] “Mixed economy” scholars, emphasize institutional plurality, and the differences between non-profit agencies, for-profit agencies, and public agencies, as well as the considerable variability within these three sectors.[cxxvi] Overall, there has been a trend towards the commercialization of services, especially as governments are under pressure to cut costs, but the nature of private agencies does vary tremendously both within and across nations,[cxxvii] as private agencies (even non-profit ones) differ in terms of their organizational missions, size, operating structure, and funding streams.[cxxviii] Mixed economy” scholars provide important insights for understanding the current challenges that welfare rights activists face, as those activists must increasingly confront both public and private institutions in order to improve the treatment of welfare recipients and applicants.
Certainly,
other scholars have examined the implementation of welfare reform policies, but
these studies tend to overlook the role of grassroots struggles. Much of this
research examines the macro-level factors shaping variation in how states and
counties implemented federal welfare reform policies. This research finds that states
tended to adopt more stingy and stricter welfare regulations where racism
towards blacks and Latinos was more salient,[cxxix] the demand for
low wage labor high,[cxxx] fiscal constraints were
greater, [cxxxi]
and conservative politicians and the Christian right were more influential.[cxxxii] This research helps
to explain why the most restrictive welfare reform policies tend to be
concentrated in Midwestern and Southern states, where these various forces
converge.[cxxxiii]
Scholars have similarly shown how county-level variation in the implementation
of welfare reform sanctions was linked to the racial and political context.[cxxxiv]
Other welfare scholars examine the implementation of welfare policies at the “micro-level.” This research focuses of the role of welfare staff in interpreting and enforcing policies, mostly based on field observations and in-depth interviews. This research reveals how welfare caseworkers and workshop leaders tend to hold negative stereotypes of the poor and enforce normative expectations regarding welfare recipients’ “proper behavior” that are rooted in hegemonic ideologies about gender, race, class, and sexuality. It also suggests that caseworkers’ compliance with welfare reform policies are encouraged by governmental monitoring, pressures to meet performance-based goals to maintain welfare contracts, caseworkers’ view that they are helping clients and their agreement with the goals and values associated with welfare reform-- “personal responsibilities, “self-sufficiency” through employment, and reducing “welfare dependency.”[cxxxv] Korteweg’s fieldwork at welfare-to-work trainings finds that trainers encouraged participants, mostly mothers, to adopt masculine work norms by working long hours and disregarding their family needs in order to get hired or promoted; motherhood was devalued and “generally treated as something to hide.”[cxxxvi] Korteweg further finds that, “Motherhood was given positive meaning only when it was used to motivate women to find paid work or when the tasks of parenting were described as a set of marketable skills.”[cxxxvii]
In contrast to their strong emphasis on the importance of paid employment, welfare caseworkers paid relatively little attention to the “marriage promotion” aspects of welfare reform in their interactions with welfare recipients.[cxxxviii] In fact, welfare caseworkers frequently discouraged poor mothers from developing too close relationships with boyfriends, or reporting such relationships during the intake process; they feared that boyfriends’ failure to comply with welfare reform requirements might jeopardize families’ access to welfare.[cxxxix]“Marriage promotion” was nonetheless carried out through special workshops, funded through PRWORA and the 2005 Healthy Marriage Initiative. Ethnographic research reveals how workshop leaders reinforced white, heterosexist, and middle class ideals of marriage and the nuclear family. And they reinforced patriarchal gender roles and stereotypes, upholding “cultural ideas of men as rational (strong) and women as emotional (weak).”[cxl]
Ethnographic
research on the implementation of welfare reform policies reveals both the
salience of racism and the neglect of the racial barriers that impede
employment in caseworkers’ and WTW trainers’ interactions with welfare recipients.
For instance, research reveals how case workers are more likely to encourage
white mothers than non-white mothers to finish high school and obtain education
when implementing WTW requirements.[cxli] Observations of WTW
workshops also revealed that trainers discouraged discussions of race, failing
to address participants’ experiences with racism in the labor market.[cxlii] Likewise, employers’
racial discrimination was generally ignored by WTW case managers in their
interactions with their clients.[cxliii]
Qualitative
research also shows how participants often questioned or challenged the enforcement
of welfare reform policies and the presumptions underlying them. For example,
welfare recipients frequently resisted the expectation that they ignore their
children’s needs in order to comply to work requirements, which led to high
rates of procedural diversion from the program.[cxliv] Interviews with black
welfare recipients show that many of them viewed WTW programs as “creating a
workforce of slave laborers,” and that they saw caseworkers’ presumptions that
they didn’t want to work as racist.[cxlv] Meanwhile, the presence
of same-sex and other non-traditional couples attending marriage promotion workshops
challenged the hegemonic assumptions about family life expressed by workshop
trainers.[cxlvi]
While otherwise insightful, this scholarship neglects the role of collective struggles over the implementation of welfare reform policies, some of which involved alliances between service providers and welfare recipients. By focusing carefully on everyday interactions at welfare offices or workshops, or capturing the views and experiences of individual welfare recipients, the unusual efforts of welfare rights activists to shape the implementation of welfare reform policies has been largely overlooked by ethnographers. The welfare state remains an important site of collective struggle, as various case studies of national or local welfare rights campaigns have demonstrated.[cxlvii]
Past research on the design and
implementation of welfare policies towards poor families, mostly headed by
women, tends to highlight its classist, racist, and patriarchal dimensions.
While capturing broad patterns, this research obscures the multi-vocal character
of the
I argue that whether or not welfare advocates are able to succeed in making policy gains at the implementation stage partly depended on their capacity to build broad based coalitions that crossed social divides rooted in class, race, or gender, and which cross policy sectors. This part of my argument borrows insights from the literature on social movements. While the welfare rights movement has been fairly small-scale and only sometimes employs disruptive tactics, it is nonetheless a social movement. By social movement, I refer to “those organized efforts, on the part of excluded groups, to promote or resist changes in the structure of society that involve recourse to non-institutional forms of political participation.”[cxlviii] Participants in social movements often work in league with more influential groups, including state actors, and frequently utilize a range of tactics that are more or less disruptive.[cxlix] If we are to fully understand the interrelationships between welfare policies and race, class, and gender relations and ideologies, we must pay attention to how such relations and ideologies shape the demands, rhetoric, and social composition of welfare rights campaigns, as well as actors’ responses to those campaigns.
