Contact: pwdail@charter.net

Poor women in America are likely to remain poor because they lack political clout and because they are forced to live with social policies crafted by male-dominated legislative bodies far out of touch with the realities of poor women’s lives. Even worse, America needs a large population of working poor, particularly working poor women, to sustain its profit-motive capitalist economic system.
These are two of several conclusions Emerita Research Professor Paula Dáil, author of the award winning book Women and Poverty in 21st Century America draws. “America has a shameful history of failing women, particularly poor women, and the current political assault on women’s rights is, unfortunately, not that unusual,” Dáil explains.
Published by McFarland Publishing company, the book has received the Council of Wisconsin Writers 2012 Kenneth Kingery/August Derleth non-fiction book award. The independent publishing industry (IPPY), which includes university presses, also awarded the book its 2012 Gold Medal as the non-fiction Book of the Year on women’s issues.
In this controversial work Dail stresses that poor women have no political staying power and a campaign built around the needs of the poor, particularly poor women, isn’t likely to get very far. “Poor women are struggling to feed their kids – they don’t have money to contribute to political campaigns, so most candidates aren’t interested in them. As a result, configuring friendlier social welfare policies for poor women, isn’t high on anybody’s political agenda.”
Quoting the words of poor women who are forced to live with social policies created by policy makers who have never had to choose between paying the rent or feeding their children, Dáil offers a feminist perspective on 21st century poverty for women. “Poor women are forced to live with policies they had no voice in developing, yet dramatically impact their day by day lives,” Dáil explains, adding that most policy making elected officials are too concerned about keeping their jobs to risk making the hard decisions that would actually ease the plight of poor women. Social policies that would provide better child care subsidies for working mothers, ease criminal penalties for welfare fraud violations, ensure the availability of outpatient mental health services, eliminate abstinence-only sex education programs in favor of realistic family planning education in public schools, guarantee that the full spectrum of reproductive health services are available to poor women, and improve Job Service employment assistance efforts would make a dramatic difference in the lives of poor women.
Pointing out that free-enterprise capitalist economics is the culprit in American poverty, Dáil claims that America needs a poverty class to sustain profit-motive capitalism, thus lacks the political will to fix the problem. “Poverty is a complex, multi-billion dollar industry, and fixing poverty would cause this industry to disappear – and no politician wants any part in creating that kind of economic hit. Additionally, someone needs to do the low-wage labor that allows the rich to reap their huge profits, and if we actually implemented fair wage laws and enabled workers to equally share in the profits of their labor, it would turn capitalism upside down…and no politician wants that to happen on his watch either….so poverty in America is here to stay, and anyone who claims otherwise is wrong.”
Dáil, who holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a career poverty researcher, doesn’t hold back in her analysis of the hardships poor women face. She points out that most poor women get into legal trouble because they associate with bad men, endure a publicly funded education system that is biased against poor girls, and can only find jobs in the low wage service industry which provides no benefits or job security. Dáil also points out that America is a greedy nation severely lacking in compassion or concern for poor women, or anyone unable to compete in the profit driven marketplace of capitalist economics.
“Unfortunately, misogyny is as American as apple pie and until the nation faces up to this truth, women generally, and poor women in particular, will continue to suffer the ill will of policy makers more concerned about the bottom line than about any moral obligation to the poor,” she says.
In addition to being widely published in the social sciences, Dáil has written two novels and the script for an award-winning Hospice video production, and co-authored a grief book. After leaving academia she wrote editorials and a column on women’s issues for a small newspaper syndicate..For more information about Women and Poverty in 21st Century America go to http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-4903-3

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I believe the time for women, and the men who love them, to join together, dig their heels in, and stand up to the conservative political agenda has come. Women generally, and poor women particularly, are poised to become major collateral damage as the conservative agenda gains an even greater foothold. The more pressing issues at stake include:

