Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20141027

And it took time to fix it. We were talking earlier about bob gates and mike mullen and one thing they got credit for is that it is a no way sexy at the outset and in the governmentwide security clearance if we sought help and had counseling and medication and this was the guest stigma there could possibly be because if you set guess you might not get your clearance and if you said yes you might lose your clearance because it is governmentwide into the biggest defender so they looked at this and they thought this is not. You could lose your clearance. Youre never going to change it. And the constant lobbying that pushed back against it very hard they basically argued against their colleagues had finally got changed this was a multiyear fight chugging along on the surface. They want that fight but it took a lot. You think about changing the question on a form and took several years. The kind of change they talk about with the best intentions. Its not quick and its not easy may be some things i can add that will help afford some clarity not suggesting that there is a disorder so that when you incorporate, something is out of order. On the stigma that is attached to this theres also a label and this label traveled with him like you just exemplified so you can compare that kind of scenario. For dont ask dont tell you are hiding pathology. Behavioral health is something that is a taboo especially with suicide and embarrassment and associated so you can look at it in that regard. There is a debate in the military and an illegitimate honest one and that is a nice way to wrap up the conversation. But the question is how do you commemorate a soldier that killed himself and on the other side they say these are casualties of war and they should be memorialized the same way. When i first met him they lost 168 soldiers to combat that another killed himself and when they came back to the Unit Division they had the names of the ones that die in combat died in combat and not told himself and to this day he said the biggest regret of his life that he did that but this isnt people say there is a difference between being shot on foot patrol and shooting your soviet people say that one deserves to be honored in one way and one deserves to be commemorated the other way. They are not bad people and this isnt some in that is blackandwhite. This lives in the gray and we should accept and can accept that these are real threats. As a society held to be fix it and there are other people trying to do just that but we have to remember that this is nuanced. You cant simply say give them a prosthetic in his life goes on and he is much better. We dont have that luxury anymore and for a country that cares we have to bear in mind this doesnt go play for the only for the person that has a candidate doesnt go away for a country struggling with suicide and for a family that lost two sons and tried to get out of bed in the morning. People do it, people find a way to try to help you keep those things in mind. There are people out there trying to make it better and with that, thank you all for your time. [applause] let me say a quick thank you for joining us in conversation and as we mentioned before, this book, which you can all see how important it really is too everything that we are thinking about these days it will be available to you all. So thanks again. [applause] up next on the tv after words with guest host tracy ross senior policy analyst on policy for the center for American Progress. This week linda and her first book hand to mouth living in the struck america. The selfdescribed average american and mother of two describes how she went from middle class to lower class to poor and argues that a safety net is needed for those on what she calls the bottom rungs of societys letter. This program is about an hour. Host i am tracy a senior policy analyst at the center for American Progress and im joined by linda tirado whose recent book hand to mouth was just released last week. Congratulations. I know that you have been on a whirlwind for discussing this book. But the book is really kind of a long time in the making and the reason were here is because of an essay that you wrote last year that was entitled why i make several decisions were poverty. Can you tell us a bit about that and it was actually a response. Guest i was having a conversation with my friends after work one night. What she said as i know that im not supposed to judge people for that. Somebody remind me why. I knew this one. I started to get a kind of weird response and then i kind of got an incredible response and i was on the front page of the Huffington Post and russia called and israel called and we had a fan base in india which is interesting to me and then there was do you want to write a book and i thought and now im interviewed about the book. And here we are today. Host tell us a bit about the book. I mean, speaking about the essay, why did you decide to do such a thorough response that you have probably heard similar comments before. Guest i was in the mood. It literally is it. I was on the last shift at work and some of the ask a question and i thought i know the answer to this one and i am incredibly wordy so i wrote responses of that length, he need not quite that length but there was a long comment and that one in particular for whatever reason reason and i documented the original wording of the thing i was responding to but something about the words made me think i can explain this. And so why did an as much as i wasnt capable of at 2 00 in the morning after lunch and that really was it like i know this one. So off it went. I didnt get near as much fun as people probably give me credit for. Host said the essay, like the book, kind of gives us a tumor