The Power of
As Piven and Cloward’s classic study shows,
major gains in welfare rights were won in the
While otherwise insightful, what is missing from Piven and Cloward’s analysis is the role of allied groups in supporting poor people’s struggles, and how such support is often critical to making gains, especially during periods of welfare retrenchment. Also missing is an analysis of how gender and race interact with class politics to shape both poor people’s mobilization and welfare policies. A major argument of this book is that broad, cross-class and cross-racial alliances were often critical to the success of welfare rights campaigns. This book seeks to increase our understanding of the conditions under which welfare recipients and their allies were able to forge alliances with groups beyond those who traditionally advocated for welfare rights, how their campaigns challenged classist, racist, and patriarchal underpinnings of welfare policies, and why such alliances mattered to welfare policy-making.
Social movement research suggests that coalitions are often vital to activists’ success. Alliances improve access to members, allies, and inter-organizational ties as well as the material resources required to mobilize people. Coalitions thus expand the variety and numbers of people who get involved in collective actions (letter writing campaigns, lobbying, demonstrations, or more disruptive forms of protest), which helps to gain the attention of power holders.[cli] Forming coalitions with other types of groups, such as professional associations, experts, celebrities, or business groups, often adds legitimacy to activists’ demands.[clii] Alliances can sometimes improve activists’ access to policy-makers, enabling them to broker agreements with the state.[cliii] For all of these reasons, coalitions increase the effectiveness of demonstrations, boycotts, and lobbying campaigns.[cliv] Perhaps most importantly, alliances improve groups’ strategic capacity and leverage. As Piven and Cloward argue, poor people’s power is constrained by their position within social structures. For unemployed workers, their main source of leverage is their power to disrupt daily routines, such as through sit-in demonstrations or stopping traffic. Poor people’s alliances with workers improve their strategic leverage as workers are in a structural position to halt production, services, and the flow of capital. Coalitions also enhance activists’ strategic capacity when they enable aggrieved groups to carry out “multi-pronged” strategies or coordinated campaigns involving multiple targets and tactics.[clv] Of course, coalitions do have their pitfalls and challenges. First, coalition work can interfere with groups’ autonomy and their ability to meet their own organizational needs and goals.[clvi] Political differences, racism, sexism, class inequalities and other social cleavages also pose challenges for coalition building.[clvii] Successful coalition building requires effort to overcome such challenges if their fruits are to be born.
Scholarship on other movements, such as the civil
rights movement, suggests the importance of organizations, institutions, and
leaders within deprived communities for their mobilization.[clviii] Research on the
mobilization of extremely deprived low-income communities in the
Other research on poor people’s mobilization finds that it tends to be the most successful in winning benefits when reform-oriented politicians, or governmental allies, are present.[clxii] Evidence presented in this book is consistent with this finding. When reform-oriented or sympathetic policy-makers were present, demands were more easily won. When such policy-makers were absent, state actors more easily repressed welfare rights groups or ignored them, even when they were highly mobilized and supported by a broad alliance. This was especially the case when activists’ demands contradicted the vested interests of powerful groups, such as politicians’ and employers’ interests in minimizing social expenditures and putting more poor people to work. Demands that did not conflict with such vested interests were more easily won. Nevertheless, within these constraints, and sometimes in spite of them, poor people and their allies managed to shape the development and implementation of welfare reform policies.
Forging Alliances in the ‘Post-Welfare’ Era
As Schneider and Ingram (1993) argue, one of the most important consequences of public policy is to construct target populations, who become subject to particular kinds of treatment. They argue that the political power of target populations and how they are socially constructed or culturally portrayed influences the design of public policies, which in turn, powerfully shapes groups’ social status, access to resources, and their patterns of political participation. They claim that policy makers tend to adopt beneficial policies for “powerful, positively constructed target populations” and punitive policies towards “negatively constructed groups.”[clxiii] They suggest that the design of public policies, and the rationales justifying public policies, provide powerful messages that shape how target populations view themselves in their relationship to government, and how those groups are publicly perceived. They claim that, “Groups portrayed as dependents or deviants frequently fail to mobilize or object to the distribution of benefits and burdens because they have been stigmatized and labeled by the policy process itself.”[clxiv] By contrast, advantaged groups tend to participate actively in politics as they frequently view themselves as entitled and worthy of governmental assistance, and they tend to be treated as such by policy-makers.
Mobilizing groups, such as welfare recipients, that have been stigmatized through the policy process is challenging, as Schneider and Ingram (1993) suggest. Even more challenging is to mobilize them and make collective gains. But history has shown that this is not impossible. Policies that threaten groups’ status and access to resources can spark opposition and contestation even among the most denigrated social groups, especially if they are already organized, or if allies invest resources in organizing them. Extending Schneider and Ingram’s (1993) insights, one would expect the scale of policy targets to shape the incentives and opportunities for coalition building and mobilization in response to policy changes. If policies have inclusive targets, this increases the opportunities for building broad and influential social movement coalitions against them, especially if political opportunities appear to be relatively favorable. On the other hand, if policies have narrow targets, those opportunities tend to be diminished.[clxv]
When the policy threats
or opportunities associated with welfare reform crossed multiple policy domains
and symbolically or materially affected groups beyond the welfare population,
this helped to draw new groups, often less stigmatized and more advantaged than
welfare recipients, into welfare rights struggles. For example, the implementation of “work
first” policies that emphasized job placement over education and training
affected both welfare recipients and those employed in educational and job
training programs. These policies forced tens of thousands of students enrolled
in job training and college classes to quit them, frustrating their hopes of
obtaining better-paying jobs.[clxvi]
In
response, students receiving welfare organized at the state and local levels to
demand their rights to enroll in community colleges, four-year colleges, and
job training programs.[clxvii] Activists also
protested in support of stopping the five-year clock for recipients enrolled in
high school, college, or job-training programs.[clxviii] These campaigns,
which crossed the educational and welfare policy domains, often involved school
administrators, teachers, and other students, who were concerned with
maintaining access to, and demand for, educational programs.
