ANGIE . . . A face of the working poor in America

By l.t. Dravis

PHOENIX, Arizona – Saturday, August 16, 2008 – Think you could feed and clothe a family of four on $200 a month without government help?

You’re about to meet two people who do just that . . . month in and month out . . . without any expectation that anything will ever change.

Angie and Marcello Rodriguez (not their real names) and their two daughters are members in good standing in an invisible American society . . . the working poor.

I met Angie Rodriguez Saturday night just outside a Marriott Residence Inn on North Black Canyon Highway in north Phoenix. The sun was setting as I was returning to my room and I spotted her standing alone near a guest entrance. “Lock yourself out?” I ask, thinking she might have forgotten her room key card.

“No,” she says with a cautious smile, “I’m just waiting for a friend . . . she works here.”

Angie was wearing a polyester skirt, blouse, and vest along with non-skid clogs typically worn by people who spend long hours on their feet working in hotels and restaurants so I guess, “You work here, too?”

“No,” she says. “I work in a coffee shop and in a ninety-nine cent store.” Angie’s an attractive young woman, about five feet two, with fair skin, big brown eyes, and delicate hands with long fingers and plain, short nails. Her shiny black hair is pulled back from her round face and is gathered into a pony tail that falls to the middle of her back.

I’m impressed. “You work two jobs?”

“Yup,” she replies, matter-of-factly, “sure do.”

I had to ask, “Why?”

“With two kids, I got no choice,” she says without inflection or emotion.

I tell her who I am; say I’m working on a column about the ‘working poor’, and ask if she’d be willing to talk to me about her life.

She looks at me long and hard for a few iffy moments but then the tight expression on her face relaxes and she extends her right hand. “Okay,” she says tentatively, “’til my friend comes out.”

As I let out a slow sigh of relief, she introduces herself, tells me she’s 24, and starts to talk.

Angie works about 35 hours a week afternoons and weekends for minimum wage as a hostess in a nearby coffee shop. She also runs a cash register in a ninety-nine cent store about a mile down the road from the coffee shop two to four hours every weekday morning for minimum wage. Her 25 year old husband Marcello works 30 to 35 hours a week for minimum wage as a porter at a local new car dealership where he’s been for four years. As car sales decline and the dealership runs low on cash, his hours have been cut, and she worries that he’ll be laid off.

Angie says she and her husband bring home about $21,000.00 a year.

It costs about $800.00 a month, including utilities, to stay in a tiny two bedroom apartment in a run down complex in north Phoenix, a crime ridden neighborhood not far from where we were talking. An elderly widow who lives in an adjacent apartment watches their daughters, ages 4 and 2, for $75.00 a week while Angie and Marcello run from job to job.

Angie told me about the ’93 Toyota Corolla they bought from a ‘pay by the week’ used car dealership that uses a remote control to disable the vehicle’s engine on the Saturday morning after a missed Friday payment. The dealer sold them the Corolla for $4995.00, plus tax, plus a $750.00 ‘warranty activation fee’, plus a $250.00 dealer preparation charge. The dealer kindly accepted the sales tax in cash as the down payment and financed the balance at 18% over two years with a weekly payment of $74.83. So far, Angie says proudly, they haven’t missed a payment.

After all the bills are paid, including the premium for Arizona’s mandatory car insurance policy, plus whatever they spend on gasoline, Angie and Marcello typically wind up with about two hundred dollars at the end of each month for groceries, clothing, and any unexpected expense. They have no life insurance and no health insurance and they use the local emergency room as their family physician for treatment of everything from the flu to colds to minor injuries.

Angie told me that although some of their friends have told them they could probably get a couple of hundred dollars a month in Food Stamps and another hundred dollars a month in child care assistance, they don’t believe that other people (taxpayers) should have to support them, so they decided not to apply.

“So,” I ask, “how do you get through each month?”

“With God’s help and hard work,” she says. “I have to be the best hostess ever and Marcello has to be the best porter ever. If we do that, we know God will see us through. We don’t need charity.”