of the things that poor people are judged for. Everything from their diets to work ethics sex lives, and you have a lot of ideas criticism or a lot of people thought how does this woman actually a low income person, shes so articulate. People started digging into your background. How did that come about . Because even in the New York Times they questioned your credibility. Guest yeah. Yeah. Which is interesting because to question the credibility of someone that says this is what porter feels like, you have to say you dont look were ended to be able to see that, you have to have an idea of what it looks like what is interesting to me because the working class folks, people near the minimum wage, like one third, and we dont look like anything. We look like everything and everybody because we are all over the place. And so the criticism i think was more projection than anything because people wanted to be able to say were looks like the other things. It looks like that over there. Word isnt skilled because we have a meritocracy and if you are skilled you are going to be successful. Cracks dont exist in america. And that was the genesis of most of the criticism and the backlash is people see that you are doing for him properly. My parents were middle class and i was estranged from my parents most of my adult life, so i didnt have the Family Resources. Hypothetically, i did. We came to we reconciled when my first daughter was born, but in the intervening years now, i didnt have the Family Resources and i didnt have a degree and i was working in the Service Economy just like anybody else now. Does the fact that my childhood was more comfortable than many children and that i didnt experience that in the Service Industry and mean but i dont understand what its not like to pay your bills and how many years you have to not be able to pay your bills to see this has been my experience and im allowed to stand up and say that so people ask me about the criticism of lott and i dont really think its criticism. I think that its a defense mechanism of being able to say you clearly and i titled is why i make these decisions because im snarky by nature and a lot of people grabbed onto that and said while you made all the bad decisions and i like to say its kind of a mix of decisions and luck because if i had been in a position where i could cover my mistakes like a lot of wealthy people can, i never would have were it i had a good look i could have made all the bad decisions i wanted and it wouldnt have mattered, but if you dont have those things come if you dont have the cushion and you are not equipped to make those decisions and i left home when i was 16yearsold. How wonderful are the decisions that every 17 year old out on their own . So i always laugh when people are like you didnt do it properly. Okay, tell you what, find yourself think about your sofa to 16. Now assume you can do anything you want and have no rules. Youre alone. How well do you think he would have done . Probably about as well as i did. So, you know, the criticism as i was interested until you more about the person doing the criticizing dan ever does about you. Because here is what it comes down to. I gave the records to the nation, the washington post. I gave interview. I took my teeth out on youtube. I dont have anything more to prove because all i ever said was that it sucks to work hard every day and never get anywhere and that is a true statement whether or not i was a multimillionaire living in a con of war if i never had a home in my entire life it sucks to work hard and never get anywhere. Host i also think part of the problem is when you are near the poverty rate which is about 15 over the last several years, steer was 14. 5. We tend to think that its the same 15 of americans when really people are cycling in and out of a small percentage of people are poor for those few years that we are measuring. Guest those people that are working class will be in poverty technically five or six times over the course of their life. Most people get out in the over four years because it depends. If you have good health this year, did you get into a good job, maybe your spouse got something weve got a crazy tax rebate or someone died and left you 20 grand. You can have those good years and you can have bad years. They come and go and that is what being working class in america is. Host i want to read a part of your book that i think really captures what its about and what youve been saying. I can say for sure is downward mobility is like quicksand. Once it grabs you it constrains your options until its got you completely. I slid through the bottom with a mix of my own decisions own decisions and some curiously bad luck. I think that is true of most people. It can seem light upward mobility is blocked but the lady are between the lower middle class and the poor is porous from above. What does that conjure up for you . Because throughout the book, it sounds like there is a level of anxiety that you can feel about being in poverty with a level of fatigue and just kind of constant fear that youre going to get below. Guest im so glad that that came through. [laughter] host hearing your words read back to you, what were you thinking when you wrote that because it seems to capture that. Guest i was thinking about a flood when i wrote it. When i was pregnant with my first child, we discovered that we were pregnant and my husband decided to go back to school. He had been recently in iraq and so we applied if we got him into school. We planned to move to cincinnati and we were going to be living on his stipend because with the g. I. Bill, you get your books and tuition paid and they give you a living stipend that is dependent on the zip code of the school that you are in. And for us, we were supposed to be getting