Other campaigns focused on opposing threats to welfare recipients’ rights as women, sometimes with the support of feminist organizations. For example, feminist organizations filed legal challenges to the child exclusion policy, which denied additional assistance for a child born to a woman already receiving welfare. These groups claimed that this measure not only discriminated against children based on the conditions of their birth, but restricted women’s reproductive choices. Feminist organizations persuaded Congress to adopt a “domestic violence option” that allowed states to exempt battered women from new work requirements and time limits.[clxix] Various groups also contested the use of federal welfare money to promote marriage, pointing out how it discouraged women’s independence and might pressure poor women to stay in abusive relationships. Members of GrassRoots Organizing for Welfare Leadership (GROWL, a national coalition of 50 organizations in 20 states), for example, raised awareness about the problems with marriage promotion through protests and a policy briefing in Washington D.C., attended by more than 90 legislative staff.[clxx]
Campaigns challenging nativist and racist welfare policies and practices involved immigrant rights organizations, ethnic organizations, and welfare advocacy groups. Such groups joined together in opposing rules restricting legal immigrants’ right to welfare, organizing numerous marches, demonstrations, and legislative visits to prevent their implementation at the state and federal levels.[clxxi] Various advocacy groups around the nation also documented and opposed the lack of translation services and other problems that prevented immigrants, racial minorities, and other poor people from getting access to welfare.[clxxii] Drawing lessons from these local campaigns, activists drafted a national bill, the Racial Equity and Fair Treatment Bill. The introduction of this bill helped to reframe public debates about welfare reform, but it failed to win much Congressional support.[clxxiii]
Given the limits of existing U.S. welfare policies, it
is not surprising that some welfare rights groups, namely the
Philadelphia-based Kensington Welfare Rights Union formed in 1991, drew on
internationally recognized economic human rights policies to build alliances
among various groups of poor people and challenge the implementation of welfare
reform policies. In June 1997, Kensington members launched a Poor People’s
Economic Human Rights campaign and organized a ten-day “March for Our Lives”
from
Some demands failed to attract much support outside
of the traditional welfare advocacy community as they challenged the central
thrust of welfare reform policies and the new “gendered consensus”[clxxv]
that poor mothers should be employed rather than stay at home to care for their
children. In 1999, a national moratorium on time limits for welfare benefits was
called by the People’s Network for a New Safety Net.[clxxvi] “Stop the Clock” protests were waged in 25 states calling
for a moratorium on federal time limits.[clxxvii] While these protests involved allied groups, such as
children’s and women’s advocates, they mainly involved traditional welfare
advocacy organizations. Likewise, protests and demands calling for the
abolition of welfare-to-work requirements on the grounds that they
devalued poor women’s caregiving work did not receive much support outside of
grassroots welfare rights organizations, limiting their impact.[clxxviii]
New Allies for
Welfare Rights: Immigrant Rights and Labor Activists
The
campaigns examined in this book focus our attention on two types of
“cross-movement coalitions” that formed in post-PRWORA struggles for welfare
justice: coalitions between the labor movement and welfare rights movement and
those between the immigrant rights and welfare rights movement. The boundaries
of each of these movements, like all social movements, are blurry and
overlapping. Yet, analytically distinguishing these movements helps us to
better understand the dynamics and trajectory of the alliances formed in this
period of welfare history as well as some of the inter-organizational tensions
that occurred. Coalition building between welfare rights groups and other types
of organizations was facilitated by the coincidence of welfare reform with the rise
of the immigrant rights movement and efforts to revitalize the labor movement.
Labor activists and immigrant rights activists were responding to their own
sets of threats, only some of which overlapped with welfare rights issues. In
joining welfare rights struggles, they were also shaped by, and contributed to,
internal shifts within these two movements. A convergence of political forces
thus came together in the late 1990s to broaden the scope and the scale of
welfare rights activity.
The labor movement as a whole was
not particularly active in the post-PRWORA struggle for welfare justice, but a
number of labor organizations did join it. In 1998, Jobs for Justice rallied
thousands in over 60 cities for a national day of action against welfare reform,
calling attention to the lack of good job opportunities for welfare recipients.[clxxix]
Unions also became involved in joint campaigns to organize workfare workers
with community groups in cities where the labor movement was relatively strong:
While we
should not exaggerate its extent, this level of interest in welfare issues by
organized labor was markedly greater than what occurred in earlier decades. Prior
to the late 1990s, most campaigns to organize job training participants,
unemployed workers, and welfare recipients were initiated by community
organizations.[clxxxiii]
Although some unions supported the efforts to organize unemployed workers in
the 1930s and supported the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) in the
1960s, most unions ignored these campaigns. Some union leaders even opposed the
NWRO’s demands, such as demands for a guaranteed income, which they viewed as
undermining the work ethic. They also expressed alarm over the expansion of
welfare-to-work and job training programs, claiming that participants would
compete with other workers for jobs and reduce unions’ bargaining position
within the public sector.[clxxxiv]
Many union leaders thus helped to reinforce long-standing divisions between
employed and unemployed workers rather than encouraging greater solidarity
among them.
Even today, there are many barriers
preventing service providers, only some of whom are unionized, from joining
welfare recipients in their struggles to improve welfare programs. Fieldwork
and interviews in
Of course, the challenges of building community-labor
alliances are not isolated to welfare issues; such challenges have generally
been great within the
There
were at least three reasons why labor unions mobilized in response to welfare
reform. First, the implementation of welfare reform posed multiple threats to unions
and their members. The privatization of welfare services and other rollbacks in
social services threatened public sector unions with job loss. The influx of
welfare-to-work participants into the public sector also threatened to displace
unionized workers and to erode their bargaining position. The loss of welfare
entitlements coupled with the implementation of welfare-to-work programs
shredded the safety net for all workers, undermined the wage floor, and
increased job competition by pushing millions of welfare recipients into the
low wage labor market.[clxxxix] Second, the rising
cost of living, stagnant and declining real wages, and the rise in contingent
(and insecure) employment increased unions’ interest in expanding access to
supportive services for low-income workers, such as child care and health care.
The implementation of welfare reform created new opportunities for pushing
through such expansions as policy-makers at all levels sought ways to “make
work pay” and to ease the transition from welfare to work.
Finally, the spread of social movement unionism into
the mainstream
Social movement unionism spread in the 1990s for a
number of reasons. First, the leadership of John Sweeney and the New Voice
slate encouraged AFL-CIO unions to invest more resources into labor organizing.
Greater inclusion of women and people of color within organized labor as well
as organizers with experience in other social movements also fostered social
movement unionism and a greater interest in community issues.[cxci] Finally, there was a
sense of crisis within the labor movement as membership declined, Republicans
gained power, and unions confronted rising threats of layoffs, greater economic
insecurity, and other pressures associated with neoliberal restructuring and
economic globalization. This perceived crisis encouraged union leaders to
embrace tactical innovation.[cxcii] As a result, unions
increasingly relied on community support for labor campaigns.[cxciii] Unions and central
labor councils also became more active in voter mobilization and efforts to
influence public policies.[cxciv] Unions’ involvement in
welfare rights campaigns thus reflected broader political shifts within unions
as well as a recognition of the ways that welfare reform threatened workers’
and union members’ interests.
