Dear Hillary:
I am going to vote for you, but I do have issues with you. Yes I am a former Bernie supporter, but I do think you are the best candidate we have and for this reason you have my vote. But in order to be clear here, I have to tell you the truth; yes I am voting for you but I have been mad at you for decades as a poverty activist. You have been terrific for overseas women, but sorry, your senatorial record for US citizens in poverty is abysmal, and this is the truth. I have poverty activist friends in NYC when you were a senator and they along with millions of us around the country we all have those similar issues with you too.
Do you remember when disenfranchised low wage NY mothers threw waffles at your office window for “waffling” on the terrible needs they and their families were experiencing after your husband signed Welfare Reform? The official title for Welfare DeFormed is “The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Act” (we call it Welfare DeFormed)? That was one of those ironic names created by the most irresponsible men around and written for submission by the Heritage Foundation. Yeah, those waffle throwers are my friends. I hear you want those of us to vote FOR you, not against Trump. Well I am in the 1rst category. Maybe I can vote FOR you, but the jury is out for me at this time. Perhaps if you listen to people like me, a low income single mom who has been through hell, perhaps then I will consider being more enthusiastic but for now, I will support you.
Do you think any of we low wage people will ever forget how you went around the country with the likes of Joe Lieberman of all people to crow about how wonderful that horrible poverty creating bill was ~ when in fact the *only* thing you had to say about it was that the welfare roles dropped? You had *no* idea where those people had gone, you did not care, hey you got all those people off the roles from a program who only took about 4% in the budget from the revenue brought in. This was during peace time when over 47% of that budget was for military contacts. Nobody bothered to track the devastation, an ignored silent scream of agony that was ripping through the air.
Well we knew where those who have left the roles have gone ~ and so did entities like your WalMart billionaire friends who were using us as their slave labor while cutting out all the American factories and cutting us off from any decent wages. You also made sure that we could no longer go to college ~ and the *only* alternative you left for us was to work those McJobs and be in poverty for the rest of our lives. So yeah I am very angry about that and for good reason. I was sure mad when you went to the Middle East wearing your hijab calling for women’s equality there while at home millions were in worse shape that you pretended not to see.
My main intention however is to find a way to help you be better at one aspect of poverty. Here is my main concern:
Your bragging about your work in "fast track adoption" is causing heueuege issues here with mostly poor families in my state of WA State and all over the country. They are now using the American Safe Families Act (AFSA) programs as a "cure" for kids whose families are in poverty. Thanks to your leading the torches and pitchforks against low income American woman in poverty, they keep cutting family support budgets ~ while pumping $billions into those Child Protective programs where DSHS agencies "harvest" low income family's kids to "sell" to upper income families.
My state (WA) at this time is getting about $2 Billion a year solely for the purpose of taking kids from low income and homeless families, while TANF and other support services are ever shrinking. Furthermore CPS (Child Protective Services, and the courts go in and TAKE even more money out of the TANF and other support services such as Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance as well ~ over 30% taken out of a meager budget when they already have $billions to play with. Other states receive a little more or a little less depending on the size of their CPS agencies.
Oh and the mandates for taking that $2+Billion, Dear Readers? In order to get that money the mandates are in essence: “the more kids you take, the more money you will make…”
In other words that means, “ keep taking more and more kids from more and more citizens and we will pour more and more federal dollars into your ever burgeoning coffers…”
If you think this is only affecting poor kids think again, although the terrible affect on low income families and their kids is bad enough. Middle income families are being forced to drain their resources for defense as the “defense” attorneys are paid out of that same “more kids you take” funding (they are only for parents’ rights, no one else, no other family members, although foster homes get paid-for the best defense they can find if they are accused or have issues). The concern is that these attorneys stand to profit by losing cases rather than winning them if they can wiggle out of the Bar Association requirements ~ and they can and they do.
Not only that but CASA are admittedly going with any state recommendations almost 97% of the times (CASA being an acronym for Court Appointed Special Advocates who are not attorneys but are *supposedly* “independently” replacing a lawyer for the children. They are most certainly *not* independent) This often because these CASAs are depended upon to do the foot work for the case managers instead of case managers doing that as they are required to do. So the case is all about their personal take on the situation. Most CASAs are upper income childless white women who do not have a clue about those of us in poverty and harbor the assumed opinion that if we have been accused, then of course we are guilty. Even though these people are “volunteers,” they are not experts at anything and yet they have a great deal of power in the courtroom.
So it all stays in that “more kids you take” house, see? They ALL depend on that “more kids you take money. All of them, including the judges and the courts. Our King County CASA receives almost $5,000,000 per quarter for this work. Alarmingly when a CASA worker goes into court for the kid, she takes a real lawyer FOR HERSELF *not* for the kid. So she gets protection but in essence *nobody* is in court to defend the kid, they are all agencies in court defending themselves. Not making this up, ask Rep Jim McDermott who is on that particular Ways and Means committee.
I cannot tell you the agony it has caused to both the kids, who lose their families and to the generations of families for their lost children. Truth is and DFS agencies (acronym for Departments of Family Services) know it, the statistics prove it; taken kids whether adopted or fostered are more likely to become homeless, drop out of school, go to jail, become substance abusers, become teen parents, and have their own kids taken simply because it would be considered as “fact” that they were a threat to their children because they had been foster kids themselves. Fostered and adopted kids are 5-7 X more likely to suffer physical and sexual abuse as well as neglect in their "forever homes" than they have if their biological families have supportive services ~ and this success includes kids whose parent(s) are substance abusers!
