Kids
lobby at Capitol for welfare reform
By
Christopher Sprung
The
Forum - 02/20/2001
ST. PAUL – Somewhere, somehow, in some heavenly clime, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln must have been smiling.
As other kids whiled away their Presidents Day holiday sleeping late, vegging out in front of the TV, or hanging out with friends, some civic-minded Moorhead and Dilworth kids trekked to the state Capitol Monday not only to celebrate democracy, but to become part of it.
Ranging from 11 to 17 years old, the eight-member group paid calls on state lawmakers to voice their concerns about welfare reform, an issue close to their homes and hearts.
“We want to help other people who don’t have time to speak for themselves,” explained 17-year-old Amy Cerna, a junior at Moorhead High School. “There’s some of us here who really don’t need the help, but this will affect a lot of others.”
Minnesota is rapidly approaching its first milestone in the national effort to reduce welfare dependency with work-focused reforms. Of the 41,000 families now on the state’s welfare rolls, about 5,600 are slated to exhaust their five-year lifetime limit on benefits by July of 2002.
What happens to the families that aren’t self-sufficient by the cutoff date is a matter of great concern to welfare rights advocates, to some lawmakers and to 16-year-old Bianca Mendez of Dilworth.
She worries the policy will result in hunger and homelessness. “Do you know what it feels like to wonder if you’re going to have enough money for food the next day?” she asked.
It’s a question she put to Sen. Keith Langseth, DFL-Glyndon, and Rep. Paul Marquart, DFL-Dilworth, when she visited their offices. Others asked tough questions of their own, questions that didn’t always meet with answers they wanted to hear, or answers at all.
Fifteen-year-old Jesse Villarreal wanted to know how anyone earning just $5.50 an hour can possibly support themselves, let alone a family. At those wages, it’s almost impossible to buy food and clothes and a place to live, he said.
Manny Martinez, 13, asked the lawmakers if they believed “everybody on welfare is lazy and just doesn’t want to work?”
And Erica Villarreal, 13, thought it might be a good idea for legislators to trade lives for a little while with the poor people their decisions will affect.
“How do you think we feel to be on welfare? I mean, some people don’t like being on, and some are embarrassed, and some don’t even like to mention it,” she said. “I would like to see you go on welfare for at least a week and see how it feels.”
The kids were advocating in support of bills sponsored by Sen. John Hottinger, DFL-Mankato, and Rep. Neva Walker, DFL-Minneapolis, that would stop the five-year time limit in Minnesota and focus on creating higher-paying jobs, affordable housing, child care, education and health care.
“We came all this way to the Capitol, so what’s our answer?” 8-year-old Johnny Cantu asked in a voice nearly inaudibly soft.
While stopped short of saying he’d support the Hottinger bill, Langseth told the young lobbyists that he realizes the issue is both pressing and important.
“I think we really have to talk this over and try to figure out the best solution,” he said, adding that part of that discussion means talking about the reasons why people can’t get off welfare.
Marquart explained that while he might support extending benefits for some recipients under the right circumstances, he doesn’t support a blanket rollback of the five-year limit.
A high-school government teacher, Marquart was impressed with how well-prepared the kids were. “They asked some very good questions,” he said. “I was surprised by their insightfulness.”
The kids came to the Capitol as part of a field trip arranged by Moorhead’s People Escaping Poverty Project, a local advocacy group heavily involved in welfare issues.
Their day began with an immersion in such government fundamentals as how a bill becomes a law and some strategies on effective lobbying.
Not that Franky Martinez needed any help with the latter. The first to talk and the last to quit talking, he’s surprisingly well-spoken for an 11-year-old and unusually comfortable raising questions with adults.
Long after the meetings with lawmakers were over, Franky spotted Marquart in the Capitol basement and began to make his sales pitch all over again, trailing the lawmaker as he walked down the corridor.
“He was kind. He was nice. He tried to answer most of our questions,” Franky said.
Llysa Ringquist, a PEPP community organizer, said the trip teaches kids about responsive government and “how to make themselves heard.”
For Amy Cerna, the day brought her high school civics classes to life in ways that textbooks simply can’t teach.
“There’s
some things I don’t understand, like those big words. They confuse you,”
she said. “But we’re seeing the real thing instead of just hearing it in
government class.”