Immigrant rights advocates
also participated in the struggle for welfare rights in the late 1990s. Efforts
to restore or replace legal immigrants’ access to welfare benefits that were
lost through PRWORA were part of a much broader struggle to defend and expand
the rights of immigrants. The immigrant rights movement rose to new heights in
the 1990s and early 2000s in response to a backlash against immigrants that had
been growing since 1980. That anti-immigrant backlash included the promotion of
Congressional legislation that aimed to reduce the levels of immigration
through tougher border enforcement, country-level restrictions on the numbers
of legal immigrants allowed to enter the
Immigrant rights advocates
sought to counter this backlash and to also shape immigration reform laws. In
the 1980s and 1990s, various organizations and institutions, including the
Catholic Church, engaged in Congressional lobbying. Immigrant rights advocates opposed employer
sanctions for hiring undocumented immigrants and guest worker programs, and
they pushed for the legalization of undocumented immigrants already residing in
the
Various factors facilitated
the mobilization of immigrants and their allies in support of immigrants’
rights in this period. These included the growing size of the immigrant
population and its various ethnic communities, which were also geographically
concentrated. Civic and grassroots organizations providing services to, or
advocating on behalf of, the rights of immigrants or particular racial or
ethnic groups also grew alongside them. Various other organizations and
institutions also became more active in the struggle for immigrants’ rights,
including the Catholic Church, other religious institutions, workers’ centers,
and labor unions. These civic organizations and institutions helped to provide
the leadership and resources needed to mobilize people. Collaboration across
race and ethnicity was encouraged by the formation of various formal and
informal coalitions in response to anti-immigrant bills and legislation.
While the immigrant rights
movement was growing in the 1990s and the early 2000s, it was still maturing
and had not yet reached its peak of mobilization. Much of the activity was
defensive, responding to the threats to immigrants’ rights posed by various
state and national laws and policy proposals. In this stage of the immigrant
rights movement, much of the activity on behalf of immigrants involved
lobbying, citizenship drives, service provision, legal advocacy, and voter
mobilization, although various demonstrations and marches also occurred.
Protests against
In short, the implementation of federal welfare reform presented overlapping threats to the rights of welfare recipients, immigrants, and service providers, which encouraged the formation of cross-movement coalitions in support of welfare rights. The implementation of federal welfare reform also coincided with other threats to workers’ rights and to immigrants’ rights and rising activism confronting those threats among immigrants, unionized workers, and their allies. This convergence facilitated the formation of new, cross-movement coalitions for welfare rights in the late 1990s and early 2000s. These coalitions, and their success, depended upon the local willingness and capacity of activists to build bridges and to mobilize however. This book helps to explore the conditions under which both unions and service providers were able to join forces with welfare recipients to improve welfare policies, and with what results.
Outcomes of Post-PRWORA Welfare Rights Activism
Even when new groups joined welfare rights campaigns
in the late 1990s, most remained fairly small-scale. Local events usually involved
only a few hundred, and at the most a few thousand people. As the former
director of the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support commented, “This
has not been a ‘movement period’ comparable to the welfare rights movement of
the 1960s and 1970s. We do not see large numbers of people in the streets or at
the welfare office demanding change…”[cxcix]
While other movements, such as the anti-war movement, the immigrant rights
movement, and the movement for global justice rose to new heights in the late
1990s and early 2000s, welfare rights activism did not gain such wide popularity.
The small scale of post-1996 welfare rights campaigns
reflects the enormous challenges that the current welfare system creates for
organizing a mass based welfare rights movement. The
The implementation of federal and state welfare reform policies also created additional barriers to organizing public assistance recipients, even as it brought greater public attention to welfare issues. Tough new welfare-to-work requirements increased the time that welfare mothers spent working and transporting themselves to and from their workplace and their children’s daycare, reducing their time to organize or protest. The implementation of welfare reform, coupled with a booming labor market in the late 1990s, also led to rapid declines and high turnover in the welfare population as tens of thousands of welfare recipients left welfare for paid employment and welfare became harder to access.[ccii]
Even when welfare rights activists mobilize and gain
media attention, they face an uphill battle in challenging the marginalization
of adult welfare recipients within
In the aftermath of PRWORA, welfare rights activists
spent considerable energy in trying to reframe the public discourse about
welfare reform in order to gain greater support for their goals. Concerned with
the biases in elite-sponsored welfare reform evaluations, for example, the National
Welfare Monitoring and Advocacy Project involved 20 national and local
organizations in documenting and publicizing the negative impacts of welfare
reform.[cciii]
In
Not only are welfare recipients demonized, so are the groups that organize them. The media scandals surrounding the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in 2009 which led to the demise of many of its state and local chapters and the withdrawal of federal funds from the organization illustrate this point. ACORN, a national federation of multi-issue organizations representing people with low and moderate incomes in more than 70 cities in 2009, was founded in 1970 by former organizers with the National Welfare Rights Organizations. True to its roots, a number of ACORN chapters responded to the implementation of federal welfare reforms in the 1990s by organizing welfare recipients and providers of subsidized child care. As documented in this book, these campaigns helped to defend low-income people’s rights in an era of welfare retrenchment. Other ACORN campaigns, including those to curb predatory lending by banks and in support of local living wage ordinances, were also successful. Perhaps because of such success, the organization came under fire by conservative groups and the mainstream media for a series of scandals in 2008 and 2009. First, the organization came under fire by conservative Republicans for voter fraud in 2000. Although an U.S. Attorney General’s investigation cleared the organization of these charges, voter fraud allegations quickly resurfaced in the mainstream press in 2008 after Barack Obama was elected as President, even though the organization had reported voter irregularities to authorities. Rumors about the misuse of public funds by the organization’s founder, Wade Rathke and his brother, were also circulated by the mainstream news, despite efforts by national staff and leaders to address such problems. Finally, conservative groups and the mainstream media circulated selectively edited videotape of ACORN staff from various offices around the nation giving tax and housing advice to right-wing activists who were disguised as a pimp and a prostitute. Although the organization attempted to improve the management and accountability of its staff, including firing many of the workers involved in the scandals, the public image of the organization was ruined. National surveys showed that a majority of those polled had an unfavorable opinion of the organization, and public and private funders alike withdrew money from the organization. Staff and leaders of the organization’s largest chapters were forced to close their offices and disaffiliate from the national federation. As John Atlas and Peter Dreier persuasively argue, ACORN’s experience reveals both how conservative groups carry out an “orchestrated campaign” to demonize progressive organizations and activists, and the complicity of the mainstream news media.[ccvi] More commonly, the activities of welfare rights organizations are simply ignored by the mainstream press.
Despite the enormous challenges facing welfare rights activists, they did manage to make policy gains in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Overall, welfare rights activists were more influential at the state and local levels, where it was both easier to mobilize poor people and their allies and where political conditions were sometimes more favorable than at the national level. Republican control of Congress and the rightward shift in Democrats’ positions on welfare issues prevented welfare rights activists from winning very much at the national level. Nevertheless, activists did manage to protect or restore benefits at the national level for certain groups of poor people that were threatened by PRWORA, especially when their demands gained support beyond poor people and welfare advocacy organizations. For example, women’s rights groups managed to win Congressional support for the “domestic violence option,” which allowed states to exempt victims of domestic violence from time limits and work requirements. Immigrant rights activists persuaded Congress to restore some of the benefits that legal immigrants lost in 1996. Child welfare and women’s rights groups also persuaded Congress to increase federal funding for publicly subsidized child care.