somewhere between 12 or 14 or a month. It was enough to barely live on. We could make it through the semester. My daughter was due three weeks after that semester and then the money never came. There was a paperwork screw up somewhere that they didnt put through some paperwork and so every week we would go and say that the stipend coming and they would say no not to speak. Come back next week. Individually we both got jobs at the burger king locally and we got the the craftiest apartment we could find because we thought it was just going to be temporary because now we were going to get a huge check for the back pay and we would be able to put a deposit down on a decent apartment we could raise our kids. And the money just kept not showing up all semester long. It kept not showing up and we were living in this awfully maintained apartment and then there was a summer storm in ohio the drains were not properly maintained in the building and everything in the apartment in the basement and everything we owned was pretty much destroyed in the flood and we had no money and no place to go see what it is sweetland to this little that was right next to our work and we stayed there but we didnt have enough to pay on the rent and own the hotel so our landlord sued us for an eviction on this apartment that was more driven because the person taking care of the flood was some handy guide with a shop vac that popped the windows open which if you ever been to ohio in the late summer, that is not an effective management technique there was mold 6 feet up on the walls. It was crazy. Thats what i was talking about is knowing our baby was on the way and we have done everything right. We have done everything right. There was nothing we didnt you write. We went to school, we of the had the funding in place, we had an apartment. Then there was this storm and all of it was gone. And everything we had was some of the vb stuff that we savaged. Thats what he had. As you mentioned this earlier but one third of americans are a flood or paycheck were broken car or sick child away from poverty. So, does your experience throughout the book i have to say going into it i am a little skeptical reading a book where the persons experience of almost supposed to represent a broad experience but i think that you do a good job of things and this is what i saw also balancing it with this is created for particular reasons as our economy is set up. This is my particular experience but its also a common one on many levels. Guest i like to say that i am indicated because youll hear the variation of the flood from any poor person can anybody ever completely screwed by something that was out of your control and that for all of your dreams away and set you back by years. That will happen and it will be a flood or sick relative or that kind that got laid off were the kind that hurts their back. Something that everybody has got more than one of them. And they are interchangeable. It doesnt matter. It doesnt matter which story youre talking about or which time because something happened and something is going to happen and something will always happen so it is the question of being poor or being working class even at this point because we have heard of move upwards, right. Its always knowing that something is going to happen. You just never really know when and you dont know what its claimed to look like and you dont know how that its going to be but the one thing you can count on is that they are still going to take over the taxes out of your paycheck and something is going to happen. But the quote that i read, you also mentioned bad decision and bad luck. So those decisions are healthrelated like smoking and drinking and other vices that you talk about having to deal with insurance settling after a car accident. Do you ever get worried about playing into that i guess guess the stereotype that poor people are giving it to themselves . Because you are candid about decisions that might not have been the best in the world. Guest i think that for anybody to try to say that i am human and i have never made a bad decision in my life, i am a saint and you should all be appropriately affordable for the perseverance. Thats ridiculous. Multiperson on this world hasnt made a few mistakes. The difference between rich people and poor people is that when we make mistakes, we cannot cover them. There arent are spots for them. You see an addicted rich person coming to you dont because they take a cab and they go to rehab where they take some personal pride and go to rehab and their insurance covers it and they are in a nice place and they can stay for as long as they need to get healthy. Its not that we make different decisions but its that we cant cover them in the same way. So we pay for our decisions immediately. And we do it in a way that people will never understand because they never know what it is to know that if you screw up even in the slightest amount, of time it could be the ruin of view ruben of you. The privilege is never having to fill feel that this year because that one time that you made a mistake i mean look which respectively have i always made good decisions . Absolutely not. But ive always made the decision that made sense for me at the time. And i have not always had good information and ive made decisions of drunk. Im not going to say that hasnt happened but who hasnt . I mean, how many marriages started drunk . Liked her coke so yes it is playing into that stereotype for anybody that holds onto it and wont get rid of the stereotype that those people arent going to hear what im saying anyway so i dont worry about them. If you are determined to find something in my history that explains the entire American Economy and why so many people are trapped, you are already living in your own world. Get your head out