Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 18, 1995 TAG: 9501180070
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The Southwest Virginia Second Harvest FoodBank parking lot is dark, steamy from the night's rain and from the unseasonably warm temperatures.
A chartered bus loaded with people not fully awake sits with engine humming, its headlights reflecting off the wet gravel.
The passengers are mothers and fathers, children and grandparents, most of them welfare recipients from Roanoke, all of them bound for Richmond. That it is Monday, Jan. 16, the holiday honoring Martin Luther King, is no accident.
He had a dream. They have a dream. It is not living on welfare, they say.
The bus pulls off under a sky that seems too dark for the early morning hour. As it lumbers along the interstate, the sun rises, easing through the grayish sky and rousing a few sleeping passengers.
They munch on snacks. They fiddle with their hair. They talk about Gov. George Allen's welfare reform proposal and nervously joke about the impact they hope to have.
Ashley Johnson, 7, places the headphones of her mother's cassette player over her ears. She sings, clearly and loudly enough for those around her to take notice.
``He'll make a way,'' she sings, her head bobbing to the chorus of a gospel song. ``He'll make a way. He'll make a way.''
The Campaign for Virginians in Need bills itself as concerned residents and groups organized to advocate policies that help low-income people. The campaign - whose beliefs are based on the premise that prevention policies are the most effective in assisting people in need - sponsored Anti-Poverty Advocacy Day on Monday to call attention to some of Allen's proposals.
Nearly 500 people from across the state attended the event, including an estimated 50 from the Roanoke area. The campaign sponsored the Roanoke group's trip. The bus was paid for by a private citizen.
In preparation for Monday's event, campaign volunteers traveled the state, helping groups of welfare recipients learn how to effectively communicate their concerns to legislators.
``When there was a pretty good indication that welfare reform was going to be a major issue, people working on this issue set a goal of trying to put a little different voice on the discussion, to make sure welfare recipients were included,'' said Joe Szakos, who helped conduct the campaign's training sessions.
``That voice doesn't get heard very often or only heard in a limited way or a formal public hearing. It's just not the same as when a legislator can sit down with people who are in that system and know the details of how they will be affected by it.''
Szakos knows the impact of citizen lobbying. In 1981, he helped found Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a statewide organization that taught people how to participate in the democratic process.
``What we noticed over the years was much more of a receptiveness to [legislators] actually talking to people about what they wanted,'' Szakos said. ``The legislators knew that people were sincere about what they were trying to do. And eventually, there were changes in their attitudes and in their actions. They started making decisions based on a lot different information.''
Szakos, now living in Charlottesville, wants to do the same in Virginia. He helped found the Virginia Organizing Project, a group that's exploring what kind of organization similar to the one in Kentucky could be developed in Virginia.
``In the long run, if there are more people [in Richmond] day to day - citizen lobbyists, volunteers, people just talking to legislators about things that they want - that place would be different,'' Szakos said. ``If what we saw Monday happened every day, that place would have to change.''
St. Paul's Episcopal Church is a few steps from the General Assembly building. Monday it is serving as Anti-Poverty Advocacy Day headquarters.
In the church's crowded annex, participants are scattered about eating lunch - on the floor, at tables, leaning against walls.
Between bites of a turkey sandwich, Debra Whitaker talks of living on welfare with three children and a husband who receives Social Security disability benefits.
Wanda Jones says that, until a few months ago, she had a house and a husband with a good job. Now he's in jail on drug charges. She and her three children are on welfare and living in public housing.
Ann Leffler had no money for the last week of November and the entire month of December. A mix-up with her welfare check, she said.
They want to give their legislators - about to toil over welfare reform proposals - some sense of what it means to live on welfare.
``I make all my kid's school clothes, and I've had my sewing machine in pawn since October,'' says Whitaker, 26, of Roanoke. ``I pay the three dollars each month to keep it in there. Then when I get enough, like if my dad sends me a check for my birthday, then I'll get it out. I've got this material that I've saved up and got on sale, and I'll go ahead and make everything real quick, in case I have to pawn it again.''
``Yeah there are a lot of people who abuse the system,'' says Jones, 24, of Roanoke. ``I see dirty kids walking up and down the street when the parents are looking good. Even though you're on welfare, you got to do something for your kids. I mean, come on; my kids come before me.''
``If they go ahead and cut our programs, all you're going to do is increase the homeless, going to increase the uneducated - and when you do that, you're going to increase the crime rate,'' says Leffler, also of Roanoke. ``You might as well go ahead and build the prisons, because you're going to need them to take care of the generation that's coming up now.''
The General Assembly building is chaotic. People crowd the lobby. Outside a budget hearing, the line of people who want to enter is 20 deep. The wait for an elevator is 10-15 minutes, one passer-by claims.
Debra Whitaker heads for the stairs. She and three other Roanoke welfare mothers have a 1:30 appointment with state Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County. It is 1:25.
They snake through a maze of busy corridors until they find Bell's office. An aide, Gordon Dixon, tells them Bell has someone with him and his 2 p.m. Commerce and Labor Committee meeting has been rescheduled for 1:30. He has agreed to meet with the group briefly, go late to his committee meeting, then come back around 2 to meet with the group again.
Bell emerges from the office and welcomes the group. He explains that he must leave for the committee meeting and invites the group to wait in his office.
Debra Whitaker asks if the group can walk with him to his meeting. Bell obliges. And in a back stairwell, walking quickly down three flights of stairs, Whitaker tells the senator her concerns.
She opposes requiring minor parents and their children to live with a parent, grandparent or legal guardian. She is against the two-year time limit for benefits.
``Those are some of the things I want to go over,'' Bell says. ``It's not a `one size fits all.' Two years may be less for some, a lot more for others.''
``That's what I want to talk to you about - what you are planning on doing,'' Whitaker says.
Bell politely excuses himself and heads to his committee meeting. He tells the group they are welcome to sit in. They do, briefly.
``What I want is some kind of commitment from him that when this bill comes in front of him, that he'll either vote yes or no if they have these exceptions,'' Whitaker says outside the meeting. ``Because if they don't, a lot of people are going to get hurt who really want to use welfare as a steppingstone to something else.''
The bus rolls into the food bank parking lot slightly off schedule. The sky is as dark as the morning's, the temperature a little cooler.
The passengers pile into cars and wave goodbye through fogged windows.
William Simmons, a welfare father, stands next to his chugging car, reflecting on the day.
``I hope that whatever decision they make, they really think about the people who are getting involved,'' says Simmons, 27, who has custody of his two children.
``They need to think about what they're taking away from people before they decide anything.''
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1995
by CNB