Even at the state and local levels, the victories of
poor people’s movements seem puny in comparison to the major policy gains that
were made in other historical periods, such as the 1930s and 1960s, when poor
people’s movements arose to new heights and led to the creation and expansion
of welfare programs. Instead, in the decade after the passage of PRWORA,
welfare rights actions were fairly small-scale and most often led to the
rejection of proposed cutbacks or restrictive regulations at the state or local
levels, or improvements in operational procedures. Some welfare rights groups
eliminated or eased restrictive policies and practices that prevented poor
people from obtaining welfare. Make the Road By Walking in
These were small, but important, victories. They made a tangible difference in people’s lives, given the political weight and momentum behind efforts to push poor people into the low-wage labor market and to de-fund, restrict access to, and privatize social services. Even when they were unable to halt cutbacks or make policy gains, welfare rights organizations had a positive impact on low-income people’s lives; they helped to give low-income people a collective voice. They helped welfare recipients and other poor people to assert their rights to income and social services, and to challenge negative stereotypes about the poor, and to make the claim that the economic system and policy-makers are key to the generation of poverty.[ccxi]
Appendix: Data and Methods
My research is based on multiple data and methods. I
interviewed a total of 110 people between 1998 and 2008. These included 44
people in
When possible, my interviews were supplemented with
field research. My interest in this book initially grew out of my observation
of a public forum on welfare reform that took place in
Given my time and budget constraints, I was unable to
conduct nearly as much field research in
For both
Table 1.1: Welfare Policies in
|
TANF Policies |
|
|
|
Most severe sanction for non-compliance. |
Adult portion of grant for 6 months |
Entire grant permanently |
|
Application of sanction rate, compared to most other states |
Low |
High |
|
Permitted all work activities allowable under federal law |
Yes |
No |
|
Exempts adult recipients from work requirements and time limits if they are sick or incapacitated. |
Yes |
No |
|
Exempts adult recipients from work requirements and time limits if they are caring for a sick or incapacitated person. |
Yes |
No |
|
Exempts recipients aged 60 or more years from work requirements and time limits. |
Yes |
No |
|
Exempts victims of domestic violence from work requirements and time limits |
Yes |
No |
|
Maternity leave from work requirements (months after birth of an infant). |
12 |
3 |
|
Exempts recipients from time limits if child is 3 months or less in age. |
No |
Yes |
|
Exempts from time limits unemployed recipients cooperating with welfare regulations. |
No |
Yes |
|
Other Welfare
Programs |
|
|
|
Number of federal benefits replaced to legal immigrants |
4 |
2 |
|
Requires counties to provide General Assistance. |
Yes |
No |
Table 1.2: Selected
Characteristics of
Los
Angeles-Long Beach Milwaukee-Waukesha
Labor Force
(PMSA, 1998) a
4,645,468 809,079
Unemployment Rate 6.5% 3.3%
(PMSA, 1998) a
Unemployment Rate 7.4% 5.2%
(Central City, 1998) a
GR WELFARE-TO-WORK
participants b 15-26,000
------
TANF WELFARE-TO-WORK participants b 60,537 14,121
All WELFARE-TO-WORK participants b 75,537-86,537 14,121
Sources: a) unemployment rates are annual averages; of
Bureau of Labor Statistics (1999a,1999 b) These welfare-to-work figures are for
June 1998 and include participants in educational and training programs, and so
are larger than the actual size of the workfare population (data not
available). They give a rough approximation of the relative sizes of the
populations that activists sought to organize in each city however. Monthly total from Wisconsin Department of
Workforce Development (1998); estimate from Citizens for Workfare Justice
(1998); monthly total from Los Angeles Department of Public Social Services
(1998).
Table 1.3: Demographic and
Political Characteristics
Percent of the population
that is foreign-born, 1996* 25.6% 2.9%
Percent of the population
that is Latino, 1996** 27.9% 2.1%
Percent of the population
that is Asian, 1996** 11.7% 1.4%
Average AFDC***
Payment, 1996 $198 $155
Percent of Legislators
Who Are Latino, 1996**** 11.7% 0%
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Source:
Zimmerman and Tumlin, 1999;
**
Source:
***Source:
****Source: The Council of
State Governments, 1998; National Association of Latino Elected Officials
Educational Fund, 1997.
Endnotes
[ii] Mink 1998; Hays 2003; Gilens 1999; Neubeck and Cazenave 2001; Fording, Soss, and Schram 2007.
[iii] Pierson 1994, 1996, 2001a, b, c.
[iv] These figures are for Temporary Aid to Needy Families (Brown 2010).
[v] Albelda 2001; Hays 2003a: 55; Legal Momentum, The Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund 2011; Loprest 1999; Savner et al. 2002: 4; Weicher 2001: 19.
[vi] Legal Momentum, The Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund 2010.
[vii] Gornick and Meyers 2003; Neubeck 2006. These international measures of the poverty rate are based on the percent of the population that earns 50 percent or less of the country’s median income (Gornick and Meyers 2003: 75).
[viii] Christopher 2002.
[ix] The poverty rate was 20.7% for all persons below 18 years (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Smith 2010).
[x] For 2009, the poverty rate is 35.4% among African-American children and 33.1% among Latino children (U.S. Census Bureau 2010a).
[xi]
[xii]
[xiii] The federal government’s two official measures of
poverty—the poverty threshold and the poverty guideline-- were developed in the
1960s. These measures are based on two slightly different estimates of the
annually adjusted cost of a minimally sufficient diet for a family of a given
size. These estimates are then multiplied by three. This multiplier was chosen
based on consumption patterns found in the 1950s, which suggested that families
spent about one-third of its household income on food. Since the 1950s, the
real prices of many goods and services have increased markedly, including the
cost of housing, health insurance, child care, and transportation. The cost of
living also varies greatly across
[xiv] In other words, these scholars suggest that the poverty guideline for a family of three in 2008 should be at least $35,200, rather than the federal government’s figure of $17,600; this latter figure that would place most female-headed households in poverty (Cauthen and Fass 2008).
[xv] Compared to welfare states in most other highly
industrialized democratic nations, the
[xvi] It required states to have at least 50 percent of single adult TANF recipients engaged in at least 30 hours of “work activities” (20 hours of which should be actual work) and provided credit toward this goal for caseload reductions. Able-bodied adult recipients of Food Stamps with no dependent children (aged 18-49); they were denied assistance after three months if they did not work at least 20 hours per week or meet their state’s WELFARE-TO-WORK requirements unless exempt because of their area’s job shortages, high unemployment rates, or other reasons, recipients are required to work at least 20 hours per week or participate in a workfare program for the number of hours it would take for them to earn their benefits if they were paid the higher of the federal or state minimum wage.
