Social Action Alert

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The Newsletter of the Social Justice Task Force of the Presbytery of Southern New England

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Number 2     —    March 1999

Our Voices Count!

by Ralph Jones

[Jesus] unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:  "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."   {Luke 4:17-19}

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.   {Isaiah 1:16 - 17}

Social justice is often complicated. Certainly the issues concerning children in poverty are complicated. That's why there is a lot of information in this issue of Social Action Alert. When we are not informed, however, we forfeit much of what it means to be a citizen. We forfeit the privilege of informed voting.
 

This newsletter is primarily about communicating with legislators. The hope is that it will provide you and many other members of your church with resources to speak responsibly as citizens of both God's kingdom and Connecticut. But it is up to you to get the information into people's hands. Your enthusiasm makes a witness AND a difference..

Motivation

Legislators say, "Yes! Absolutely!"

In the relatively small states of this Presbytery, our voice can be remarkably important.

One call or letter may be taken for the opinion of a hundred silent constituents.

Five letters on an issue count as an avalanche of interest!

This issue of Social Action Alert focuses on Connecticut's children. Over the past few years a variety of religious and social service advocacy groups have been speaking up on children's behalf. Their efforts are beginning to pay off.

There are bills before the legislature NOW which can make a real difference.
Legislators are concerned about our children's welfare.
Many legislators have made this issue a  priority

This is the time to speak up...
      the laborers are few.

Connecticut's Children

The Problem

The number of working families in Connecticut with incomes below the federal poverty level has jumped by 127 percent since 1989, according to a new study on childhood poverty in this state.  That dramatic increase, due in part to the double impact of the recent recession and Connecticut's welfare reforms, also means that some 75,000 children in this state are now living in poverty-stricken families where at least one parent is working.  {Gregory B. Hladky, New Haven Register, 2 Mar 1999}

• "There are now about two and one half times as many Connecticut families raising children in poverty as there were in the late 1980s." {Geballe, Canny, Gruendel, "Connecticut Families: Poverty Despite Work," CT Fiscal Analysis & Family Investment Series, Connecticut Voices for Children, Vol. 1, No 2, March, 1999, p. 2}
• 63% to 81% of the children in New Haven, Bridgeport and Hartford live in poverty.
• Poverty, and especially poverty in the early years, is closely correlated with poor social and economic performance.
• 149,000 children -- nearly one in five -- Connecticut children live below the federal poverty level. {Ibid. pp. 3}
• There are as many more families living near poverty (that is supporting a family of four on less than $32,900 a year) as living in poverty (less than $16,400 per year for four). {Ibid. pp. 9}
• The percentage of children ages 5 to 17 jumped from 17.8 percent in 1995 to 23.5 percent in 1996. Only nine states have a higher rate. {Miringoff, Miringoff, Opdycke, Hoynes, The Social State of Connecticut '98, Fordham Institute for Innovation in Social Policy, Tarrytown, NY, p. 37}
• The majority of children living in or near poverty are in families with working parents. 41% have parents working full time year round. 80% have parents who are working. Much of children's poverty is not based on parent's "welfare dependency."
• Poor children are twice as likely to repeat a grade. The correlation between poverty and educational underachievement cannot be explalined by factors other than poverty. {Arloc Sherman, Poverty Matters, The Cost of Child Poverty in America,Children's Defense Fund, 1997, p. 1, 3}

Governmental Background

...the most far reaching implications of the budget proposal I submit to you today have to do with education. As important as how much we spend, is how we are spending it.

These spending and policy proposals begin the shaping of a new vision for education in the state of Connecticut. A vision that begins to define what we truly mean by life long learning. A vision that recognizes the global village we live in requires that our children learn more at an earlier age, and that we as adults can never stop learning if we are to remain competitive.

In today's economy, job training for adults is as important as pre-school for children.

{Web posted 10 Feb 1999 by The Hartford Courant}

When it comes to spending money, there are always competing values. Most citizens agree there is waste in our government's budgets. What is difficult is agreeing on which spending is wasteful.

Moral choices are always difficult. The question is one of balance. Have we taken care of the most urgent, the most important people and matters?