This is because the only thing any of these agencies have to say in court to take children is that they are “concerned” without having to legally prove a damn thing other than that. They can suppress evidence, hide facts, and ignore facts without a single consequence. They can go in and lie in court (commit outright perjury) and do so without facing any consequence. If they are wrong and the kid gets abused or killed while in government hands, they do not face a solitary consequence for taking the kid falsely and putting them into the path of even worse danger. Over 6000 kids die a year while in government hands ~ less than 15% of children are legitimately taken, you will *never* hear about the other 85% who needed family support. This “legal kidnapping” is in the business, it is an outright money generating industry of taking kids and their suffering is admitted by DSHS and CPS agencies themselves.
I have been a poverty activist for over 30 years and believe me I can tell you these practices are more than injurious to kids and their families than when they received decent support. My involvement began with that world watched fiasco called “The Wenatchee Witch Hunt.” It was proven to be just that, a witch hunt based on quack psychology used as fact in court called “retrieved memories” that the psychiatric and psychological associations now call “unethical.” None of those false accusers paid a single price for what they did to destroy hundreds of kids and their family’s lives that imprisoned innocents for years and tried to pin upon their heads the word “sexual deviant.” Some of these accusers are now in nice well paying jobs and have never answered to a single consequence, indeed they are now in high places such as University “advisors” to our policy makers and the legislature now, one prosecutor (or persecutor either title applies) even became governor of our state! .
If these families receive support services, it literally costs taxpayers 1000% LESS than putting their kids in foster care. But family support is not where the money is flowing in, it comes through Social Security under YOUR, Mrs Clinton, your American Safe Families Act (ASFA) under Title IV-E, all pouring into the courts, CPS, and all their minions of contracted agencies. I am not making this 1000% statistic up, check out the Annie E Casey’s studies as well as cruise through the decades of data gathered on National Coalition for Child Protection Reform where a LIBERAL journalist has made his life’s work collecting data on these laws and policies.
Please know my hope is that instead of your bragging about how “wonderful” taking kids from their families and placing them in stranger’s homes (grandparents also have no rights), that we help you stop the bleeding and begin programs that give more family support. You did not make the lack of grandparents’ rights part of your policies, but the laws bend toward only the parents who lose these kids. Those laws leave out any other birth family member with zero rights to so much as attend the parental termination hearings. This is because DSHS can receive far more money fostering and adopting kids out than they ever would helping the family (foster care gets between $8,000-$10,000 per month per child, family service often ZERO). They will pay anyone and everyone in the world BUT the family to raise these children. I understand the concern about kids falling through the cracks, but they are already falling through the cracks anyway. All you have to do is go to any homeless teen hangout and you will hear stories from foster and adopted kids that gave me nightmares they were so horrifying.
Below I am posting a Tedx talk by someone who knows exactly what to do and why we are not changing anything. Listen to her, she gets it. I do disagree with her take that her ideas would cost more money. No it wouldn’t. That $2Billion a year ASFA money could sure be used to give the family support these people need if it were funneled into saving families, not destroying them, Indeed supporting them costs less:
These agencies know full well extended family support is far better for these kids~ IF they are given the chance, but it is not to DSHS’ benefit. Jobs, agencies and others’ funding are at stake if this was changed. I do not see how they could lose frankly, but they only care about the funding they get now. These policy wonks and the Powers That Be do not look very far outside of the box. The truth is if the funding was shifted to more family support these people would still have jobs, etc, because the social services would be needed ~ and kids would for the most part be better protected.
Thanks to your “fast track adoptions,” the destruction of families has become a heueuge concern among low income families. But we have few in the progressive community to talk to about this. While there are a few progressives, until recently the only other people who know what I have just written about are the Conservatives. They often do not get the poverty/CPS connection because they are mostly upper income people who have been affected. Until those like me began showing them the relation between the low income and how the laws affected their own experiences was when they begin to get it.
Since Conservatives hate poor people, as do many Liberals, the difference between upper income of either group is that Conservatives outright hate us while Liberals often are not aware of their hatred, they mask it with their “concern” But either way once they see the connection linking the lack of civil rights they begin to see what it is about. Such as no due process, and many other issues they experience with the courts and CPS, they get the same lack of respect (gasp, as if it somehow dawns on them that the same rights or lack of should apply more to them than it does to those in poverty). After they are considered automatic liars, and/or are not heard when they try to tell their side, they get it ~ and they ARE mad like we are. So crossing the aisle is happening and we have found solace and solidarity with one another on these terms.
My Conservative friends think it would be a good idea to bring the Trump people into the fray and tell them all the information we have gathered ~ years of documentation, protest and sharing. We both know they detest you and they would LOVE to find something of substance, but this frightens me. I would rather work with you and other liberals to change things Mrs Clinton. You are a true policy wonk and you listen better IMO. But the truth is, I have been working on these issues for decades and I am tired. All I know is we both want to do whatever it takes to be heard. Would you listen to us? We have more stories to tell and information to give.
Thanks for hearing me out Mrs Secretary. Hope you will listen so my Conservative friends discover you are someone to trust. To be honest they are laughing and think you will never give us the time of day. I believe you will once you hear what I have had to say in this letter.
Sincerely, Cat in Seattle
PeeEss: here are a few more links to get you started. They are my friends who are also my Sheroes who have been at this on the front line for over 30 years as well:
rebeccaprojectjustice.org
www.welfarewarriors.org/…
www.mwro.org
