Tuesday, March 17th, 2020
Editor’s Note — A Tale of Two Worlds
Author: Stephan A. Schwartz
Source: Schwartzreport
Publication Date: 16 March 2020
Link: Editor’s Note — A Tale of Two Worlds
Source: Schwartzreport
Publication Date: 16 March 2020
Link: Editor’s Note — A Tale of Two Worlds
Stephan: Over the weekend I had a lengthy conversation with my daughter, Katherine. She is the president of a multimillion dollar social services agency in Northern California. But she is also a working single mother. Katherine has about 100 people who work for her, and her clients are mostly people of low income who are in some kind of crisis, medical, psychological, financial, addiction. I listened as she laid out for me her passionate concerns not only for her hundreds of clients and their families, but also for the men and women who work for her. I was not surprised by her compassion and concern. She walked away from a career as a singer when one of the most famous music producers then in Hollywood approached us, saying he would make her a star, choosing instead to become a social worker as soon as she finished graduate school; a life path she has followed ever since.
But I was surprised as she described the realities of her clients and staff as they faced school closings, therapy closures loss of work, and all the other things you hear discussed. But it is one thing in the abstract and quite another to listen to the specific details from the life of a single hourly minimum wage working class mother with a handicapped child.
After we hung up I began to think about what the stress of the pandemic is bringing into focus about the utter inadequacy of America's social safety network, particularly the absurd and ugly illness profit system that passes for healthcare in this country. How in the world are people who can't write a $400 check in the best of times, who may or may not even have health insurance, who may need food assistance, going to get through what is happening in America? With the demonstrated incompetency of the Trump administration, how to people even get tested?
This morning when I did my first survey of the news I came across four stories that told me a very different story, and I realized that another aspect of American life is also being brought into focus: what the ultra-rich are doing and what their lives are like. In sum it is now very clear that there is one very large America, and another very small America, and their worlds strongly resemble the medieval age with its small world of lords and ladies and the vast world of peasants. As it was 500 years ago, so it is again today. These two world are so different that neither really relates, or even understands the other.
Stephan, I grew up in a very wealthy town in a very wealthy family on Cape Cod. One of my jobs as an adult was as an addiction counselor counselor in New Bedford Massachusetts. I also decided that I would live in New Bedford in one of the poor neighborhoods of the city. I was horrified by what I saw and heard from both my clients and my neighbors. The first night I was there, I heard gunshots less than a block away. The stories I heard from my clients who are mostly attics of one sort or another were almost beyond belief. I immersed myself in their world and learned so much about their joys and sorrows and really serious problems with both addiction and lack of education, lack of jobs, crime, difficult interfaces with the city from the local cops to the social services people to the politicians. I watched as social workers from the state department of children and adults took young children away from their drug addicted mothers or simply because the mother‘s boyfriend had left a roach on the coffee table in their home. I watched them cry and rage and get depressed and more depressed, and I thought what is going on here? I listen to them talk about how the game went the system and I thought good for them. I thought that because the entire system is against them from the politicians on down. And I didn’t blame them a bit. I probably would have done the same, scrambling for a few more dollars from food stamps and where ever they could find some money so that they could stay alive and keep their children alive.
I had 2 clients, one black, one white, who told me basically the same story: They both were angry, but resigned. They were both drug addicts. And they both knew from experience that if the political will existed, the city coulda get rid of the drugs sold on every corner overnight. They’d seen that happen when serving in Vietnam. But the establishment, they believed — and I think they’re right — wants the drugs there. It keeps people quiet. Cops were corrupt, look them other way, on the take from the man who brought all drugs into the city. I knew him. He owned a successful bar, drive a silver Mercedes convertible, and ran a marina for the yachting crowd. Everyone knew what he did, and no one to this day has said a word.
I dealt with clients with serious mental illness-depression, anxiety, PTSD,. And of course there was the addiction to everything from alcohol to heroin to fentanyl to math to OxyContin, to prescription medications. And I’m afraid the agency I worked for was ill-equipped to. I was the only counselor licensed to do the work, and the only one with extensive training to do the work. Some of the counselor were using themselves. Some were “born-again Christians” whose methodology was to pray once a week for 50 minutes with their clients. Only one used the 12 Steps and required clients to attend NA or AA. (One Goodman place to buy drugs, by the way, is at NA meetings).
I had clients with little kids who had never been to one of the city’s 5 beautiful beaches — didn’t even know there’s were beaches. So in the Summer, my homework for them between appointments was to take the kids to the beach. .Org go by themselves and just sit or walk and try’s to absorb the beauty of the sea and sky and wind and sun. None ever did, simply because the bus system was so poor they would have to change buses 2 or 3 times, and it would take 2 hours to go the 3 miles to the beach.
The difference between their situation and mine was simple: I could get out of the city every afternoon after leaving work if I wanted to. I had a car. They scrambled for bus fare so they could get to the grocery store many blocks away, sometimes on the other end of the city.
During the summer once or twice a week I would go back to my hometown to my wealthy friends and go sailing we would race out on that beautiful bay. We would sit at the yacht club after a day of sailing and talk about the races and our lives and our concerns and worries, which were real, but pretty mundane I thought. One of the things we never ever talked about was what was going on in New Bedford 10 miles away. My wealthy friends had no idea what it was like to live in the north end of New Bedford in a six block area and that was the world they knew in New Bedford. Whenever I would try to bring up what I was doing, eyes were glazed over or there would be some talk about how awful it was but we were volunteering once a month at a food pantry or a soup kitchen and our church was doing what it could to help out. But they didn’t know they had no idea and they didn’t want to know.
My clients in New Bedford had absolutely no idea a place like my home town, 10 miles away, even existed. They had no idea what it was like to be able to sit by the sea and have a drink and a good meal and talk about the joys of sailing. They didn’t know they could get out, if they really wanted to. There’s wasn’t anywhere else to go.
I had a foot in both worlds and neither World knew about the other.
I did that for three years, and finally gave up after 3 women clients died of overdoses. I didn’t see that what I was doing was having any effect at all and realized my clients really didn’t want to get well. I also got no support from supervisors, and in fact was harassed me by one for bringing up flaws in the system.
A solution to the problems of innermost cities must be out there somewhere, but I don’t know what’s it is. Better education, new jobs to replace the those in the dying fishing industry, cleaning out the drugs, voting corrupt politicians out, better trained counselors and social workers, and a big change in the attitudes of the wealthy all would help. None seem so likely to happen any time soon.
Thanks for posting your thoughts, Peter. National universal, birthrate single payer healthcare would be one step. Easily accessible child and elder care as part of that would also help. But the key to all of it is making wellbeing the first priority not profit. Other nations can and do all of these things.