Why Focus on Children?

'When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?' ... And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' {Matthew 25: 37, 40}

"But the governor believes getting somebody off the welfare rolls and into a paying job is just the first step.... Getting that person into a better-paying job that is significantly above the poverty level takes some time." Rowland continues to support efforts to break the cycle of dependency on welfare, insisting that a job provides self-esteem and the opportunity to move up the economic ladder,  according to Pagani. {Gregory B. Hladky, New Haven Register, 2 Mar 1999}

• Failure to provide proper nurture for our children has serious, long-term implications for the future of our society.
• Children are the least able to act for themselves to change their circumstances.
• This is the "Year with Education" in the Presbyterian Church, USA.
• Our elected officials have identified childhood poverty as a major concern which improves the chance of meaningful change.

Suggestions

The major legislative effort, backed by several religious and social service organizations, is passage of:

An Act Creating an Earned Income Credit Against the Personal Income Tax. <http://www.cga.state.ct.us/ps99/cbs/s/sb-1173.htm >

Federal tax law currently provides an earned income credit for low income wage earners. This would extend the benefit to Connecticut state income tax payers. More important, it would make the benefit refundable in those cases where a person's tax liability is less than the amount of the credit. A low income wage earner would receive a cash refund of any or all of the credit which exceeded the tax owed. The proposed benefit would be ten percent of the Federal amount. At that rate, the maximum would be about $376.

That's just a small boost, but it is directed to those on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. It rewards work. It diminishes gradually as family income increases. It requires little additional effort on the government's part. It helps to offset the very regressive nature of sales taxes.

On the other hand, the tax rebate as proposed by the governor, does nothing to help low income citizens. The proposal for 1999 would eliminate some 200,000 lower income citizens who received this benefit in 1998. Just treatment of all citizens is God's requirement and must take priority. Many of Connecticut's citizens see the rebate as a political gimmick. Make sure your representatives know you want justice before cash back.

Other options, supported by both Connecticut Voices for Children and The Connecticut State Permanent Commission on the Status of Women include:

• Increasing the minimum wage. At $5.65 an hour, Connecticut's current minimum wage is 28% below federal poverty for a family of four. Over about the past ten years, Connecticut's poorest families incomes (lowest 20%) have declined 31% in inflation adjusted terms. Our most affluent have seen income increase 11% over the same period. {Geballe, op. cit., p. 4}
• Increase education and job training opportunities. Training is the best way to speed family's transition through entry level, poor paying work to jobs which provide self-sufficiency. The Children's Defense Fund reports "Only a small fraction of welfare recipients' new jobs pay above-poverty wages; most of the new jobs pay far below the poverty line.... Many families leaving welfare report struggling to get food, shelter, or needed medical care; many are suffering even more hardships than before."  {CDF "From Welfare to What?" <http://www.childrensdefense.org/fairstart_welfare2what.html >  Executive Summary} One approach is, An Act Expanding the State's Incumbent Worker Training Programs. <http://www.cga.state.ct.us/ps99/cbs/s/sb-0931.htm>
• Refundable property tax credit. Taxes hit our poorest families hardest. Yet the governor's current proposal would refund property taxes only to those who earn enough to actually owe income tax. Some 200,000 who benefited in '98 would loose out in '99. Making the property tax credit refundable would particularly help people who must have a car to get to work.

Letters

Some practical suggestions:

• Write from your own perspective.
• If that includes your faith, mention it.
• Keep letters to one issue.
• Keep letters to one page.
• Be clear.
• Details change rapidly, so identify the results you hope for.
• Be specific. If you can, mention the legislation you are interested in - by name. Bill numbers change.
• Feel free to write - or call - more than once.

If you are unsure who your senator or representative is, you can find out through one of these numbers, or through the web link below. You can also use these numbers to leave a message for your legislator.
 

Letters should be addressed "Dear Senator (last name)" or "Dear Representative (last name)". They can be mailed to:

Senator (or Representative) ___________
Legislative Office Building
Hartford, CT 06106-1591

Points you may want to include:

• Children's poverty  is wrong.
• It affects all of us.
• It affects our state's future.
• We have the financial resources to do something.
• You support the legislators who have made children a priority in this legislative year.
• You expect results.
• The Refundable Earned Income Tax Credit is more desirable than giving a tax rebate to the well off .

