Poverty Tourism for the Sake of Political Campaigning Is Not OK
- Michael Nagle c/o The New York Times
- Candidate John Liu, hugging kids in a dimly lit hallway. Cool.
So, to sum up, after spending a night in public housing, only to be greeted in the morning by a bank of cameras and a huge media presence, the mayoral candidates learned that repairs don’t happen quickly and unemployed people wish they had more job opportunities. And, also, everyone is disappointed in the Yankees. But shouldn’t the candidates already know this? I mean, I know this and I’m not running for mayor. This kind of stunt is reminiscent of the Food Stamp Challenge, most famously undertaken by beloved, media-hungry New Jersey politician Cory Booker, wherein people willingly commit to eating only what could be purchased by food stamps for a specified period of time. Weiner attempted the Challenge last month, which New York Magazine noted is “in keeping with Weiner’s outer-borough populist shtick,” though it’s unclear if it was much of a challenge for him because Weiner admitted at the time, “I’m not a good example. I eat only periodically.”
So then why do it? Oh, just for personal gain and to appear sympathetic to the plight of the economically disadvantaged? Cool. You know what though? This type of grandstanding has absolutely nothing to do with good governance. And, in fact, all it serves to do is continue the othering of the people who do live in these situations and who are struggling to get food on the table using only food stamps and who do really need jobs. How must it feel when a mayoral candidate spends the night in your home, enjoying your hospitality, and then says the next day that he “spent last night living with a family living in conditions you would never tolerate,” as Anthony Weiner told the press? I don’t know exactly, but I imagine it would feel pretty shitty to hear that the way you live is intolerable and, as Christine Quinn put it, like a “horror movie.”
The bottom line is, these candidates don’t need to make these hyperbolic statements in order to come up with plans to change the system. No one needs to “suffer” through a week of living on a food stamp budget to understand that being economically disadvantaged makes for a difficult life. The problem with this kind of poverty tourism is that it takes away a certain degree of agency from the people who are living in public housing or who are eating using food stamps. It implies that they are helpless to affect change, and that, just because they need government assistance, their lives are somehow “less” than those of the people who don’t. In fact, this is not the case at all. Public assistance is not an inherently awful thing of which people should feel ashamed. It is a necessary part of having a healthy and functioning society, and, when it works right, can help people empower themselves. So instead of dipping their toes in the pool of public assistance, only to dramatically run from the water because it’s just too damn cold, maybe the candidates should focus on making sure that, come September (primaries…wheeeee!) they have cohesive plans to fix these problems and address the ongoing shortage of decent and affordable housing. And it’ll be hard to do that if they haven’t had a good night sleep because of the cameras flashing in their faces as they roll out their sleeping bags.
Follow Kristin Iversen on twitter @kmiversen