and turn it on. Host i want to read another part. To predict every possible, poor people are not uniquely psychic. Throughout the book you kind of talk about how there are all superhuman expectations for lowincome people while simultaneously being treated like subhuman and that comes across a lot in the different work situations that you describe in the minimum wage work generally. And many people know the minimum wage has decreased and its value by 30 . So, not only is it just a low number but it is worth less than it once was. And yet, you are expected to as the title suggested with your self up on your bootstraps. Can you talk a bit about your Work Experience and how hard this was . Guest i used this metaphor because to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps you need to be able to levitate. And your hands are not going to be free to study the latter is essentially what we are saying is do the impossible in the least to safely possible. And if you managed that, then you are okay. At work we are interchangeable and we are told how interchangeable we are but it hasnt filtered down to the mom and pop but the Large Companies to you within 15 minutes how many people you need to have. So we are okay you need to be inherent fault 15, not 12, 12 30, 12 15. And we dont know how long we are going to keep you because you are out of the schedule until i dont doubt, 2 30 because that is as much as we can afford to have you. But we might need you to stay until 5 00 workers a possibility that that youll get. It will be a slow day because your time is invaluable to us. The profit margin is so valuable that we need you to dictate and plan your life around our profit margin and in exchange for that we are going to give you as little as possible we are going to have you sign contracts that say you will get a second job because we might need you to come in at 7 p. M. On that one night. I have had a contract like that. We will give you 28 hours old or because then we have to pay you health insurance. Theres there is nothing like that. You are obligated when we have a 20 minute window to get here and if you have a second job, you are fired. But we are paying 7. 25 and you only get this many hours a week and they expect us to make that work and then people expect us to not rage and i dont understand how youre going to put resurgence of somebody like that. People that can see how ridiculous the whole thing is that not only that, but you are going to dehumanize them and tell them if you complain there is another 100 outside of the door and we dont care because none of you have any more value than anybody else. How many times can they tell you this but they have heard i have a stack of applications on my ojai if we think that we are punished for thinking outside of our class and thinking about what the profit margin is. But then if we go to do it, then we are not engaging and we are not earning it and we do not want it bad enough. So, work is indicative of the rest of our lives. Its another place that we are not d. Human on human. Thats what we are there to be. We have done these studies like you have to go and be friendly and automate you have to be polite and nice to welcome people as the bridge of the home and make them feel really warm and welcome. You start losing track between what you feel and what you are facing. And so, when work stops our ability to feel joy for 7. 25 per hour or we talk about the minimum wage. If you do know how many people are working for 7. 35 or 7. 60 because the raise is come in the goals andsign nichols and dimes. Host i think there is the belief that if youre fired you did something wrong. You mentioned being fired. Guest if i personally had to fire somebody because she had another job and her other manager wouldnt do the schedule or within a day before the new work week started. And she was a great employee. She was fantastic and she was one of those people that are not like me, but actually like a sunshine person and she was fantastic. Couldnt keep her on the schedule. She couldnt make it in often enough. We said we will keep you as an employee but then we didnt need her fast enough everything she came and it was in it was like the first time she had been in door and she wasnt making progress and we couldnt afford her. That was the woman that was raising her own title. I mean, she was on her own and i had to look at her and say im so sorry i cant help you even though you are contested. And so you are clearly sympathetic to that given how everything is set up it was almost out of your hands it seems like. Guest if you are over that and lose your job i managed a restaurant and made 28,000 if you are working 90 hour weeks and you are desperate enough to do that. Its probably the best job youve ever had but mentally torturous job job of that 90 hours a week for 28,000 is the best job youve ever had. So then you have to do those things to these people and you just came up from that and you know its going to do to their lives and you understand all that and you did it anyway because you have your own family to feed. Host so how does that make you feel about these fast food strikes going on because it seems like a huge burden on the shoulders of people who are working incredibly hard and need a raise and yet they are pushing them of themselves at the risk of being fired. Guest nobody is going to help us. Are you kidding . And more than that, we get to do it ourselves. You watch these people walk out and they are going to lose their jobs very they are going to be retaliated against. That is a common knowledge. Nobody, nobody even dares to mention a union in a restaurant without understanding that they are about to lose their jobs. We dont even go when we hurt ourselves we dont go to work or whichever you you call it depends on the state