In the Hot Tub

At the NOW conference, I went to the hotel hot tub one evening to relax and there met a woman - I'll call her Sue - who gave me a lot to think about.

Sue is a care provider for a young man who was at the hotel for the Power Soccer tournament (this is a tournament for athletes who use a wheelchair). He had been deprived of oxygen as an infant and as a result has very little ability to control his body or talk. Sue said he is bright, sociable, and once had a girlfriend and wanted to have a relationship again.

But this is Sue's story...

Sue asked me why I was at the hotel and then asked me what NOW does. I gave her the "brochure" speech - oldest and largest women's organization, with six issue areas. She immediately told me her story, wondering if I could help in some way.

Sue has allowed a woman (aged about 20-21) - I'll call her Joan - to stay in the 2 bedroom apartment she shares with her husband and her young son. Sue had worked briefly with Joan at a grocery store. One day, Sue was driving and saw Joan on the street with her baby. Joan and the baby had just been thrown out of the place where they were staying, apparently because of an ongoing conflict with the family whose home it is.

Sue took Joan to her home and there Joan has been since - about 10 months now. Joan receives a small amount of assistance ($600/month) and has food stamps; she has had some government help in a job search. She has no family in the area and doesn't know where the baby's father is. Sue has helped in every way possible - looked for appropriate jobs (Joan has administrative skills so at least theoretically could find a job, although this market makes it all the harder), looked for affordable housing, offered to take the baby when Joan went for a job interview, found a free parenting class for Joan, and more and more. She takes no rent from Joan. Joan is reluctant to look for a job. She spends many days shopping. Sue thought they could work something out if Joan watched her son (especially as Joan was already watching her own baby) but that fell apart quickly when he was found wandering outside while Joan slept on the couch. I suggested Joan was depressed and needed medical attention, but Sue didn't think that was the case. Apparently, Joan doesn't think she needs such assistance either.

I tried to articulate a NOW "perspective" - meaning, to talk about the damage done by welfare "reform," how we needed more job training, better supports for women, etc. I talked about how we needed to change the structure...about economic justice, the fault being with society, etc.

Honestly, it sounded pretty weak to me as I said it.

Here is a compassionate, smart, hard-working woman - Sue - who has a problem that all of NOW's fine words and legal arguments cannot do anything about - at least not in the present or near future. And another woman - Joan - who is stuck in inertia, refusing to take control of her own life.

I tried pop-psychology - saying this was Joan's problem, not Sue's. But Sue doesn't want to put a baby in the street. Period. Sue and her husband tried several times to lay down an ultimatum to Joan - find a place and move out by such-and-so date - but Joan just continued her life, sleeping on the living room couch. She doesn't have a key - she climbs in through a back crawl space when Sue isn't there.

Sue's going to try the ultimatum route again - telling Joan she has to leave by a certain date - and she's also going to close up the crawl space.

So this is the real-life situation of two women who - I fear - NOW cannot help. At the conference, we fought over who should run the organization for the next four years. We had spirited discussion over the state of NOW and (according to press reports) whether we should focus on activism or lobbying. We asked ourselves, who would be better for NOW.

I know it matters who runs the organization. But it matters more what we can do for women. I think we would be stronger and more relevant if we focused on real-life facts - such as the situation of Sue and Joan and all the other women in need and at risk - rather than fight over who to blame for our internal problems. No, I don't mean we should provide social welfare services. I mean we should be real. To be real, we need to hear more from Sue and Joan - and less from policy people, our own activists (who all seem to have jobs), and super-privileged women who have nothing better to do than go to Democratic Party confabs and bitch about how the party has sold them out.

I'd love to hear comments.