Reagan's Legacy of Poverty
WHY Reporter editor Pia Wilson weighs in on "The Gipper"

I was a young reporter, barely out of college, when President Richard M. Nixon died. During the news coverage of his death, my memory was refreshed of his great accomplishments as president — the most prominent being his opening of a new relationship with China. I couldn't fully appreciate the emotionally-charged, disparaging comments made about Nixon by my older colleagues. Sure, I knew about Watergate. I'd learned all about it in history — and later, journalism — classes. Nixon was so past tense to me that I couldn't understand my colleagues' visceral reaction to his death and subsequent reentry into the forward parts of their consciousness. Now that President Ronald Reagan has died, I understand.

Despite what some call his charm, I never had a great affinity for Reagan. I've always felt he had a devastating effect on not just our country's economic and social systems, but the world's systems as well. I fear some young person might think Ronald Reagan was a great president who presided over a robust economy while single-handedly winning The Cold War. I want to bear witness to his true legacy.

Domestically, his myth of the "Welfare Queen" is still truth in the minds of many Americans, just as a five-year-old believes in the tooth fairy. His trickle-down theory never managed to send any economic benefits downstream to impoverished neighborhoods, already adrift in an ocean of a chronic recession without the oars of well-funded social programs. Those programs had been cut by Mr. Reagan, whom I'm sure was optimistic poor people could pull themselves up by their own boot straps, if they really tried.

I'm not alone in remembering the true legacy of the Reagan years. This week, William Greider — former Harry Chapin Media Award winner — wrote a column in this week's issue of The Nation. He talked about "The Gipper's Economy" and what that meant to America, and the world. Greider wrote:

The rending of the American middle class, the stagnation of industrial wages, the relentless loss of US manufacturing--these great wounds to general prosperity were all visible during the Reagan era, but instead of addressing them honestly, his policies further aggravated the consequences. The Gipper insisted, no doubt sincerely, that it was "morning again in America."

By ignoring the AIDs crisis at a crucial moment in its evolution, Reagan spun the world into a dark night, from which the world has yet to see light. The financial costs of the epidemic have seriously affected first world countries and devastated third world countries. The cost of human lives lost is without measure.

Homelessness also became a raging problem, stifled by The Great Communicator's optimism. Kevin Fagan writes in The San Francisco Chronicle, "Before Reagan, people sleeping in the street were so rare that, outside of skid rows, they were almost a curiosity. After eight years of Reaganomics — and the slashes in low-income housing and social welfare programs that went along with it — they were seemingly everywhere."

"... the single most powerful thing Reagan did to create homelessness was to cut the budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development by three-quarters, from $32.2 billion in 1981 to $7.5 billion by 1988. The department was the main governmental supporter of subsidized housing for the poor and, combined with the administration's overhaul of tax codes to reduce incentives for private developers to create low-income homes, the nation took a hit to its stock of affordable housing from which it has yet to recover, they contend," Fagan said.

Homelessness, social carelessness, and the continuing repercussions of AIDS — that, in my opinion and experience, is what "The Gipper" has left us.

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Pia Wilson is editor of The WHY Reporter.

Family Farms vs. Factory Farms
WHY's own Mary Gable visits an Iowa farm

As we rounded the corner on a gravel road in north central Iowa, two large dumpsters ten feet from the road dotted the sparse landscape. Closer inspection brought us face-to-face with dozens of dead hogs dumped headfirst into the receptacles. This lack of care for the animals and the environment revealed the harsh realities of America's corporate agriculture and its bitter contrast to family farms struggling to survive. Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (Iowa CCI), a 2003 Harry Chapin Self-Reliance Award Winner, is helping independent family farms to provide a safe, environmentally friendly alternative to the products of factory farms.

Along with a rural Illinois activist, I visited two family farms participating in Iowa CCI's Family Farm Alternative Marketing Project. The Kelseys and McDowells — Kurt, Arliss, and Kent Kelsey, and Mark and Connie McDowell — each represent at least four generations of farmers. Our tour of the Iowa countryside surveyed their farms, where sheep and hogs roam freely and receive humane treatment. To ensure the production of high-quality, safe, healthy meat, Iowa CCI farmers also raise their animals without antibiotics, hormones, or animal byproducts. Their farming methods producing relatively little waste over a large land area protect the environment, and their sale of fresh, local foods support rural economies.

Unlike the Kelseys and McDowells, factory farms use many environmentally harmful and inhumane farming methods. Thousands of animals confined in large sheds produce massive amounts of manure on small parcels of land. To increase profits, corporate agribusinesses ensure that their animals grow quickly by using antibiotics, animal byproducts, and hormones. These harmful toxins cause serious health problems through dangerous manure spills and animal waste injected into the ground by corporate farms, and through air pollution.

During our visit, we drove by many vacant farms lying dormant due to the unbearable odors and unhealthy toxins emitted by their factory farm neighbors. Factory sheds pack hundreds of hogs in each building, growing them to full-size in less than four months without ever exposing them to sunlight. Many hogs die during their first outdoor excursion when corporate farmers finally attempt to load them onto trucks for transport to slaughterhouses. Corporate agriculture's large-scale production takes these losses into account while inflicting serious economic, health, and environmental damage onto rural communities.

Iowa CCI's Family Farm Alternative Marketing Project, funded in part by the Harry Chapin Self-Reliance Award, connects consumers with local food produced by family farmers using safe, environmentally friendly methods. Iowa CCI member Mark McDowell described the benefits of the program best in the project's directory:

When consumers buy directly from family farmers, they are paying the farmer a fair price for the food they raise and supporting an economically just food system. They can also be sure where and how the animal was raised and processed, as well as what it was fed.

This grassroots solution to a national — and international problem — serves as a model for family farmers and rural activists in Iowa and Illinois, and nationwide. It, likewise, suggests serious changes in American domestic and international agricultural policies. WHY continues to promote grassroots efforts, such as Iowa CCI, to effect social change.

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Mary Gable is program director of WHY's Reinvesting in America program.

Haiti Harsh on Children's Lives
Deforestation aids flood disaster

Raging floods in Haiti and the Dominican Republic have compounded Haiti's economic problems, where many people were already eating “dirt biscuits”. Children — many underfed and not knowing how to swim — made up nearly half of the approximate 3,400 victims of the flood.

Save the Children had already listed Haiti as one of the world's hardest countries for children, with the highest infant mortality rate in the Western hemisphere: 80 of every 1,000 children die there before they turn one years old, compared with 7 out of every 1,000 children in the United States. The flood disaster has done much to increase the juvenile death toll.

According to the Associated Press, the flooding in Haiti was aided by the country's rampant deforestation. More than 90 percent of Haiti is deforested, in large part because most of its 8 million people cook with charcoal, which is made from wood. There's no electricity outside major cities and towns. The floods — combined with recent political coups — have thrown Haitians into even more turmoil.

Organizations like Oxfam, which recently distributed 800 five-gallon bottles of water to affected families in Mapou and in Fonds Verettes, are on the ground trying to stave off the dangers of acute poverty there while the United Nations peacekeeping troops are trying to stop the deforestation.

Get the full story from the Associated Press.