I am a woman with three children. I am not a criminal: I am not any of the things you've been told I am.

Off Our Backs, Feb 1995 by Wink, Jodeen

I am a woman with three children. I am not a criminal: I am not any of the things you've been told i am.

While going through a pile of my old writings, I developed a lump in my throat upon discovering how many of them were hateful pieces about living on welfare: poems; editorials; letters to presidents, governors, congressmen, federal department of human services secretaries; letters to employment agencies and CAP agencies who contract to police various experiments in welfare reform; letters to women's organizations -- all in hopes that the world would change, that something I said, or screamed, would make someone somewhere wake up and listen. I've written poems no one would publish: the tones too radical even for the radicals. It's just like my poetry professor said: "If you turn into one of 'those people' who sees a conspiracy against you in all of history, you're apt to lose many readers who would just as soon ignore as understand you."

Unfortunately, he was right about one thing: the world is ignorant. But what he didn't say was that it's acceptable for politicians to see women like me as conspirators: the abominable breeders of national evil, worms in the fluff of the great apple pie -- and to call us as much publicly in hopes of rallying citizens, sentiments and dollars around them and their cause. My professor didn't mention that people continue to listen to the hysterical ranting of politicians even though we've learned by now that Native Americans aren't really savages, Jews aren't really parasites, and Blacks aren't really work animals, nor is it true that yellow skinned people value life less than anyone else. At least, I think we've learned this.

I have learned that it all depends on who you are. Get yourself in government office and suddenly you can let your face spiral open and excrete your opinions down upon just about anyone and they're obliged to wear the mark, like it or not. But put yourself in one of the groups the campaigns happen to be bombing at any given time and you suddenly find a rope twisted so tightly around your neck that you can barely hear yourself speak, let alone expect anyone else to. My professor of poetry was never a Woman on Welfare, nor was he Black or Red or Yellow or Jewish or Iraqi or pagan or anything but white, though I suppose he meant well.

I've been going through this pile of old letters, essays, poems, and basically they all shout the same thing: "Listen. I am a woman whose name is not "welfare recipient." I am a woman with three children, and their names are not welfare recipient. I am not a criminal. I am not any of the things you've been told I am. LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN." Nobody listens.

Even women in the same situations as I don't really listen. They have their own terror-tales to tell. Underground news papers are filled with accounts of their lives and read by radicals who shake their heads and mumble, "Mmm hmmm, mmm hmmm, I know exactly what she's saying. I've been there. I'm still there. I'm worse." or, "Thank God, I'm not that bad..."

Tonight I'm about as well off as any Woman on Welfare could hope to be. I find myself in the state of Minnesota, and, as welfare policy goes, Minnesota is one of the few liberal states left in our union -- "liberal" being such as it is. (I'm writing this in 1993. We'll see what the future brings.) My rent only costs a little more than half my welfare grant, as opposed to all of it or more, and it's a decent place for the money: i.e., nicely painted walls, level floors, bright windows in every room, clean carpeting, one big closet, running water, a toilet, heat in the winter, no leaks in the roof, no rain seeping through the walls, no stink and no houndy neighbors as far as I can tell. It even has a reasonable back yard with a place for a garden. We have a phone for the first time in five years.

My plants are hanging all around the bright rooms. My calico cat is asleep on the sofa. There's a week's worth of food in the almost new refrigerator. I have a cook stove with three working burners and an oven that works too. This is a big deal. Living in a place like this makes me want to get up in the morning and fix my hair, clothes and face. I hold my head up walking down the sidewalk with my three beautiful daughters.

And I keep it so fresh-smelling, dustless and gleaming. I shovel the cat's turds from the litter box and spray it heavily with Lysol. I'm constantly after my kids to pick everything up after themselves because I have this fear that while I'm vacuuming the carpet or washing the dishes there will come a knock at the door. I'll open it and standing there will be one of those child protection ladies and she'll have received a call from some anonymous person who expressed their "concern," that my children are living in diabolical filth, that rats run across our floors, or that my children have been seen running naked in the streets. It'll have been rumored that I am a prostitute, or maybe, that I'm so drugged up and drunk most days I can't begin to supervise them. (There seems to be an unspoken, but socially agreed upon list of indictments...I mean, concerns.) Perhaps the children will have to be removed for their own safety.