The New York Times - USA (2020-11-15)

2 SR THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020

M

Y STORY starts in Lowndes

County, Ala., a place that’s

been called Bloody Lowndes

because of its violent, racist

history. It’s part of Alabama’s Black Belt,

a broad strip of rich, dark soil worked

and inhabited largely by poor Black peo-

ple who, like me, are descendants of

slaves. Our ancestors were ripped from

their homes and brought here to pick the

cotton that thrived in the fertile earth.

I grew up here, left to get an education

and followed a range of professional op-

portunities. But something about that

soil gets in your blood. I came back hop-

ing to help good, hard-working people

rise up out of the poverty that bogs them

down like Alabama mud.

A big part of my work now is educating

people about rural poverty and envi-

ronmental injustice — about how poor

people around the United States are

trapped in conditions no one else would

put up with. Those conditions — polluted

air, tainted water, untreated sewage —

make people sick.

I take activists, donors and politicians

to see such conditions for themselves.

We visit families crowded into run-down

homes that lack heat in the winter and

plumbing in all seasons. We visit homes

with no means of wastewater treatment,

because septic systems cost more than

most people earn in a year and tend to

fail anyway in the impervious clay soil.

Families cope the best they can, mainly

by jury-rigging PVC pipe to drain their

toilet’s sewage into cesspools in the

woods or yard outside, where they breed

parasites and disease right by where

children and pets play.

An estimated 90 percent of Lowndes

households have failing or inadequate

wastewater systems, although no one

took the time to count until my organiza-

tion, the Center for Rural Enterprise and

Environmental Justice, conducted a

door-to-door survey in 2011 and 2012.

The head of one of those households

for years was Pamela Rush. Pam, who

was a 42-year-old mother with a cautious

smile when I met her in 2018, greeted vis-

itors at the door of the faded blue, single-

wide trailer she shared with her two chil-

dren. Senator Bernie Sanders, as well as

famous activists like Jane Fonda and the

Rev. Dr. William Barber II of the Poor

People’s Campaign, traveled down the

dusty road to Pam’s home, where they

saw a picture that was hard to shake.

In 2018, I described her living condi-

tions in an essay for The Times. The

trailer barely protected Pam and her

children, now 11 and 16, from the ele-

ments. Gaps in the walls had let opos-

sums and other wild animals squeeze in,

so Pam had stuffed rags in the holes and

set traps outside the front door. She cau-

tioned visitors to watch their step on the

sloping, flimsy floors, which were soft

underfoot.

Her monthly checks — less than $1,000

a month from disability and child sup-

port payments — didn’t stretch far

enough to cover repairs. Still, Pam did

her best to make a comfortable home for

her children, shopping secondhand at

the Salvation Army stores. The trailer

was musty, poorly ventilated and dimly

lit, with water-stained popcorn ceilings

and exposed electrical wiring. But Pam

had arranged an old sofa and chairs in a

cozy semicircle around the television set

and hung framed prints on the mildew-

streaked walls. A mobile of three brown-

skinned angels, bearing the words “An-

gels live here,” hung from the wall.

She shared a bed with her daughter,

whose bedroom was uninhabitable be-

cause of mold that thrived in the damp

environment. The child suffered from

asthma and needed a CPAP machine to

breathe at night. Her son slept on the

couch.

At the rear of the home, overlooking a

small yard and dense woods, was a col-

lapsed deck. Beside the deck a pipe

spewed raw sewage onto the ground.

The toilet paper and feces told a story of

the lost American dream much more

clearly than Pam ever could. The pride

and independence of homeownership

came to rest there, in that stinking pool.

Why didn’t she move, people some-

times asked me. A look at her mortgage

papers provided one reason. She had

paid about $113,000 for the trailer in 1995,

with an interest rate of 10 percent.

Twenty-four years later, she still owed

$13,000, but the trailer was worthless.