Unrestrained capitalism, greed and lack of moral obligation to the poor. In my book Women in Poverty in 21st Century America I explain how profit-motive, free-enterprise capitalism has created and sustained America’s poverty class. I also point out that greed is America’s new religion, and is a belief system lacking any sense of moral obligation to those who are unable to compete in the capitalist-driven marketplace. Unfortunately, the very bottom rung of the economic ladder is occupied entirely by women, because the wage scale for women is lower than for men. Women can work just as hard as, or harder than, men yet earn less money. The conservative political agenda favors the selfish, unrestrained pursuit of wealth and lacks any concern for the human cost of the unrelenting pursuit of money because the working class poor whose labor creates the huge profits the rich enjoy are not their friends, family, or neighbors – thus they feel no moral obligation toward them.

The assault on women’s reproductive rights. Make no mistake about the fact that the Right to Life movement has very sharp teeth and is using them to chew into Roe v. Wade, with a view toward getting this decision overturned. The issue is not that women want abortions – it’s that they want, and are morally entitled to, full control over their reproductive lives, which includes having the ability to safely deal with unplanned, unwanted, or forced pregnancy. The Right to Life movement, fueled by the Catholic Church and other conservative religious groups, has gone so far as to promote legislation that denies women access to birth control, essentially assigning women the role of society’s baby machines – and using biblical mandates to induce guilt in those who refuse to perform. While most men will deny it, what really drives this movement is not the right to life, but the primal fear many men have that if women are able to choose whether or not to bear children, they will choose not to, thus leaving men unable to procreate. A woman has control of her own life only when she has full control over her body, which includes the full spectrum of reproductive choices. This is a matter of basic human rights.

Controlling the workplace. All conservative eyes are on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, the first governor in the nation to break the labor unions. This is important because the unions are the only voice labor has in standing up to management and the only voice poor workers have that protects them from exploitation by their employers. Collective bargaining rights unions provide is the only power workers have, and taking that away opens the door to unrestrained workplace abuse. This is a particularly vital concern for women workers, who already earn less than men and are subject to various forms of workplace discrimination, including sexual harassment and the accompanying fear of being fired if she doesn’t submit to a predatory male supervisor. Hiring practices based upon female being a pre-existing condition when, for example, obtaining workplace subsidized health insurance also occurs. The union gave women a place to take these issues and receive help fighting them… but no more. In this era of massive job shortages, workplace abuse is much more likely to occur, and the means for women to fight it have evaporated.

Walker thought he could break the unions because he is backed by the Koch Brothers, Kansas-based industrialists with extremely deep pockets and a vested interest in promoting unrestrained capitalism. When Walker realized he might be in serious political trouble, he quickly pushed through voter ID legislation, which had the net effect of making it much more difficult for the working class and poor, the people for whom unions are most vital, to vote.

What Walker didn’t realize is that Koch Brothers’ money doesn’t equate with political safety, and as a result of his union busting action he finds himself face to face with what is looking very much like a successful recall campaign. There are two important lessons in this scenario. One is that the people do have political power when they use it; second is that, even in politics, unlimited money doesn’t necessarily equate with success.

So where should the first blow in this fight be struck? I would take on the voter ID issue, because it is winnable and has a major long-term impact on the lives of the poor. I would not waste time arguing the injustice of this law, but I would work hard to make absolutely sure every poor man and woman of voting age has an ID that assures their right to vote. Doing this will help the poor, particularly poor women, understand that they do have political power, but they must exercise it. They do not have to live with welfare policies they had no voice in developing – they can organize, speak up, and be heard, because they vote – and votes are what every politician wants, and needs, to keep his or her job. A smart career politician knows the voter is in the driver’s seat when it comes to political agendas, and a smart politician knows he works for the voter – not the other way around. Walker apparently missed class the day this Civics 101 lesson was taught and as a result he’s about to be fired from a fairly well-paying job.