but youre supposed to be able to go see a doctor you dont do that because a very shortly you will find yourself written up in it they will have you out the door and a couple of months. These people are doing this and they are able to do it and ready to stand outside of their work and say we are worth more than this and he will give us the respect that we deserve because we keep this economy running and zero my god the rush of being able to say that its what i do for a living now. I have more potential. I have more to give them this and i deserve more than this because i have earned it. To be able to say that for the first time, the things these people are feeling. They are scared, lonely cash out, frustrated, but they are also for the first time standing up and taking some of the respect they deserve and that is a feeling that is very, very good. So i think that they are doing it because we need to change the economic situation. But also because they can just say it. Sometimes you just have to say it. And i want to see that. I love it. I love every bit of it and i hope to god everybody thats ever said i wish there were something i could do up the walk up to the restaurant and say theres a job waiting for you when you are here. Absolutely. Host its organized in an interesting way. It isnt chronicling your experience. It is organized by where people are judged. Guest i actually asked a bunch of people and i took that and we kind of structured that way because what i think happens is the poor are judged for the human behaviors because again we do it in the open. Everything that we do is open to inspection and that they do and we have to report things to everybody constantly. There is no such thing as privacy of your poor we are very used to being open and so we are pretty open about all the things we do both good and bad and more or in moral or anything like that. And we come in and so i just took the things that i thought were the biggest and i said heres why you dont get to judge me on this and this and this. One of the chapters is on children and i think thats one of the things that you hear often why are they having so many kids. You have an interesting argument about this. Of course it is hard to raise children but we are not uniquely psychic just as people cant predict they might get divorced you cant predict we might become poor later on. But there are tons of unintended pregnancies among lowincome teens still while the overrate stops and is increased how do you reconcile the fact that it really is hard to be poor and have children with the fact people should be able to leave the lives that they want . Guest there are different arguments and its like you cant reduce access to Birth Control and then not expect people to get pregnant. Because like if you dont teach kids about sex then theres going to be unintended consequences there and i would personally like to thank every crusader whos ever thought we shouldnt say the word penis or vagina in high school and use biology because we cant use the word sperm and then we are going to blame them when it happens. That is incredibly silly. But more than that, the argument there is we dont think that you are valuable enough to raise children and thats where you get a part of that its like you cant even take care of yourself how are you going to take care of kids . I would be capable if you would be in a situation i could find work that is going to pay my bills. The trouble with poor people is that they dont have very much money. Its not that we lack integrity. We lack opportunity. If youre going to tell me this is what qualifies you to be a parent than i would point then i would point you to any number of abuse or horrifying stories that we hear. It does that make you a good. Anymore than being poor makes you a bad parent. And third, how much money is enough to qualify you for parenthood. Give me an amount. It is 230 grand or something from birth all the way up through college. I know an awful lot of people who would consider themselves barely middleclass who do not have 230,000 when it comes to a rainy day should we require that if everybody where the slippery slope are we going to draw that line . Host im glad you mentioned how rich kids are raised and how it isnt unique for poor people that it it might run into trouble. I included a tab on the chapter where you talk about it specifically and i wrote on it because you do see these stories of the kid who was in a drunk driving accident and he said hes not used to being punished so we cant hold them accountable or send them to jail guest you get these two kids that lock up their girlfriend. One of them is selling his vote and the other is an incredibly irresponsible person whos going to be a mom dirt and is going to leave. So, theres also another topic that i want to talk about which is the criminalization. I know theres been a lot of headlines recently when men whove been arrested because they kept their children in a car when they were getting a job interview, they let their kids play in the park while they were at work. And in your experience how do you feel like this now plays into the calculation on a daily basis knowing that it is a crime to be poor essentially . Guest its worse to be poor and black when youre talking about incarceration rates. I havent been pulled over as much because thats how we do policing in america and we know about the pipeline between the schools and prisons and we know that they are targeting folks. We know you are not worth being on our streets. At the example i like to use is homelessness. Its illegal to do anything if you are homeless. They criminalize they criminalized entirely but heres how it affects everybody. Say you got drunk in a bar. You had one too many. Tell me that any drinkers havent done it at least once. Im not talking