Her sincerity was impressive. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

“Why not? So far, it’s worked. It may be tough and me and Marcello may be hungry more than we like, but the girls are happy and healthy, so we keep on believing and we keep on working.”

She’s a bright lady and I’m curious so I decide to take the conversation to another level by asking, “What do you think about the election?”

“Obama and McCain? Nothing’s gonna change. No one who has that much money and power really cares about people like us. I don’t vote because elections are decided by politicians not voters . . . look at George Bush.”

“Okay, then,” I say, deciding not to argue the point, “what about Mayor Gordon? Do you think he’s able to help?”

“You’re talking about the mayor of Phoenix . . . right?” I nod and she says, “That’s what I’m saying. If he cares about us, why hasn’t he brought jobs to north Phoenix? If he really cares about us, why hasn’t he come to my neighborhood to talk to me, to Marcello, or my neighbors? Why hasn’t he done anything to cut the crime up here? We don’t want his handouts, we want better jobs, we want safer streets, and we want better schools.

“If this was Scottsdale,” she frowns, “you think we’d be hearing gunshots on Saturday nights? No way!”

I ask what Angie thinks about Governor Janet Napolitano and she says, “Don’t know her, but it’s the same as the mayor. Never saw the Governor out here on these streets. So, I wonder, is she trying to get a higher minimum wage or job training or health insurance or retirement benefits for people like us? If she’s done anything to bring more jobs or better schools or to make the streets safer out here, I haven’t seen it. But I have seen that capitol building all my life; it isn’t that far away. She could be here in ten minutes.”

A tall olive-skinned lady with her black hair in a tight bun on the back of her head emerges from the door behind Angie. She stops, looks at me with a suspicious expression and a raised eyebrow and says, “Angie, you ready?”

Angie smiles and says, “Gotta go. Nice talking to you.”

She may not have articulated it clearly, but Angie’s talking about how the working poor are doomed to live lives of frustration, disappointment, and uncertainty because people in power believe the working poor get what they deserve: government assistance, minimum wage, no health insurance, no retirement accounts, and no real opportunity for upward mobility.

For those who’d like to argue, think about this: We are a ‘class-based’ society. Where you were born, who your parents are, and your family’s financial status and education determine how, when, and where your life goes.

Don’t believe it?

If George W. Bush had been born George W. Lipchitz or George W. Mendoza or George W. Jackson or George W. Takei, does anyone really believe he’d ever have become Governor of Texas, much less the 43^rd President of the United States of America?

We like to think there is ample opportunity for everyone in this great nation; we like to think that any American can pull themselves up by the bootstraps to escape poverty and crime, but it ain’t always so.

There are plenty of private, state and federal support programs available to working poor families, including Food Stamps, Child Care Assistance, tax credits and other benefits. But none of these programs have eliminated the problem. In fact, there are more working poor in America today than there were in 2001 when the Bush Administration was sworn in.

Angie, Marcello, their two daughters, their neighbors, and 30 million others across this country will remain working poor unless and until people in power like Mayor Gordon and Governor Napolitano leave the comfort of their offices, get out to places like north Phoenix, roll up their sleeves, and mobilize private and public resources to make the streets safe, rebuild the infrastructure, and attract new business to create new and better jobs for the people who have the most to gain.

Our so-called political leaders can either create new, meaningful economic opportunities to increase income and tax revenues and to stabilize the communities where the working poor live or we can continue to throw millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars at a myriad of bureaucratic programs which, over time, have been proven to have no material impact on the problem.

Which is the smarter policy?

If politicians can’t figure it out for themselves, perhaps they ought to ask someone like Angie.

Copyright © 2008 by l.t. Dravis. All rights reserved.

If you have questions, comments, or concerns, Email me at LTDAssociates@msn.com (goes right to my desk) and since I personally answer every Email, I look forward to hearing from you soon.