Despite this, payments came due each

month. A septic system was out of the

question. New ones in Lowndes, with its

impermeable soil, can easily cost more

than $15,000. That’s an example of the

structural poverty that traps good, hard-

working people where they are.

This year, Covid-19 has swept through

Lowndes County like a brush fire. Poor

people, and especially poor Black people,

fell victim in alarming numbers. Brazen

politicians have actually called for peo-

ple to die to protect the economy. In

Lowndes County, that’s exactly what has

happened. Poor essential workers are

dying to save the very economic and so-

cial structures that trap them in poverty.

It wasn’t long before Lowndes County

had the highest rate of coronavirus cases

in Alabama. Many people were infected

at the factories, warehouses, nursing

homes or stores where they worked.

They didn’t have the luxury of tele-

commuting.

Others caught it from family members

who didn’t know they had the virus or

had no means of social distancing. They

couldn’t afford to check into a motel.

They had no second homes to retreat to.

In the absence of coherent public policy,

people did what they could to help one

another, leaving food and other supplies

on the front porches of those who were

infected. In one of our last conversations

this spring, Pam told me she was fixing

some greens for a sick relative.

After two years of working with Pam,

my nonprofit had finally raised the

money to help her buy a new mobile

home. We were all anticipating her move

with joy, but the pandemic had put it on

hold.

Then, like a heat-seeking missile, the

coronavirus zeroed in on Pam. When she

developed breathing problems in June,

she was admitted to a Selma hospital,

and then transferred to the University of

Alabama Medical Center in Birming-

ham. That’s where she fought for her life

for a few days before she lost her battle

on July 3. The official cause of death was

Covid-19, but the underlying causes of

her suffering were poverty, environmen-

tal injustice, climate change, race and

health disparities. They would never be

listed on a death certificate.

I felt powerless, unable even to visit

Pam in the hospital in Birmingham

where she’d been taken. My heart ached

for her and for her family. At one point

the hospital asked for a picture of Pam,

maybe so the staff could see her as she

was before Covid. I sent pictures of her

with Mr. Sanders and Dr. Barber. I

wanted them to know that this strug-

gling patient was an important woman.

Before Covid-19, we thought we had a

solution to Pam’s plight. After years of

living in horrible conditions, Pam and

her children would finally have a livable

home with a working septic system.

Sadly, Pam never got to live there.

In the end, it didn’t matter that Pam

had opened her life and shown the world

what inequality looks like, or that influ-

ential Americans had walked through

her home and left in disbelief. Senator

Doug Jones, Democrat of Alabama, had

climbed her rickety front steps. Senator

Sanders had told her story in a video

shown across the nation. He’d promised

to work on policies to address her prob-

lems. But that would take time that Pam

didn’t have. It didn’t even matter that

Pam had testified before Congress. The

forces of structural poverty were too

strong.

I’m still hoping Pam’s children will live

in the home and enjoy the better life she

envisioned for them.

No One Should Have to Live Like This

PHOTOGRAPHS BY AUDRA MELTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Before she died, Pamela Rush opened her

home to show what poverty looks like.

OPINION

BY CATHERINE

FLOWERS

Founder and

executive director

of the Alabama

Center for Rural

Enterprise and

Environmental

Justice and the

author of the

forthcoming

“Waste: One

Woman’s Fight

Against America’s

Dirty Secret,” from

which this essay is

adapted.

Pamela Rush’s

home, now

vacant, in Tyler,

Ala.

Joe Biden’s potential to bring the country together

shortages, leading North Dakota’s gover-

nor to make the outrageous declaration

that healthcare workers who test positive

for COVID-19 can continue working.

President-elect Biden knows that to

revive our economy and achieve any of

our priorities, the United States must get

the coronavirus under control. Experts

on the Biden COVID-19 task force are

already at work on plans to reduce the

spread of the virus, ensure vaccines are

safe and implement basic virus control

measures scientists have long begged for:

a national system for testing and contact

tracing, targeted closures when neces-

sary, and promoting mask-wearing as

both a safeguard and a patriotic act.