stumbling on a one to many and you shouldnt drive home that there arent any cabs because youre not in a big city youre in a rural area or whatever and its too far to walk if you think you can get there. If you choose to walk home you are publicly intoxicated. If you choose to drive home you are driving drunk and if you sleep in your car you are sleeping in public. There could option for you to get home if you have one to many because the have criminalized all of these behaviors and the mechanisms that you could use. It is a crime. You can be arrested for not paying your electric bill. You can go to jail for not paying your rent. We talk about america as though we have no debtors prison but i tell you this you go to court on a fine or because you couldnt pay a bill and then you refuse to pay it again as though it is not just a matter of money and they will throw you in jail and you will sit there until you have enough money to bail your cell phone and let me tell you how much money you will make while you are sitting there waiting on bail. Its insane how easy it is to go to jail. I will say if you have to people two people that have had one too many walking out of the r. And one is wearing prada shoes and one is wearing light worker restaurant shoes who do you think they will be arresting . Are there statistics on a . Probably. I dont know them but i will tell you you are treated better in the prada shoes. Host you mentioned a number of different laws. In arkansas you can get arrested for not paying your rent. There is a law in the state legislature where it is a crime to the homeless and you have to pay 600dollar fine or go to jail for being outside. Because Homeless People totally have 600. All of them. Another thing that was in the news recently i dont know if you saw that the New York Times did a study on the subprime auto loans and now they have a device that shuts down cars if you havent paid your car or your low payment. You talked about in the book how dependent you are on your vehicle to vehicle to get to work and so its the path towards independence and earning money as roadblock after roadblock. Paul ryan has an opportunity grant. I read it and at one point somebody accidentally used the acronym og. And second, he had this plan and it is essentially life coaching. One of the things that are run into most often with charity or government programs. We dont know how to live properly so they are going to teach us how to get jobs. What does that do for somebody thats on food stamps which is welfare that is already working two jobs because theres plenty of both we have military personnel come active duty military personnel. Tell me they have an extra 20 or 30 hours to do reporting and show up for life skills. Tell me any giant waste of money. When youre talking about the generational property that program might be. A lot of people would benefit from these experiences because there is an opportunity barrier and a societal difference. We speak differently in the different classes and Different Things mean different stuff. Listen i just came up i can tell you how many times i behaved inappropriately and everybody is just like you will have that. Thats what it does is it sets me apart and if i hadnt come up being officially a poor person where everybody when i walk into the room knows that i dont know these rules it would exclude me from those tribes and those opportunities. So in a lot of cases it would be a helpful program. The question i have. Its available to you why would you make that a requirement, it is onerous and its a waste of the taxpayers money. So what we see with all of these programs programs and charities that are incredibly well meaning and that are going to do broad sweeping changes to peoples lives and every single one of them is crap. Some of them are helpful. Some of them get resources that i will tell you this if you are living on charity and welfare it speaks to the critiques more time to make a patchwork of all of the programs available than it does to find work and you cant find work because you are so busy proving to the states that you cant find work. At one point in my life after the flood i applied for a furniture and they said we are going to need 40 hours a week. They said we need you to do 20 hours of job searching and and i said i already have a job i just dont have money. They said you have to do 20 hours of job searching or you dont qualify for the program. I said that i already have work area and im going to have a newborn and im working like 34 hours a week. When am i going to look for a job for 20 hours and they said just take the paperwork. It will be fine. Host it is counterproductive to the goal of the program. Guest yes and that is a thing that we see a lot. Its counterproductive to the goal of the program that is a good way of putting it. Host you talk about all these programs. They are going to be dependent where we are going to game the system. Guest nobody wants to get. It constantly every day. Its only the poorest people that have figured out i dont understand why everybody doesnt get welfare. Its super comfy, but you desperately want. Quit your job and go on welfare. But then you have to find another job to prove that you deserve it. Lets not talk about it we wouldnt see so many people with fancy office is telling us how comfortable it was. They would be doing it themselves because if they are the masters and commanders on our economy they would be smart enough to take he opportunities. That is why you have the bootstrapping. And they are smart businessman. It is. Host you were at the white house earlier this year . We are talking about policy thats one way to be as memorable i think. If theres a policy change or something you can talk to even president obama about what would you hope to see in the remainder of his administration . Guest i would like to see more talk about what america is supposed to be. John locke would be really paced at us right now because he said when you have a government that is intolerable and treats the citizens in as though they are not in the government, you have not only a right but a responsibility to fight back. That was the entire basis. What we talked about is a meritocracy as though we still have that. Show up to any job one day and work hard and be responsible and you would be fairly successful. That is a true thing and i would say its time to acknowledge that because we know that its crap it doesnt exist anymore and that is isnt what america is for a lot of us can afford a third. 