[xvii] Weaver 2000. Polls, taken in 1993 and 1994, show that most respondents believed that recipients should be allowed to receive benefits at the end of their time limit if they worked for them. A 1993 survey found that more than 70 percent of voters were willing to make exceptions for the two-year consecutive time limit for mothers with pre-school children and those working part-time at low wages. About 60 percent of respondents did not think that work requirements should be applied to mothers of infants (Weaver 2000: 181-4; Garin et al. 1994).
[xviii] Mettler 2000; Schram 2006.
[xix] Polls taken in the 1990s also showed high levels of public support for job training for welfare recipients, with most respondents indicating a willingness to pay more in taxes to provide it (Weaver 2000: 181; Weaver, Shapiro, and Jacobs 1995: 620). The work first approach was encouraged by PRWORA’s stipulation that states only allow education to count as a work activity for twenty percent of their caseload (Gordon 2001: 13). The policy was later revised so that 30 percent of recipients in each state are allowed to participate in educational activities as part of their mandatory WELFARE-TO-WORK hours.
[xx] The number of state GR programs declined from 25 to 13 (Gallagher 1999: 5-6).
[xxi] Sparks 2003.
[xxii] Brown 2010.
[xxiii] Albert and King 2001; Hays 2003a: 58; Rogers-Dillon 2001: 8-9; Weicher 2001: 19; Loprest and Wissoker 2002. The expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, child care services, publicly subsidized health insurance, and minimum wage increases in the 1990s also made it easier for poor mothers to leave welfare for work (Savner, Strawn, and Greenberg 2002: 3-5).
[xxiv] Brown 2010; Loprest 2003; Savner, Strawn, and Greenberg 2002: 3-5; New York Times 2002; An Urban Institute survey found that, “Thirty-two percent of welfare recipients were in paid jobs in 1999. That number dropped to 28 percent by 2002. Employment also declined among those who had just come off of the welfare rolls, slipping from 50 percent in 1999 to 42 percent in 2002” (Zedlewski and Loprest 2003).
[xxv] Brown 2010.
[xxvi]Loprest 1999; Rogers-Dillon 2001; Urban Institute 2001; Savner, Strawn, and Greenberg 2002: 3.
[xxvii] Studies of former welfare recipients who found employment showed that most were earning between $7.00 and $7.50 per hour in the late 1990s, and most did not work full-time and year round (Albelda 2001; Hays 2003a: 55; Weicher 2001: 19). Another review of more than 30 recent state-level “leaver studies” found that median wages ranged from $6.00 to $8.47 an hour, while a national survey by the Urban Institute found that the national median hourly wage for welfare leavers was $6.61 in 1997 and $7.15 in 1999 (Savner et al. 2002: 4; Loprest 1999, Chart 7). See also Legal Momentum (2011).
[xxviii] Burnham 2001; Legal Momentum (2011); Loprest 1999; Hays 2003a: 226.
[xxix] Hays 2003a: 59.
[xxx] This philosophy, associated with the welfare reform
program adopted in
[xxxi] Jones-DeWeever and Gault 2006; Legal Momentum 2011.
[xxxii] Legal Momentum 2011.
[xxxiii] Peck and Theodore 1999: 6; see also Peck 2001.
[xxxiv] Carroll 2001.
[xxxv] Cook 1998.
[xxxvi] Heuler-Williams 1998.
[xxxvii] Citizens for Workfare Justice 1998; Krinsky and Reese 2005.
[xxxviii] Falcocchio 2001.
[xxxix] Work exemption rules varied across states, but commonly included welfare recipients with disabilities and victims of domestic violence (Pear 2002). On the impact of caseload reduction credits, flexibility in the use of federal Maintenance of Effort funds, the use of state funds to provide assistance to TANF recipients, and other administrative practices on the implementation of welfare-to-work requirements, see DeParle (2004: 220) and Brown (2010: 10-13).
[xl] Handler 1995; Handler and Hasenfeld 1991: 40.
[xli] Post 1997: 35; Tilly 1996.
[xlii] Business groups tried to cut labor costs even further by seeking exemptions from minimum wage and other labor laws for welfare-to-work participants, though they were not successful (Deparle 1997; Post 1997: 27; Rector 1997).
[xliii] Schram 2006; Wacquant 2009.
[xliv] Legal Momentum 2011.
[xlv] Rowe and Murphy 2006: 70-71.
[xlvi] This is the most recent Government Accounting Office analysis available (Brown 2010).
[xlvii] Legal Momentum 2011.
[xlviii] Brown 2010.
[xlix] Zedlewski et al. 2002.
[l] United States Congressional Budget Office 2005.
[li] Zedlewski et al. 2008.
[lii] These latter women were particularly vulnerable; they
were abused as children, had children at an early age, did not finish high
school, had little or no job experience, were currently involved with abusive
men, and sometimes suffered from drug addictions (Scott,
[liii] Burnham 2001: 40-41.
[liv]
[lv] Farrell 2008: 93.
[lvi] Patriquin 2001: 87; Gordon 2001: 4.
[lvii] Farrell 2008: 93, 112.
[lviii] Schott and Finch 2010.
[lix] Legal Momentum 2011.
[lx] Collins and Mayer 2010; Dohan 2003; Edin and Lein 1997; Legal Momentum 2011.
[lxi] Legal Momentum 2011: 7.
[lxii] Bronfenbrenner 2009.
[lxiii] Greenhouse 2008: 5.
[lxiv] Greenhouse 2008: 9.
[lxv] DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Smith 2009.
[lxvi] Brown 2010.
[lxvii] Collins and Mayer 2010.
[lxviii] The New York Times 2009.
[lxix] Realty Trac 2010.
[lxx]
[lxxi] Anderson 2011; Williams and Hegewisch 2011.
[lxxii] Center for Budget and Policy Priorities 2009, 2010.
[lxxiii] DeVerteuil, Marr, and Snow (2009) identify four forms of resistance among homeless people to anti-homeless ordinances and displacement: exit, adaptation, persistence, and voice. Only the latter involves collective action, while the former forms refer to individualized responses.
[lxxiv] DeParle 2004: 16.
[lxxv] DeParle 2004:59.
[lxxvi] For a good review of these reforms, see DeParle 2004: 165-170 and Collins and Mayer 2010: 57-58.
[lxxvii] Hein 2002.
[lxxviii] Collins and Mayer 2010: 56-57.
