"If you sit there and blame the victim for being poor, uneducated, alcoholic, drug-ridden, violent, or abused, it's not going to work."

Mikki Patterson
Career Expectations Center, Dane County, Wisc.

Mikki Patterson is a former welfare recipient and had been an abused spouse. She uses her experience in classes she teaches to W-2 recipients confronting barriers to employment.

Question:
You describe what you call a "culture of poverty." What is it?

Mikki Patterson:
The culture of poverty is living in poverty and living poor. But it's also thinking poor and not seeing beyond your poverty or day-to-day survival. Or not seeing beyond a quick fix, or a quick fistful of money. To alleviate poverty hurts. It wounds grievously. It wounds your psyche, it wounds your heart, it wounds your soul.

People will say, "Oh c'mon! I was poor as a kid and we had values" and all this.

I'm talking about when you live in a society that's main goal and thought is to gain material wealth. To own things. That's what our society is pretty much, our business world, everything is geared to.

If you don't have those things, somehow you're not a part of that society. You're an outcast. But you're looking in from the outside and you're seeing things that other people have. Just sitting in your home, if you're lucky enough to have television – which most people do nowadays – just see a world of wonder and beauty and things that should be attainable but they're not. You see that constantly, but you're poor. So it warps your way of looking at the world.

So the culture of poverty is thinking poor and staying poor. I believe that welfare, the welfare system, was in part greatly responsible for keeping people in poverty. Yes, they were able to barely survive. Barely survive.

Believe me, having been on aid myself, I know that to be true. There is no way that you get over on an aid check. It is not possible. You barely survive. And that keeps you poor. And that's what welfare did.

At least if W-2 works, in its widest concepts, people will be aware of another sort of life. They will at least have some control over their destiny as to where they will work, when they will work, and how they will work. And their income will certainly improve.

What that constant handout month after month, year after year, did was to keep people out of their jobs, out of owning their own homes, out of having businesses of their own. Out of the fiber of America. It kept people poor, in ghettos, in areas where poor people cluster because they can't live anywhere else.

Question:
What about the criticism that W-2 participants, in many cases, are making less than minimum wage?

Mikki Patterson:
People are being paid minimum wage for each hour of participation, which breaks down to more a thirty hour a week component rather than a forty hour component...so they're getting minimum wage for each hour of participation.

What it also helps people to do is to realize that what that day–to–day work world (is like). For those that don't know what the day–to–day work world is, you have to go to the site. You have to go to the job. You have to call in to the site. You have to call in on the job. When you're at the site, you do what is expected of you.

So part of the community service job philosophy is getting people ready for that work environment. To understand that that the tradeoff for that paycheck is participation in doing the work your employer needs you to do. To me that's healthy.

If you have been a single-parenting mother, which I have, which I've been for the majority of my children's lives, and have not been dependent on the system but working; you understand the overwhelming cost of daycare, the frenzy of trying to find daycare during winter break at school, the school holiday, summer vacation, and still maintain your job.

When people are in the community service job level, they get full daycare coverage for that transitional period to be able to work and survive getting in place. They get their medical benefits, they get food stamps.

I know this sounds like an old sob, but if you add that in to the $673 dollars a month, it comes out to be a bit more than a minimum wage. Quite a bit more than a minimum wage because daycares are incredibly expensive; no matter if you do in-home or a center.

So, as long as people can get the mind frame to take advantage of that to strengthen themselves so that they can survive without it, then it's a healthful thing.

Question:
Explain a little more about "community service jobs" and what your organization does.

Mikki Patterson:
The community service job tier is put in place for people whose work histories are weak or nonexistent, for people who have a lack of experience and/or training, or for people who have been working low-end, low-paying, benefit-less jobs that they want to move up out of.

My job is to basically run the resource room and to hook people up with resources as well as to help them develop plans on how they are going to overcome their multi-barriers to employability. And just being there for any need.

Question:
One barrier you work on often is with women in domestic abuse situations. What challenges does that present?

Mikki Patterson:
Women who live in domestically abusive and violent situations have a very hard time surviving and living day-to-day anyway.

Speaking from a personal as well as a professional point of view, it's hard to parent your children. It's hard to just go from day-to-day when you're living in the midst of that.

Many women will talk about how their abusers will say, "You lazy so-and-so, get out up off your butt, go get a job, help me do this." Then when they get out there, it's constant harassment about "who are you talking to, what are you doing, who do you think you are?" The fear that the woman might have some power because she gets a paycheck.

Abusers don't think like we do. They think about power and control. How can I control this woman? And somehow the control is diluted if the woman goes out into the world and has a boss, or has coworkers, or whatever. They find that threatening. So, they do everything in their power to be able to keep a person from working. Harassment, constant phone calls, showing up at work.

If they're going to be your daycare they don't show up. If the car is going to be your transportation they won't bring it home. It's hard to go to work with bruises, with marks.

It costs the American economy billions and billions of dollars each year in lost wages, in medical bills, in lost productivity just because of domestic violence. It's a huge problem. And it's very hard for a woman to sustain a position on a work experience or community service job site, or a paid job when she's dealing with those kinds of issues and problems.

Question:
Talk more about using your personal experience in your work.

Mikki Patterson:
I guess in the years that I worked – nine plus years I worked for the battered women's center – I learned that one of my most valuable tools was my own personal experience.

I know that there are schools of thought about professional boundaries: you don't share, and you don't cross that line. But if you want to effectively work with people then you're going to need to rethink those methods.

Because what works for me with working with battered women is to be able to share that experience, that commonality. How I survived it, and what I learned from it. What also happens is, when you share yourself, your personal experience, masks drop off, trust builds, and people look at you like a human being that could understand where a person is coming from.

I think probably the greatest hindrance to effective services is a victim–blaming mentality. If you sit there and blame the victim for being poor, uneducated, alcoholic, drug-ridden, violent, or abused, or whatever....If you blame them for their own troubles, say, "Oh well, this is America, you could do better, you could be better. It's your own fault." What are you doing? It's cross-purposeful. It's not going to work.

You need to approach people with respect, dignity, and humanity. If sharing part of your experience can show them that you can do it, that I did it, that it's possible to survive these things somewhat intact.

Question:
How do you know when you've been successful?

Mikki Patterson:
Fortunately for me, my job is helping people in any way I possibly can. For me, that's satisfaction.

I also get to see people strengthening, coming alive inside, feeling good about themselves, that they can, that they can do this. Learning a lot about a culture they don't know about.

I see success in, when people look and say "You know, I don't have to take this much longer because I'm going to go and get me a good job. And the only person I have to answer to is my boss."

And I say, "Yes, and the IRS."