45 million of us dont get the American Dream. We need to work harder and maybe we would qualify for the American Dream and that isnt what america is supposed to be. Obama has a sweeping rhetoric and a way to impassioned and inflamed the populace. Thats how he got elected. I would like to see him give a speech talking about what it is to work in america and why we need to change it. And you can see if you look at the number, just over the past four years they have some economic growth. But we the wages are still climbing and you will only see the real growth at the top 5 . Guest the stock market is going gangbusters. Americas fine. Host one of the things you mention in the book almost in passing is that your husband was in the military. Is there any reason why you didnt dive deeper into the fact that you are in a military family and this is something that i think both people from both sides of the aisle that find is there a reason why you didnt want to dive into that too much . Guest a lot are living in poverty and that story isnt the story isnt mine to talk about his to tell. Understand i went viral. I didnt decide to write this book and its not my story to tell. I waited while he was in falluja and he can go up a came home okay more than others and if we are going to tell a story about the military and poverty we are going to talk about the va scandal and the millions of americans who served honorably and came home and didnt have medical care. The worst that happened to us us is we didnt get our living stipend. Should that have happened . Absolutely not. It was an outrage and you bet your si was calling a lot of people and i was angry and i made sure that everybody heard about it for you but thats not the worst of it. The worst are those that came home and cant live anything resembling lift anything resembling a normal life, not getting help and i didnt want to step on them so to know i didnt touch on it very much because this story of the military and how we treat our returning veterans is so much bigger and different in how we treat our Service Workers and a didnt like it didnt feel like it was an issue i needed to tackle. The book is organized in a way people are judged and you have run in with landlords but there could have been a section on houses were so many Different Things, but you included a section on sex. What made you want to have that because its interesting there were a lot of books that talk about it but i dont think thats ever been a chapter. Guest we are restricting access to Birth Control and we are having these to oceans about why do poor people have children. We are not talking about children, we are talking about why arent they allowed to have devices and this thing that was important to me was to say we are allowed to be human. Sometimes sometimes sex results in children and sometimes it doesnt but even when it doesnt you dont get to say why arent you in a relationship with the person clicks we hear that a lot, why arent you in a relationship . Why is anybody anyone with anybody . But more than that we dont have to be any more responsible than anybody else and that is the basis of the chapter is i have to be as exactly responsible as everybody else. How many one night stands have been in bars . The book itself is to say you cannot moralize windward decisions are no better than mine. Host there is a bit in the chapter you talk about the people that you have access to and that will do with you or poor it isnt going to be you talk about the pretty woman example, you are not going to be the millionaire thats going to change your life and yet there is a lot i have the fears and policies put people just need to get married and that is the silver bullet. Guest burying somebody that isnt going to be interestedly supported that you dont like or care for just because marriage is what it should be like, encourage that in all encouraged that in all cases. Yes, what we are allowed to be attracted to who we want to be attracted to on the basis and on the terms that we fight for ourselves. We dont have a lot of autonomy. We have 2 p. M. Except just to keep your job. We give away the results. We sell ourselves. That is the problem. Thats where you go to get 35 when you so little bit of yourself and watch your blood go through the machine independent pumps your blood back into you and the whole time youre wondering is this actually whoring, am i selling myself . Yes. How do i switch but morally. And once we are are dealing on a level that you are literally selling yourself for money by what if you you cant you came off of a long shift and gave away a bunch of plasma or something. Youve had a long day. And so to be able to put that out there and say no, sometimes i deserve to get laid, sometimes im allowed to. Its okay. Everybody does it. Why are you freaking out so much about it as if it were an irresponsible decision rather than a human one. Why do we not need companionship. What do you mean, do you have any idea what i go through in a day . Theres probably going to be a lot of people they might want to be watching us, but people that if they