So, why are we poor?

This is a sign I found while driving on Highway 101. It says "Hunger on the Harbor: What's for dinner? Wilderness?" It is a testament to how disenfranchised people have felt by urban environmentalists who have little understanding or concern for their well being and a government who also has little regard for their welfare.

In a recent sermon, I asked people to start asking why people are poor. It is a great American myth that people are poor because they don’t work hard or have some character deficiency. A conference I attended recently on poverty, while fantastic in many ways, simply assumed that some people were rich and some poor. Rarely do we ask why. 

So, I intend to ask the question, and ask it specifically. Why are people poor in Grays Harbor County? Why is the official poverty rate in our largest town about 25%? Why do some parts of the harbor literally look like we are living in the so called “third world”? Why are there a huge number of people living in their cars or camping out on the river?  

Many would have us believe that it because we live in a “culture of dependency” and that people “don’t want to work.” I have lived in Grays Harbor for a good part of my life and I don’t buy it.  

So, why do we struggle so deeply with poverty? Here are few of the reasons that I have thought of....

An Industrial Economy: People are poor because the industrial economy built here, by the timber industry especially, created a system of haves and have nots, a culture of timber barons living on the hill and loggers living on the flats and in camps, a culture in which workers were dependent on capitalists for survival. This kept us from being able to take control of our own lives and futures and paralyzed us when the timber industry crashed. We never had control of our communities or of the land that had first been stolen from Native Americans and then kept in the hands of a few people with influence and power.

Industrial Crash: People are poor because the logging industry crashed. This is the simplest answer, though the causes of the crash are many. Timber was a boom and bust industry—two World Wars and the shipyards in Seattle kept peninsula loggers busy, but after the war the industry struggled and by the 80s and 90s was experiencing significant difficulty. However, two things contributed to the final demise of the industry, in 1994. And so…

Environmental Policy: People are poor because, in 1994, environmentalists successfully closed national forests to logging, citing their concern for the spotted owl. Their love of the forests most of them did not live in was commendable; however, they were far less concerned about loggers and their families or the people who made their lives here and loved the forest just as much. This is not to say that the forests were not exploited by the timber industry; only that environmental organizing failed to take into account the people living here and failed to give us any say in our future or the land itself.

Free Trade: People are poor because, also in 1994, NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) was put into place. This (and other free trade agreements) brought poverty to the area in two ways. First, many mills (especially paper mills) moved their businesses oversees, where cheap labor and low tariffs made manufacture more “cost effective.” Second, NAFTA brought a steady stream of migrants from the global south as Mexican and Guatemalan farmers were unable to compete with U.S. agribusiness and forced to migrate north to work, in this case, in secondary forestry. Suddenly, many people were in competition for low wage tree planting and brush picking jobs.  

State Control and Regulation: People are poor because those who did farm in this area have been increasingly put out of business by federal regulations that favor large agribusiness over small family farms. Farm after farm has closed operations, discouraged by a pricing system that favors big growers or shut down by the FDA because they could not afford the equipment necessary to meet regulations.

The Prison System: People are poor because the prison system keeps them poor. In the United States, with the highest rate of incarceration in the world, the vast majority of people in prison are poor. On the harbor, the war on drugs has filled our jails and prisons. When drug addiction went up along with the poverty rate and the meth industry (among others) became a black market for people to survive, the state answer was to fill up the jails. Once people are in the prison system, it is almost impossible to extricate themselves. The reality of a criminal record, probation rules, mandatory court dates and treatment programs, and so many other auxiliary functions of the prison industrial complex insure that people who end up in jail are likely to return many times over and are unable to enter the workforce even if there was a job for them to take.

Unjust Wages: People are poor because most of the jobs left are service jobs—jobs that pay poorly and offer few benefits. One of the largest employers in the region is Wal Mart. The big box store moved into the area, closing small businesses unable to compete and forcing most of us to shop with them. They employ large numbers of people at minimum wage and insure, through control of the hours people work, that they have little access to benefits. As fewer businesses can afford good wages or benefits, more and more people work multiple jobs in order to pay bills.  

A Culture in Motion: People are poor because unstable economics force them to move constantly. People who have had their roots here for generations move to the North Dakota oilfields to find work or to lay pipeline in the Midwest; they move to Alaska to fish for the season; they move from Western to Eastern Washington by season to harvest brush on the side and apples on the other; they wander the country homeless looking for work or a hand up. This constant movement contributes to an unstable economic reality as people are more and more desperate for work.

Collective Trauma: People are poor because they have lost a way of life. People who can no longer farm or log or do skilled work have lost a sense of dignity and hope and self-reliance. The harshness of poverty, the intensity of loss—these lead to collective, community trauma. And it looks like rising drug addiction and mental health struggles. It looks like hopelessness and uncertainty and anger. People have lost more than jobs—they have lost dignity.

So why are we poor? Because of misguided state power; because of the crash of an industry because of the greed of those in power; because we have lost control of our destiny and our dignity; because we have no control over our own land. How can we again find hope?