People and their families are more likely to live in poverty and be hungry if they have been incarcerated.
Just 3 percent of federal spending goes toward nutrition programs. The average Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit per person is about $29.25 per week.
Everyone I knew on welfare would tell you they’d rather have an honest job and a way out of poverty than be in the dead-end cycle of waiting for that monthly welfare check. From all sides, the welfare system was riddled with issues—and had been for decades. Back in 1996, with the clock ticking on his run for reelection, President Bill Clinton made good on a promise to reform welfare. Although Clinton’s promise to “end welfare as we know it” sounded lofty, the bill awaiting his signature was hardly reformative. Its harsh and nonsensical provisions actually promised the opposite, putting even more hurdles before poor Americans who were trying to stand on their own, and limiting benefits families relied on. “Legislative child abuse,” Senator Edward Kennedy called the bill. And yet Clinton signed it into law, which wasn’t all that surprising given the tough-on-crime climate. After all, weren’t we supposed to believe that poor, black, and crime all went hand in hand?
Part of Clinton’s flawed Welfare Reform Act was a seemingly random stipulation that anyone convicted of a drug felony was banned for life from receiving food stamps. Not only did this continue punishing those who’d served their time, but it let their children go hungry. Also, it arbitrarily singled out drug offenders while still permitting food stamp benefits for those with any other conviction, such as armed robbery, rape, or murder.
Food stamps, born out of the Great Depression, gained permanent status under President Lyndon Johnson in his self-proclaimed War on Poverty. So why, several decades later, was the country going backward, cutting off these benefits to people trying to get back on their feet and to children who’d already been hurt by having had a parent in prison? There were other insidious effects, which I was seeing firsthand: social service agencies sometimes utilized their clients’ food stamp benefits to help defray operating costs. When convicted drug offenders suddenly and systemically got cut off from food stamps, I also watched them being denied spots in residential drug treatment programs.
Collateral consequences, invisible punishment, sanctions—no matter the term, it was interest on your debt that kept accruing.
There was, however, a caveat to the food stamp ban: individual states could opt out—and many did. But not California, even though, of the 92,000 American women affected by the ban, a whopping 40 percent lived in California.
The citizens and the California state legislature were all for the opt-out, and this was made clear: twice, opt-out bills were passed. But, twice, Governor Gray Davis creamed the bills with vetoes. “Convicted felons do not deserve the same treatment as law-abiding citizens, especially those that manufacture, transport or distribute drugs,” Davis announced, in what would become his habit of thwarting his state’s legislature and citizens.
In 2001, an opt-out bill was once again up for a vote of the California State Assembly. At the request of the Drug Policy Alliance, I flew to Sacramento to testify. As I sat in the state capitol listening to testimony, I realized the amount of time, the organization, and the passion that had gone into fighting for the opt-out bill. When my name was called, I told my story and described A New Way of Life. “I can tell you, firsthand,” I said, “that withholding access to food for poor people isn’t going to curb crime. It’s real tough to go out and look for a job and to try to raise a family if you’re also scrounging for food.”
The bill passed.
And—again—Governor Davis vetoed it.
Hearing the news, I felt like I’d swallowed a stone. After all that work, what good was the legislative process if one man had the ability to stop everything? How was this democracy?
In 2004, an opt-out bill was back on the senate floor, and, again, I went to Sacramento to testify. “We’re not talking about anything but people eating,” I said. “We’re talking about the bare minimum. We’re not talking about a steak dinner, we’re talking about meeting daily nutritional requirements.” After my testimony, State Assembly Member Mark Leno, who’d authored the bill, ran down the hall after me.
“I was touched by your story,” he said, shaking my hand. “Thank you for coming to Sacramento to tell it.” I couldn’t believe he’d left the hearing room to personally say this to me, and his gesture made me feel so valuable.
Once again, the bill passed the senate floor. But, this time, Governor Davis was out—having faced an unprecedented recall by voters, a glimpse of democracy at work after all!—and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law.
The victory, however, wasn’t what it should have been: the opt-out was only partial, exempting people with simple drug possession felonies, but leaving those with “possession for sale” convictions still subject to the lifetime food stamp ban.
All I could do was shake my head. My own record had trumped-up charges of possession for sale. If I had been caught under this law, I’d be subject to the lifetime food stamp ban. It seemed an awful lot of fighting to barely solve anything. An awful lot of fighting to return benefits to some families, but not to others. America’s vow not to let its citizens starve was hollow.
For another decade, the partial ban remained in California, even though thirty-nine other states had long since opted out entirely or significantly modified the severity of the policy. At last, in 2014, snuck into the budget of the State of California, was a provision to remove the entire ban. When Governor Jerry Brown signed that budget, the food stamp ban was, at long last, dead.
Now, women at A New Way of Life could get food stamps, though they still had to take a day to wait in long lines, fill out paperwork, and then wait more days for the stamps to come through. Sadly, with all the state assembly bills, all the support and pulling together and the money spent on the many attempts at the opt-out, none of it actually fixed the system. None of it actually helped anyone get off food stamps. It was like watching pennies being taken, one by one, out of a piggy bank and finally put back in, but so what? Even a full piggy bank of pennies doesn’t amount to much.
As I became more involved in policy, I continued to return to Sacramento. But time and time again, I watched so much effort fall on deaf ears. I’d leave there and my body would be sore, like someone had been punching me. Eventually, I could no longer sit there feeling so powerless, so I quit going. I figured the best place for me was to be in my community, helping to build a powerful voice of many.