were here it would be offputting to them. Your audience must be people that are already against these compassionate ideas. Who do you hope are going to read this book collects guest i hope that the people that know what this book says death to read it, and i hope that those people at least see one of us saying out loud obloquy just like we are all watching the Service Workers. I hope that they are watching me and this book and watching me say things that are offensive or a thread or, you know offputting to people that we normally lower our eyes in front of and try not to offend because we shouldnt exist in front of them, right we are not afraid of people that are better than us. Not going to do it anymore. And i wanted to see me. If there are some people that are compassionate and think about these issues who may be working these issues or service to these people read this and learn something and if a bunch of people that are going to get angry and offended maybe they will ask somebody how dare you and i love that question. I love that question when people come to me and say how dare you be human. On august 26 i was brought forth into this world and i am human. Go ahead and delegitimize that. I dare you. I mean people will read it or they wont read it and they will hear about it or they wont hear about it and they will have to be actions that they have. But the important thing is that we never get to talk about it. We never have these discussions. You never have a poor person stand up and say i am human and the public square. We are not about to do this stuff frequently. So, that really is the nature of it. Everybody talks about how angry i am and its not that im angry its that people when they see somebody asserting their own selfworth and you have to do it a little loudly that otherwise nobody will Pay Attention to your words you are automatically angry and any marginalization of the same thing you see it in race and class in any marginalization, the second population stands up and says no no no youre not about to do this everybody says why are you so angry all the time. I cant imagine i have no basis for that whatsoever. Host throughout the book and in our conversation you refer to this and obviously your life is taking a big turn because of the book and you were on msnbc this morning. How are you reconciling this change because it sounds like you still strongly identify with being a working class american but your circumstances are changing. Guest ive spent ten years in the Service Industry. Clearly i am not starting a fire every day for which i think not. You can take the girl out of the working class but you cant take the class out of the girl and i will probably stop saying we one i stop feeling this is a fight that i am included in when i have learned the entitlement of the upper classes and thats what it comes down to is i dont feel any different than i did its just my surroundings are really nice now but my fight and of the things im saying are so broadly shared and i have experienced them for so long its hard for me to flip a switch and separate it so yes i ask myself that a lot what will i do. What i find is im so nervous and interviews i actually cant think of any of those things. Host i was watching an interview that you did and they said its great that you are talking about people like you and so it didnt seem to faze you in the interview or at least on your face but it was kind of jarring to hear. But as you said a third of americans are on the verge of going deeper into poverty and so it isnt really an us versus them kind of thing that most people were we know someone who is in it. Guest i do these appearances and i go to these places and talk to these people and everyone of them have a story for me. Theyll take me aside privately and talk to me about their relatives or their kids were this neighbor that they know. And i wonder how can Everybody Knows somebody and we dont change anything. How is this possible . I realize it is because we dont ever talk about it. Nobody knows that everybody has a poor relative. Everybody is ashamed to be on their own. Its like having an abortion in the past or something and its still 1970. Everybody is just quietly keeping it to themselves because they dont even want to be associated with it and more than that yes i am still very much i walk into these rooms and people are automatically like its the poor girl and im like okay first working class, thank you because poverty is different than working class although they are closely intertwined and closely together. And the no trouble let me tell you. Host what is next for you . You said you are working on these issues now. What are you doing that next . Guest a hope to keep writing. That would be fantastic. The radio has a Great Organization in dc to spotlight these issues a little bit more. I wound up in ferguson and have been an incredibly impressed by the cities resilience and grace under more pressure than ive ever faced in my entire life and the things that they are billing and doing. So there are a lot of situations like ferguson that we dont actually get coverage of. And ive been finding those and trying as much as possible. But that is what my work is now is finding people that need to talk and giving them the platform because they give me a giant platform over here and i want to get people on it with me. I do have a website going up. It jobindustries. Com. We are having everybody i meet write something. Anytime i see something, i can reblog if its the same experience i had were some appealss version. But the point is it isnt just me but im not at all represented. There are many of us. We respond differently. I smoke. One of my best friends thinks im a terrible person and she thinks im crazy. Thats how both of us deal with the pressure. But the pressure is