[lxxix] Collins and Mayer 2010: 59; Wilayto 1997; Hudson Institute 2002.
[lxxx] Manhattan Institute 2002; Stefancic and Delgado 1996: 86; Rector 1997.
[lxxxi] Handler 2004; Reese 2007.
[lxxxii] Flaherty 1997; Sharma-Jensen 1997.
[lxxxiii] Carleton 1998; Dresang 1998a; Hein 2002; Mayers 1999a, b.
[lxxxiv] Hein 2002.
[lxxxv] The
[lxxxvi] U.S. General Accounting Office 2000.
[lxxxvii] In total, forty-two out of fifty states deny recipients’ entire benefit or close the case as the most severe form of sanction when recipients are not compliant with program rules. However, most states do this for only a limited time period, ranging between 1 and 12 months (Rowe and Murphy 2006).
[lxxxviii]
[lxxxix] Collins and Mayer 2010: 65.
[xc] Collins and Mayer 2010: 23.
[xci] Peck 2001.
[xcii] Collins and Mayer 2010: 29.
[xciii] Milkman 2006.
[xciv] Staggenborg 1986: 375.
[xcv] Amenta, Hoffman, and Young 1999: 6-7; see also Amenta and Young 1999.
[xcvi] For example, see Noble 1997 and Lieberman 1998.
[xcvii] Marston 2000.
[xcix] Jenness, Meyer, and Ingram 2004: 300. As Deleon (1999) points out, these phases have been conceptualized differently by various scholars. Laswell (1971) initially distinguished seven stages in the policy process (intelligence, promotion, prescription, invocation, application, termination, and appraisal), which were later condensed by Brewer (1974) to six stages: initiation, estimation, selection, implementation, evaluation, and termination.
[c] Deleon 1999: 23.
[ci] Sabatier 1999.
[cii] For example, see Hicks 1999; Noble 1997; Quadagno 1984, 1985, 1994; Piven and Cloward 1993 [1971], 1977; Peck 2001.
[ciii] Reese 2005.
[civ] Collins and Mayer 2010; Peck 2001; Peck and Theodore 1999; Tilly 1996; Wacquant 2009.
[cv] Ridzi 2009.
[cvi] Mink 1998; Gordon 1994; Brown 1999; Fording 1997; Gilens 1999; Fording, Soss, and Schram 2007; Lieberman 1998; Mettler 1998; Neubeck and Cazenave 2001; Quadagno 1994.
[cvii] Reese 2005.
[cviii] Reese 2005.
[cix] Wacquant 2009.
[cx] Albelda 2001: 71; Institute for Women’s Policy Research 1994; Duncan 2000: 435; Reese 2005, Chapter 1.
[cxi] One exception to this is the higher rate of Supplemental Security Income usage among immigrants, especially Asian refugees, in 1989 (Bean, Van Hook, and Glick 1997: 448). Blau 1984; Chang 2000: 21-32; Jensen 1988; Kposowa 1998: 147-159; Tienda and Jenson 1986. Clark and Passel (1993), cited in Calavita 1996: 290; National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, cited in Moore 1998, Suarez-Orozco and Suarez-Orozco 1995: 28-35.
[cxii] Gilens 1999; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1995; Neubeck
and Cazenave 2001; Schram, Soss, and
Fording 2003.
[cxiii] By 1994, almost 62 percent of married women (husband present) with children under six were employed, more than double the figure for 1970 (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1994). Polls taken in the mid-1990s found that most respondents supported time limits for welfare and work requirements for mothers with children under three (Weaver 2000: 177-183).
[cxiv] Skocpol 1992.
[cxv] Piven and Cloward 1977b; Amenta 1998.
[cxvi] Amenta 1998, 2006.
[cxvii] Steensland 2008; Quadagno 2005.
[cxviii] Kornbluh 1997; Nadasen 2004; Piven and Cloward 1977b; Quadagno 1994; West 1981.
[cxix] Amenta 2006.
[cxx] De Jong et al. 2006.
[cxxi] Mettler 2000.
[cxxii] Gonzales 2007: 190-2
[cxxiii] Idem.
[cxxiv] Anheier 2009: 1092.
[cxxv] Aiken and Bode 2009; Harris and McDonald 2000; Gonzales 2007.
[cxxvi] Gonzalez 2007: 197-8.
[cxxvii] Anheier 2009: 1088.
[cxxviii] Andrew 2006.
[cxxix] Fording (2003) finds that tougher time limits were more likely to be adopted when higher shares of their caseload were black or Latino. States were significantly more likely to adopt tougher sanctions and family caps, when a higher share of their caseload was black, but not Latino (Soss, Schram, Vartanian, and O’Brien 2001; Gais and Weaver 2002). Survey research also shows that public support for more welfare spending is significantly lower in states where higher proportions of recipients were black (Johnson 2003: 157; Fox 2004).On the other hand, consistent with the “contact hypothesis,” research shows that whites who live in areas with small numbers of Latinos are more likely than those from areas where Latinos are more prevalent to stereotype Latinos as lazy, to want to decrease spending on welfare, and to let their negative stereotypes about Latinos influence their welfare-spending preferences (Fox 2004).
[cxxx] Fording 2003: 81-88; Soss et al. 2001.
[cxxxi] Fording 2003: 81-88; Gais and Weaver 2002;
[cxxxii] Cauthen and Amenta 1996; Fording 2003: 81-88; Soss et al. 2001; Gais and Weaver 2002.
[cxxxiii] Mettler 2000.
[cxxxiv] Analyzing administrative data from
[cxxxv] Ridzi 2004; Ridzi and London 2006.
[cxxxvi] Korteweg 2006: 329.
[cxxxvii] Ibid: 330.
[cxxxviii] Hays 2003.
[cxxxix] Ridzi 2009.
[cxl] Heath 2009: 44.
[cxli] This research was produced by Susan Gooden, cited in Burnham 2001: 44
[cxlii] Korteweg 2006: 327.
[cxliii] Bannerjee and Ridzi 2008.
[cxliv] Ridzi 2004; Ridzi and London 2006.
[cxlv] Ibid.
[cxlvi] Heath (2006).
[cxlvii] For example, see Bhargava 2002; Daniel 2002; Hall and Strege-Flora 2002; Kingfisher 1996; Krajcer and Delgado 2002; Miewald 2003; Neubeck 2006; Abramovitz 2000; Baptist and Briker-Jenkins 2002.
[cxlviii] McAdam 1999 [1986]: 25.
[cxlix] Tarrow 1998.
[cl] Betz 1974; Jackson and Johnson 1974; Swank and Hicks 1984.
