Ending the Injustice of Generational Poverty by Dr Gloria Wilder, MD notes......

These notes are from two CAMFT conferences ago. I have mentioned it to you before but had misplaced my notes. Guess what? I found them and so forgive me if I am repeating myself. The speaker is Dr Gloria Wilder, MD. She is a Pediatrician. This was the last session if I recall after an exhausting three days. Perhaps that is why I found this so sad. Dr Wilder was raised by a single mother on welfare. It is now called something else (I believe the same is here in Canada). She is from Brooklyn, USA (been there). What you have there is Brownstone which is beautiful. She was from the other side. Her father was an alcoholic who would beat her mother almost every night. There was little food in the house with little or no food. While Dr Wilder was saying all this, I had an urge to hug her. Her mother taught her early to not tell anyone. At that time, born in 1964, it was illegal in the US to be poor. Her mother raised the three of them by getting three jobs. She worked in a hospital, taxi cab, and restaurant, while obtaining social assistance. Poverty was a big secret. “A heavy blanket that smothered you.” We are now fast forwarding 50 years. This poverty generational has become the norm. 11.6% of the population live in poverty. If you are a family making 27,740, you are not considered to be in poverty. In most of the States, 28,000 and 50,000 are near poverty in reality. You cannot fairly compete for housing or food. Turkeys in some places are $40.00. Dr Wilder continued to say that we (Americans) cling to be a democratic society. Families in the lower middle class are actually in poverty. Getting back to mom. A councillor hires her mom to work the night shift. She is an Operator and Switchboard, two different jobs and her mother brings her children and has them take her shifts. If you called during the night, you would get a six year old child. Three cab drivers quickly figured three children were taking turns. The cab drivers didn’t report them, but brought them food during the night, and drove them to school in the morning. The fact that the cab drivers allowed their mom to keep her job (for 30 years) and in that time they became their fathers, she is a physician today (Wow. You can see why I ended up in tears, hearing her story). Dr Wilder said there are five keys to social justice. It either puts you on a pathway to move forward or difficulty so far back. 1. Access to Health Care: During COVID, more than a million died. Moment of greater good, suddenly everyone experiences vulnerability, education, economic justice; environmental justice. Health Care - if a hospital only has 250 beds, your grandmother may be 251 and not get a bed. Everyone has a right to health care that prevents you from dying. In the USA, we still allow 30 million people to be uninsured. Nine million are children. 50% are male, black or Hispanic. The largest group now becoming improvised are over 65. 2. Education: " All of us had an education. Every day, 26 seconds, a student is dropping out of school. Every day 7000 students drop out and this was before COVID as well. 7000 children a day drop out." 3. Key - Economic Justice: You hear about minimum wage going up in cities. 21 of the States still has $7.07 considered a good job. That is the minimum and in other States, there is no minimum (Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and Carolina {South?} and one other. It is critical that people get a fair wage. The U.S. incarcerates more than 5x10 times higher than International allies. 5.5 million people. 57 Billion dollars a year is spent keeping people locked up, but won’t spend money to get people out of poverty. Environmental Justice - Climate change is dragging some of us into the Ocean. Looking at it as political, rather than moral. Allowing children to die of Pediatric Asthma because of where they live. Community violence where children grow up that gun shots are all around them. Dr Wilder has resuscitated children in the street. She had a three year old come to see her. She had been shot playing. Her mom thought she had fell playing. Dr Wilder asks, “Have we gone to far?” The first time they went for family assistance, when she was a child, she saw a white social worker (Dr Wilder is a Black woman). She was asked if her mom feeds her? Does she have a television? During that time it was illegal to have electronics and get assistance. Her mother worked to become clerk of the District Attorney for Manhattan. Dr Wilder said that they knew their mother loved them. Talked about greedy landlords with powerful lawyers and tenants fighting alone. Dr Wilder said, “For me and everyone who wants to join - not to use charity without Justice. If we want to be the Nation we claim to be….” We need to be honest and for you brilliant people, (who me? nah) who help people - teach people not to be ashamed of their stories or poverty. Both Dr Wilder’s siblings have a Masters degree. They grew up not having enough food. On Saturdays their mom would get them all up and they would go all over to find coins. Once she had 96 cents. They would go to “Duke’s” and get baloney and bread. Duke was the only Black store in the neighbourhood. It seemed that all the neighbourhood kids came into the store to get candy when she went. Dr Wilder had a bag of pennies and was thinking that all the children would know she was poor. Duke tells her to get the bread, baloney, milk, cheese, ice-cream etc….As she is leaving the store, Duke tells her to say hi to her mom, and says don’t give the scholarship to Harvard University. MD at Georgetown University. For a quarter, Duke showed her that they mattered. She went back years later and Duke told her that she did good. “I gave her a hand. That is why God gave me two” She invites us to do the same thing. “Let America be America again. I am the Negro.” Dr Wilder states that her sister has Schizophrenia as well as a grandmother. She continues that the first time she gave a speech at a hospital where their kitchen staff and janitorial staff were getting basic pay below standard living with no health coverage. After her talk, the staff demonstrated. Dr Wilder informed us that she could still feel the heat when she knelt to help a young woman who had been shot twice and she was trying to save. She stated that it depends on all of us to help, to be a healer. She reports that education is the one that really impacts all the other four. By the end of this session my tears were flowing. Dr Wilder made such an impact on me. If there are any errors here, they are mine and mine alone. In Toronto right now, one of every ten people need to go to a food bank to get food to eat. This was unheard of when I was growing up. Today, our taxes are going up 9%. I did not vote for this Mayor who would not cap taxes. I do not know how she got elected based on that alone. We had a Refugee who came to Canada to die on the Streets on a cold night because he had no shelter. A few weeks ago, I was at a grocery store and a woman tried to communicate with me while I was in line. She was trying to determine the price of oil which was on sale. I told her the price and let her in front of my line, because that was all she was buying. She took out her change from a small purse and realized that she did not have enough money to pay for the item. I realized it was probably because of the taxes. I paid for her item. Last week the news announced that CEO pay hit a record high in 2022. Canadian top 100 CEO’s were payed 14.9 million each. That is $7100. an hour, about 60,000 a day, which is 246 times more than the average Canadian. One of those CEO's works at a major food chain, where prices keep increasing. The average person gets a 3% - 4.4 pay hike. What can I say? Houston we’re in trouble. Next week I shall be attending a lecture on Canada’s Homelessness Crises, held by University of Toronto. It will be held in the evening so I will do my best not to miss it. Of course I shall provide you with anything I learn. I think I know why we have this problem but I will wait to see what is reported.