The rise of the conservative right has caused me to become more politically active than any time since the 1960’s. Sure it’s hard work, and not always rewarding. It sucks up a lot of energy and effort I’d rather spend doing other things, but so what? Even if we don’t win on every issue, we win some, and my friends in the sisterhood of One More Cause for Old Time’s Sake will still be able to rock back in our chairs, hoist a few and promise to die once again for all of womanhood. We’ll be glad we tried and grateful for the many great memories we’ll have when we’re all sitting in wheelchairs in the nursing home.

Bill Ladewig

It’s all over the news…The boomers have reached the age of retirement. As the first boomer wave hits 65 they are looking at retirement as their right – something they are entitled to. It’s time to throw off the shackles of the workplace and find that eternal bliss that our parents struggled for after World War II, and finally found when they retired.
Surprisingly, not all baby boomers are running for vacation’s wide open door or the golf course. The baby boomers already have it all. They have enjoyed vacations, traveled to Bali, and seen the Eiffel tower. Their golf game could use some polish but isn’t bad, and they think there has to be more to life than perpetual golf games or volunteering. They want an exciting next stage. They are demanding a new and productive life, a land of grapes and honey, where life is provided for them and they can exist by doing good works that will cleanse their soul. They want to wake up in the morning with something to do that will give them a new lease on life and a promise for a better tomorrow for mankind. They want utopia and they want it now!
With a birthday in 46, I’m on the leading edge of the baby boomer generation. I represent the first of the boomers that have faced the crisis of retirement from a job that I held for over thirty-six years. I was blessed with a choice that not everyone has: I could continue to work or leave. I choose to leave not because of outside pressure but because I knew that it was time to leave. I remember leaving the army in the 70′s under the same feeling. It was time to get on with my life.
Did I know what my retirement life was going to bring? No, a thousand times, no. That was the challenge, a limited income and a sense that I can survive any challenge that is thrown at me. Yes, I’m a true baby boomer – not a wit of sense, but a belief that life is what you make it.
I announced my retirement to the office a year before I was intending to leave, and among the comments the included: “It’s about time!” And “When’s the party?” were genuine statements that they were going to miss me.
I told my wife that there would be no parties for me. “We’re in an economic depression,” I said. I was quickly told that I had to recognize this passage of my life. Maybe, but it seemed more akin to when they told us that we were getting out of Nam and the baby boomers collectively inhaled!
Came the day of retirement and I had decided that she was right and I told her to pack the car because we were going to go look for the meaning of life. She looked at me like I was crazy and maybe that this retirement was not going to be so good. The car was soon packed and with me driving we west and slightly north towards the great state of ten thousand lakes. I was not too familiar with Minnesota but heard that the scenery was beautiful and I was sure among those good Lutherans and Midwesterners that the meaning of life could be found.
After a number of hours, my wife decided that it had been a waste to buy me Mrs G.P.S. Garman since I clearly didn’t listen to any woman. I politely agreed with her and like all baby boomers declared that I believed in social equality and gender equality for all but I had rights too, including the right not to listen to Mrs Garman, if I so desired. Besides I was on a mission to find the meaning of life and she was holding me back.
Our goal was to go to Lake Itasca in the middle of Minnesota.
Rumor had it that the meaning of life was floating around up there and it was free for the taking.
The sky was blue and the air was clear. The sounds of summer were everywhere. Radios blared from car windows open to the sun, construction trucks beeped as they backed up to another pothole, causing the traffic to back up too. It was good to be alive in this part of the world on a June day.