Americans came out, in the middle of a

pandemic, and voted in record numbers

to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Despite this decisive result, the country

is bitterly divided over social issues, race

and gender. Fully 56 percent of Trump

voters said they support him because

he “stands up for America’s values,

history and culture.”That is incompre-

hensible to those of us who both love

America and fight to make it fairer and

more just. But our divisions mask an

important commonality:We all want

to feel safe—economically, emotionally

and physically. In the midst of overlapping

crises—a pandemic, a recession, a climate

emergency and a reckoning with racial

injustice—most of us don’t feel secure.

President-elect Biden will not only confront

these crises, he will work to make the

country more united, just and secure.

The unrelenting march of the coronavi-

rus pandemic—from early outbreaks on

the coasts to nearly every state being

in the red zone—has blanketed the

country in fear.

The economic downturn has cast 8

million more people into poverty. Even

before the pandemic, 40 percent of

Americans said they couldn’t cover a

$400 emergency. Many people who

never worried about their financial

security feel very vulnerable now.

The murders of innocent Black Americans,

the peaceful protests in response, and the

false characterizations of those protests as

“mobs” reveal we have much hard work

and healing to do. Racism—in law en-

forcement, healthcare, education and the

environment—is so pervasive that public

health experts say simply being Black can

be harmful for your health. Race played

a role in the elections, from dog-whistle

warnings of voter fraud to outright voter

suppression and disenfranchisement.

The thing that families place so much

hope in—their children’s education—

now causes so much angst.We worry that

children will contract the virus at school

or unknowingly bring it home; we see

our children losing out academically with

remote learning and growing isolated and

depressed as the months drag on.

Healthcare workers are exhausted, angry

and, yes, very afraid. Many still lack

necessary protective equipment as infec-

tions rage. Hospitals across the country

are reaching capacity and face dire staff

Randi Weingarten,President

American Federation of Teachers

Photo: Pamela Wolfe

America’s divisions

mask an important

commonality:We all

want to feel safe.

Joe Biden joins Weingarten, AFT members and students at an AFT Votes

town hall in Houston on May 28, 2019.

ProtectingAmericans from the coronavi-

rus will make it possible to pursue other

priorities, such as in education.This has

been the most challenging school year

most of us have ever experienced—from

the lack of consistent safety guard-

rails and guidance, to the shortage of

resources, to the limitations of hybrid and

remote learning,despite educators work-

ing harder than ever.

President-elect Biden is committed

to working with Congress to pass a

COVID-19 relief package with robust aid

to schools, towns, cities and states, so

they can invest in safeguards to reopen

schools safely. In addition to public health

components, the relief package will

provide crucial funding to help schools

recover from the devastating academic,

social, health and nutrition effects of the

pandemic on children.

The Biden-Harris education plan fulfills

the promise and purpose of our public

schools as agents of opportunity and

anchors of our communities by pledging

to fully fund the Individuals with Dis-

abilities Education Act and triple funding

for Title I to help low-income students. It

will provide high-quality universal pre-

kindergarten for all 3- and 4-year-olds.

It will expand community schools, which

is vital to help a generation of students

recover from the effects of COVID-19 and

this recession. It will restore the mission

of the Education Department’s Office for

Civil Rights.And Biden and Harris have

pledged to provide much-needed relief to

borrowers crushed by student loan debt.

Their economic recovery plan will create

millions of jobs in manufacturing, innova-

tion, infrastructure, clean energy and edu-

cation.These are jobs you can support a

family on, jobs that will help restore hope

that there is a better future ahead.

The Biden administration will protect

and build on the Affordable Care Act,

giving Americans more choice, reducing

healthcare costs, protecting those with

pre-existing conditions and expanding

coverage.

The American people have spoken.We

want leaders who care about our well-

being and will unify all Americans with

better leadership,honesty and integrity,

justice and equality, caring and respect.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the

leaders we need.