Resources

• Connecticut Voices for Children, 33 Whitney Avenue, New Haven CT 06510 (203) 498-4240.
• Connecticut Association for Human Services, 110 Bartholomew Ave., Suite 4030, Hartford CT 06106-2201 (860) 951-2212
• Connecticut Association for Basic Human Needs, 80 Jefferson Street, Hartford CT 06106 (860) 278-5688.
• Children’s Defense Fund, 25 E Street NW, Washington DC 20001, (202) 628-8787
• Annie E. Casey Foundation, 701 St. Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. Publishes KIDS COUNT Factbook.
• Presbyterian Child Advocacy Network, c/o PHEWA, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville KY 40202 (502) 569-5838, e-mail: Pchapman@ctr.pcusa.org

 
• Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work, Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein, 1997 - an excellent background resource on family poverty.

Online Resources

CT Families: Poverty Despite Work - Now in PDF format.  <http://www.ctkidslink.org/kidslink/code/PDFs/poverty.pdf >

"From Welfare to What?" <http://www.childrensdefense.org/fairstart_welfare2what.html >
The $1 trillion budget surplus <http://www.childrensdefense.org/clintonsurplus.html >

 State of Connecticut Home Page <http://www.state.ct.us/ >

Search for Legislative Info < http://www.cga.state.ct.us/search/SearchLegis.htm >
Find Representative <http://www.cga.state.ct.us/maps/map.htm >
Find Senator <http://www.cga.state.ct.us/maps/Senate/county_mapsenate.htm >

< http://www.courant.com/ >

<http://www.ctcentral.com/cgi-bin/w3com/start?ctcentral+FrontPage >

A CALL TO CITIZENSHIP

The Hebrew Bible Has a Word for "Welfare"

by Richard D. Weis

New Brunswick Theological Seminary

There are a variety of Scripture passages that define the biblical equivalent of a welfare system and that offer a broader perspective on economic life. Here, as an initial framing of the subject, I focus on the implications of a single word in the Hebrew Bible. I doubt that it is widely known that the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, has a word for "welfare": shalom.

Undoubtedly, you have met this word somewhere before, but probably translated it as "peace." Historically, that easy and near universal equation of shalom with the English word "peace" has been one of two barriers to the church's full understanding of shalom. The other has been our tendency to spiritualize our understanding of "peace" so that it refers primarily to "inner peace," i.e., tranquility in the face of suffering and calamity. One of the many gifts to the Presbyterian Church from our denomination's Peacemaking Program is the recovery of a fuller understanding of shalom as referring to a much more than "peace," and as referring to the totality of human existence.

But the older, more limited, notions persist, and the fuller, more accurate, understanding of shalom is extremely relevant to the issues we discuss during a national election. shalom refers to the ideas behind English words such as "prosperity," ¹ "wholeness," "health," ² "well-being," ³ "welfare," ⁴ and, yes, "peace". ⁵

Many of the passages in the Hebrew Bible that use the term focus on larger societal complexes, but the idea of shalom applies at all levels of life. Individuals can have shalom. Relationships can have shalom. Families can have shalom. Villages, towns and cities can have shalom. Nations can have shalom. The creation can have shalom. Shalom is what God created the world and us to be; it is the condition of life that God intends for this world.

If I were to give a core definition for shalom, it would be "wholeness" - "wholeness" in all dimensions of life.

To say that an individual person has shalom is to say at least these things:

The Bible's perspective on what it means to say that a society or nation has shalom is also useful for our work together. But this question gets different answers within the record in the Hebrew Bible.

Repeatedly, the leadership of Israel and Judah answered the question of whether their society had shalom by looking at the leading economic indicators;

The leadership did not answer the question of whether their society had shalom on the basis of the experience of ordinary people - the small farmers, sharecroppers and the day laborers who made up the bulk of their nation's population and who constituted the work force on the estates of the wealthy. The powerful did not answer the question of whether their society was shalom on the basis of the experience of ordinary people because they were largely disconnected from that experience. The powerful and wealthy lived in the cities, and most ordinary folk lived in the countryside, so their paths might cross but rarely. Moreover, their world view - their theology - insulated them from the lives of those who did not experience God's shalom. Their thinking would go something like this:

Sound familiar?