It was a unique day for me at least. It was the first day of retirement and I was footloose and fancy free. No need to worry about the next phone call or piece of mail wondering why I hadn’t responded to the last five dunning letters. No, those problems were someone else’s now! I was in the car with my wife going out to find the meaning of life.
“Do you want me to make reservations for the night?” she asked as if I had lost my mind when I had told her that I was just going to get into the car and start looking for the meaning of life. “What way do we go?” she asked. “When we are looking for this meaning…We have to go somewhere and have to have a plan, don’t we?” Oh, how sensible wives are. “No,” I said. “We will follow the advice of Horace Greely and go west.”
Off we went in our modern-day conestoga wagon, holding our GPS and our cell phones, with a six pack of soda sitting in our cooler and a bag of trail mix. No empty calories for us, my wife insisted.
The trip along I 94 was uneventful except for the occasional person waving as they sped pass us – or gave us a one fingered salute as if in wondering why old people were allowed to use their roads. Past Madison, Wisconsin Dells, and Tomah – westward ho!
“Do you have a clue as to what you’re doing?” my wife asked from the far side of the car, her nose in a book. “No, I don’t but I don’t care. No one is looking to me to solve their problems and I have no appointments that I have to get to on time,” I said. “Besides life is good and I want to feel like I did before I was scheduled to go to Vietnam. I had thirty days to go home from Fort Polk and I took two weeks just driving back, no rules and no cares, greatest feeling of my life, next to marrying you,” I said. “Now I want to discover what life is all about. I think the answer is out there and I want to find it before I’m so old that I won’t care. Haven’t you ever wondered what life is all about?” I asked her.
“Not since I figured out you’re certifiably insane and need a keeper,” she said without smiling. A few minutes later she volunteered the opinion that at my age I should be back home cutting grass, but she supposes crazy people are more interesting than everyone else. “I love you anyway!” she said, putting her hand over mine.
Well, maybe I should be smoking grass, I thought, as the miles ripped by. Then I realized those days were gone too. God, but the sixties seemed just like yesterday with tie-dyed bandanas, madras shirts and sandals. My hair was longer then… no, I actually had hair then, and I didn’t care about the meaning of life. I just existed, going along with what I was supposed to do, harnessed by an invisible strap that pulled me down the family, work and community track. Trying to do my best because that was expected of me, and that was what everyone did…just trying to get ahead in life, one boring day after another boring day.
Now I was in a car, escaping from conformity at about 75 miles per hour, looking for the pot of gold. I’d known for a long time that I wasn’t going to get it from working in the office – that dream had died a natural death as the day to day struggles had worn me down. Now the question becomes where is the answer? Did the Beatles have it right? Was it in the sky with diamonds or hanging out with Lucy, or perhaps Timothy Leary and his obsession with LSD.
I had never been driven by the demons of the drug culture, and my observations over the years has been that drugs were a road that led nowhere but the darkest places of your mind and frankly that didn’t seem like a place that I was interested in.
The road that I was interested in was the one I was on now. It had twists and turns and seemed to have a lot of inclines and declines but it went straight ahead and I thought at least I was getting somewhere. Finally up ahead I saw the sign that said Mississippi River, just past it was the Minnesota state line.
Eureka – an epiphany moment! I knew what I had to do. Looking at my wife, I said,” Find the headwaters of the Mississippi and figure a route to get to it.” Soon we were on our way to Lake Itasca somewhere in the middle of a state that I was not familiar with except that the Vikings had a quarterback by the name of Bret Favre and he used to play for our beloved Packers.
The next miles flew by in total boredom. Much like Wisconsin, Minnesota seems to have invested in farms and cows with an occasional town thrown in to ensure that the locals can have gas and food on Friday night along with a fish fry and a beer or two.