[cli] Gerhards and Rucht 1992; Jones et al. 2001; Jenkins and Perrow 1977; McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1988, 1996: 13; McAdam 1999 [1982]; Reese 2005b; Shearer 1982; Shaw 1999; Staggenborg 1986.
[clii] Prunty 1984; Epstein 1996; Taylor 1996.
[cliii] Diani 1997; Gamson 1975.
[cliv] For example, see Gerhards and Rucht 1992; Jenkins and Perrow 1977; Jones et al. 2001; Reese 2005b; Shaw 1999; Shearer 1982; Staggenborg 1986.
[clv] Tarrow 1998: 103-4, 152.
[clvi] Zald and McCarthy 1980; Kleidman and Rochon 1997; Hathaway and Meyer 1997: 61-67; Staggenborg 1986.
[clvii] Arnold 1995; Gitlin 1995: 116-125; Rose 2000.
[clviii] McAdam 1999 [1982].
[clix] Piven and Cloward’s theory (1977a, b) has been rightly criticized for overlooking the role of organizations and organizational resources, such as money, staff, and leaders, for shaping the mobilization of low-income people (Perrow and Jenkins 1977; Cress and Snow 2000; Valocchi 1990).
[clx] Imig 1997; Jenkins and Eckert 1986; McAdam 1982; Cress and Snow 1996.
[clxi] Fletcher and Gapasin 2008.
[clxii] Amenta 1998; Amenta, Carruthers, and Zylan 1992; Cress and Snow 2000.
[clxiii] Schneider and Ingram 1993: 334.
[clxiv] Schneider and Ingram 1993: 344.
[clxv] My argument here borrows insights from the political
process model of social movements, which suggests that activists’ incentives to
overcome their differences and such challenges for cooperation increase in
response to new political opportunities or threats. New opportunities and threats not only create
a sense of urgency among organizers, they tend to mobilize constituents and
donors, which reduce the scarcity of, and competition for, organizational
resources (See Hathaway and Meyer 1997; Kleidman and Rochon 1997; Staggenborg
1986). Various studies examine the relative importance of threat and
opportunity for the formation of various kinds of social movement coalitions.
For example, see McCammon and Campbell (2002), Van Dyke and Soule (2002), and
Van Dyke (2003). Almeida’s (2003) case
study of
[clxvi] Gordon 2001: 13; United States Student Association 2002: 5.
[clxvii] Kornbluh 1998; Miewald 2003.
[clxviii] Wheeler 2002.
[clxix] Abramovitz 2000: 147.
[clxx] Daniel 2002; Krajcer and Delgado 2002.
[clxxi] Reese and Ramirez 2002.
[clxxii] Some of these groups worked with
[clxxiii] Krajcer and Delgado 2002.
[clxxiv] Neubeck 2006:
[clxxv]
[clxxvi] Abramovitz 2000: 145-6.
[clxxvii] Liu 1999; Defranco 1999.
[clxxviii] A similar campaign in
[clxxix] Abramovitz 2000: 145-6.
[clxxx] AFSCME formed a temporary organizing partnership with A Job is a Right in New York City; SEIU invested in several workfare organizing projects, in collaboration with People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) in San Francisco and AGENDA in Los Angeles; CWA formed an organizing partnership with ACORN in New Jersey and in Milwaukee, and the AFL-CIO supported a workfare organizing project in Baltimore (Krinsky and Reese 2006; Simmons 2002).
[clxxxi] Worthen, Edwards, and Stokes 2002.
[clxxxii] Simmons 2002: 73-78.
[clxxxiii] Tait 2005.
[clxxxiv] Reese and Newcombe 2003; West 1981.
[clxxxv] Ridzi 2007.
[clxxxvi] Clawson 2003; Isaac and Christensen 2002: 723–25; Katznelson 1981, 2005; Stepan-Norris and Zeitlin 2003; Tait 2005.
[clxxxvii] Fantasia and Voss 2004; Levi 2001; Nissen 2003a, b; Voss and Sherman 2000.
[clxxxviii]
[clxxxix] Simmons 2002.
[cxc] Dreiling 1998; Johnston 2000; Obach 2004; Robinson 2000; Nissen 2003a, b; Scipes 1992; Voss and Sherman 2000.
[cxci] Nissen 2003a, b, 2004; Voss and Sherman 2000.
[cxcii] Johnston 2000; Robinson 2000; Rose 2000: 99–102; Voss and Sherman 2000.
[cxciii] Bronfenbrenner et al. 1998; Clawson 2003; Nissen 2004, 1995; Brecher and Costello 1990.
[cxciv] Clawson 2003; Eimer 1999; Matejka 2000;
[cxcv] Heredia 2008; Reese 2005.
[cxcvi] The measure was overturned through a court ruling in 1997 and the state’s appeal of this ruling was dropped in 1998 under Governor Gray Davis.
[cxcvii] Diaz 2010; Heredia 2008.
[cxcviii] Diaz 2010; Heredia 2008.
[cxcix] Bhargava 2002: 208.
[cc] As of 2006, only one state (New Hampshire) used a
standard of need above the federal poverty guideline, while the 34 other U.S.
states set their income ceilings below
the federal poverty guideline to determine eligibility for TANF, a guideline
that many experts consider to be set too low. Twelve
[cci] In part, this was the outcome of prior welfare rights campaigns involved particular groups of low-income people or their advocates, such as the elderly, veterans, unemployed workers, or maternalist social reformers concerned about the plight of low-income single mothers (Amenta 1998; Skocpol 1992; Goldberg 2007; Piven and Cloward 1977a, b; Gordon 1994).
[ccii] Nelson 2006.
[cciii] This group was initially organized by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (Abramovitz 2000: 148).
[cciv] Miewald 2003.
[ccv] Daniel 2002.
[ccvi] Atlas and Dreier 2009; on coverage of Rathke and his brother’s misuse of funds, see Strom 2008.
[ccvii] Krajcer and Delgado 2002.
[ccviii] Hall and Strege-Flora 2002: 193.
[ccix] For example, in Maine, the Maine Equal Justice Project and the Maine Association of Interdependent Neighborhoods and their allies celebrated when state legislators authorized funds for a “Parents as Scholars” program that allowed 2,000 welfare recipients to attend school and be exempt from time limits (Bhargava 2002: 203). In Kentucky, state policy-makers, pressed by activists, agreed to increase the supportive services available to recipients enrolled in school, to allow 24 months of college education without additional work requirements for full-time students, and to allow students to count 10 hours per week of class time toward their 30-hour weekly work requirement, to create additional work-study placements for them, and to give any participant a $250 bonus for completing an educational program (Miewald 2003: 176-178).
[ccx] Krinsky and Reese 2006; Reese, Geidraitis, and Vega 2006.
[ccxi] Kingfisher 1996; Miewald 2003.