Fortunately, in spite of its continuing popularity even among Christians - including Presbyterians - this theology and this understanding of when a society or nation can be said to be "whole" appears in the Bible only so the Bible can criticize it.

Equally fortunate, there is an alternative theology, and an alternative answer to the question when a society can be said to be whole, and it's found among the prophets of the Hebrew Bible who criticize the rich and powerful of their day for just the view we have described.

Perhaps the most radical thing Amos did among all his speeches was to call the poor "righteous," thus undermining the self-justifying theology of the rich and powerful. ⁶

For Isaiah, the criterion of the justness of his society was whether the widows and orphans, who could not go to court on their own and had no independent economic resources to speak of, received just treatment. ⁷ If they received just treatment, then his society could fairly be said to be a just one. Since they did not, it had no claim to such a title.

And from Jeremiah (8:13-14) comes this passage, focused on economic distortions in the Judahite society of his day, translated as follows by the NRSV:

From the least to the greatest of them,
          everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
and from prophet to priest,
          everyone deals falsely.
They have treated the wound of my people carelessly,
          saying, "Peace, peace,"
          when there is no peace.

"Peace" of course, is shalom, but since the context clearly refers to economic matters, rather than warfare, a far better translation would be "prosperity". So we read the text again with that change.

From the least to the greatest of them,
          everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
and from prophet to priest,
          everyone deals falsely.
They have treated the wound of my people carelessly,
          saying, "Prosperity, prosperity,"
          when there is no prosperity.

All of these prophets have a different standard from that of the leaders of their time, and ours, when it comes to measuring whether a society has achieved the shalom God intends for it. For the prophets, a society could be said to be shalom only when each and every one of its members had shalom. The society could be "whole" only when all its members were "whole," from the greatest to the least. The welfare of a society was not to be measured en masse by overall economic indicators, but by the welfare of every one of the individuals that made it up. Moreover, when some members of the society are not "whole," it is a mark that the institutions of that society are dysfunctional. That people are in such a condition is a sign of the need for systemic change, no matter how good the overall measures of economic activity look.

I would suggest that this might help us to identify what is at stake.... What is at stake in considering our society's "welfare system" is certainly the way we provide for the well-being of the members of our society who need that support, but also at stake is the very welfare of our nation as a whole. That 13 million members of our society (5% of the total population) are in a dire survival situation is a sign of serious systemic illness in our society and economy. It is only as each of those 13 million recovers the "wholeness" of God's shalom that our society can hope to become "whole".
 

Endnotes

1. As in "O that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then prosperity [shalom] would have been like a river, and your success like the waves of the sea." (Isa. 48:18)
2. As in the synonymous parallelism of shalom with healing, "We look for shalom, but find no good; for a time of healing, but there is terror instead." (Jer. 14:19 NRSV altered)
3. As in "I [the Lord] form light and create darkness, I make well-being [shalom] and create woe." (Isa. 45:7 NRSV altered)
4. As in "But seek the welfare [shalom] of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare [shalom] you will find your welfare [shalom]." (Jer. 29:7)
5. Shalom comes to mean "peace" because in a largely farming society, where military conscription takes the farmer from the field, and where passing armies 'live off the land" and trample what they do not eat, prosperity/well-being for ordinary folk is only possible when those armies stay at home. For the full range of meanings associated with the hebrew word shalom see Walter Baumgartner, Ludwig Koehler, and Johann Jakob Stamm, Hebraisches und Aramaisches Lexicon zum Alten Testament (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967-1970), Vol. 4, pp. 1395-1399. An English translation of their discussion will appear in the fourth volume of The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: Brill).
6. As can be seen in the synonymous parallelism of "needy" and "righteous" in Amos 2:6. See the discussion in Robert B. Coote, Amos Among the Prophets (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), p. 35.
7. See especially Isaiah 1:17, 23; 10: 1-2.