There were two exits for Lake Itasca, either indicating that there is a large demand for going or coming from there or that the federal government had been taken by some smooth talking politician from The Great State of Minnesota. Pulling off at the second exit it quickly became obvious that the smooth talking politician was responsible for this place, as we were surrounded by pine trees on a road that stretched for miles with no other cars in sight. Eventually we came to a wood post that indicated a right turn would take us toward water. Following it, we ultimately came upon a visitor’s building. “Let’s use the facilities and get a map.” I said to my wife who by now was sorely annoyed with my search for the meaning of life. However, admitting that I wanted to follow a map definitely got her attention and she asked me if I was feeling OK?
“There it is, “I said as I pointed to the headwaters. It’s only ten miles away so let’s go. They have a boat trip we can take tomorrow, leaving at 10:00 in the morning.” My wife didn’t understand why it would take the rest of the day and night to go ten miles to catch a boat ride.
Back in the car I could feel my enthusiasm take over my body. Take the first right, then the second left, pull into the parking lot, two hundred feet to the headwaters. I hurried out of the car and walked over the wooden path stopping at a circle in the sidewalk that told me that I was at a point that was in the exact place that four watersheds meet, rivers going to the Atlantic, Hudson Bay, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico. Down a wooden path I walked, until I came across the head waters of the mighty Mississippi. There surrounded by maybe twenty-five people, all tourists with cameras and kids in tow, I saw it – a trickle of shallow water less than twenty feet wide flowing from a lake. Two men were wading across, while four or five children were walking across a small line of boulders that created a line of demarcation from the lake to a small stream that was more like a puddle that babbled away to the North. Could this be the mighty Mississippi? Well the sign said it was, but I had seen bigger streams coming out of showerheads in the Army
I looked at my wife and she could see my disappointment, “Is that it? “I asked. “What did you expect, a fountain with the water coming out of a little boy’s penis!” she asked.
“No but I sure thought that it would be bigger than this!”I gulped. I can’t believe that I came all this way to see a twenty foot wide canal. But I’m here, I guess I’ll walk across.”
Pulling my shoes off, I hiked up my shorts and proceeded across the Mississippi on foot, feeling somewhat as Jesus must have felt when walking on water…or maybe more like some rube that has been taken by a fast talking swindler. Not satisfied by doing it once, I repeated it by going back. Pulling my shorts down back down to my waist I realized that I hadn’t even gotten my clothes wet.
“Well, let’s get something to eat” I said as I put my shoes back on. Walking to the car I bemoaned my disappointment in the event. However, fish fry in a German restaurant in town soon brought my spirits back.
After a night’s sleep in one of the only hotels in town, because most people preferred to camp in the park, we returned to the park and drove around the lake which was really a fairly good size lake with only one small outlet. We found the boat that took us around the lake, filling us in on its history and how the headwaters were discovered. We were given another view of the headwaters from the waterside. What had seemed disappointing from the shore was made only marginally better from the lake side. There were no powerful rapids that ripped away from the lake. The water’s motion was more like pulling the plug in the bathtub to let the water out.
Soon we were back in the car and on our way back to Wisconsin. “Well let me have it!” I said as I awaited the “I told you that you weren’t going to find the meaning of life and even if does exist, it sure wasn’t going to be found in Minnesota” proclaimation. But in the way only a wife can, she said, “Well honey, are you happy that you were able to find the meaning of life?”
“I drove for about another fifty miles and looked over at her and smiling said,” You know honey, I think I did…life is like a river, it starts small and flows from a bigger life like a parent that gives birth to a baby. It seems so small at the beginning that it can’t even walk but as it goes along it joins other lakes and gets stronger, sometimes other streams join it and it gets bigger and bigger sometimes it’s banks overflows in places it’s not suppose to go. Sometimes there is a drought and it gets weaker and barely seems to be able to carry on, and sometimes it floods creating destruction in its wake. It starts in the headwaters but keeps flowing through the riverbed until it gets to the wide delta where it starts to ebb by spreading out to its destination, joining a larger area before it enters a larger body of water and dissipates into the great unknown of the ocean and loses it’s identity. When you look back at the river, you can see where it has created other rivers that flow and bring sustenance and existence to all that they touch. I know, honey, that it may sound stupid but I think that life is like the Mississippi River and I think I can compare my life to the river. I started as a baby and came in contact with other rivers that made me who I am. I have had travails and tribulations but my life just kept flowing along until I guess I’ll approach my death by joining the vast unknown of a vast sea that awaits at the end of every river.”
“Wow!” my wife said.
“ I guess what I’m saying is that the meaning of life lies in nature and that we are all just part of a great plan that starts when it starts and goes along like a tumbleweed, rolling down the years, with children and jobs to enjoy during life and as you approach the end that you have an opportunity to consider that there is no ending until you dissipate. The meaning of life is that you know it when you get there so you might as well just keep enjoying it until it ain’t there anymore. Carpe diem everyone!

 As the dark and seedy side of the church is being examined by the abused and tortured victims who have heroically stepped forward to demand retribution for the crimes afflicted upon them by a male controlled monolith, I am shocked to my core amid continuing, gut-retching stories of abuse and cover -up. Two hundred deaf boys in Wisconsin being abused by a priest who apparently felt that he had his own little fiefdom among youth who, being deaf and, in most cases without the ability to speak, could not protest. The massive cover-up, stretching in a direct line from the archbishop’s office to the Vatican, and most certainly includes civil authorities and members of the legal community who advise the Milwaukee archdiocese,  makes me wonder just who is looking out for the disabled and most vulnerable among us?

In defending itself, a member of the Vatican’s insider good old boys priestly network uses his bully pulpit to liken the cover-up of sex abuse cases to the “more shameful aspects of anti- Semitism.”  What’s next? Will the old boys claim that everything the offending priests did was all right because the Pope sat on their cases and failed to discipline them? Because the Pope is infallible and let these acts go unpunished they have done no wrong because their heart is good and besides, they went to confession and all their sins were forgiven.

 From Europe to the United States, the Catholic world is calling for an investigation into these abuses and demanding that the boy’s club be examined, the bad apples sorted out, and steps taken to care for the victims. To continue under the theory that “No comment was issued by the Vatican” leads Catholics to a conclusion we do not want to reach, namely that is that the Church is riddled with these issues and problems and that once light is cast upon the good old boys sex club the church will shrivel up and be forever destroyed by the evil of its’ ministers and it’s leaders.

 Can my Church be saved? I really don’t know! I suspect so, but certainly not with the leadership that has been lacking so far.

What the church needs to do is to turn inwards and investigate itself, with outside voices being involved in a transparent attempt to get to the extent of the problems and to set forth controls so that it does not continue in the future. They must reach out to the victims, not hid behind legal statute of limitations. They need to form restorative justice circles in every parish where victims exist. The circles should be formed with the victim, and parish members and include either the offender or parish priest as representative of the offender. This circle should hear the victim out and then as a group decide what sum of money should be given to the victim based on his individual situation. At the very least, authorization should be given to the victim for therapy, paid for by the church. The funds for these circles would come from the sale of schools and churches that no longer are needed as their flock flees from the evil underbelly of their church. If this is not enough, the Vatican can sell off their precious artwork and other assets. Only when the parishes and the priests themselves realize the effects of this molestation can the church begin to heal. Full transparency, would be the window to the world to show that The Catholic Church really recognizes its past misdeeds, is willing to make amends and remain a place of Christian values.

 It would foolish for me to believe that there will not be further transgressions by pedophile priests. “Boys will be boys” is not only a quaint saying it also suggests an honest view of the human sexual mores of the world. The church must seriously look at what’s happening in the seminaries where priests are being trained, at the issue of celibacy and marriage for priests, and examine its position on a female priesthood. Granted, allowing women to become priests would shatter the good old boys priestly network, and admit that women and men are equal – something the Church has been unwilling to do. But most important of all, allowing women into the priesthood provides a natural gatekeeper system in a good old boy network of that has gone badly haywire. The Church has been run exclusively by men for centuries, and this practice has brought us to this present crisis. It is time to let women have an equal voice in Catholic governance and help set things right.

 The Catholic Church can die out or it can elect to heal itself by opening its doors to its people. Only when the governance structure changes and transparency reigns will the Catholic Church regain its position as a moral interpreter of the world.