The challenge

In 1996, the passage of the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act allowed states and localities to change drastically and limit the ways they delivered welfare benefits. In New York City, the Human Resources Administration oversees a Work Experience Program (WEP) with a peak enrollment of 40,000, which puts people on welfare to work for city agencies. Supporters say such workfare offers dignity to welfare recipients. Critics of the program charge that it fails to move people into real jobs and that welfare recipients have little voice in the program or the public policies that shape their lives. In order to continue receiving welfare benefits, WEP workers clean offices, parks, highways, subway cars and platforms, and perform other jobs. In exchange for this work, participants receive cash benefits, based on their family size and total income and assets. Community Voices Heard argues that the pay is too low, and restrictions too tight, to allow welfare recipients to move out of the welfare system. WEP workers receive no sick leave, vacation days, or social security. An analysis of “cash assistance levels in relation to hours worked” shows “a wage of far below minimum wage,” according to Community Voices Heard. Moreover, “workfare workers are often denied federal civil rights protections since legal coverage was left vague in federal welfare law. If the welfare recipient complains, he or she may be punitively sanctioned with the welfare program; under new regulations, reopening a case or grievance can take months.” If the plight of WEP participants is not better understood by legislators, citizens, and the faith community, Community Voices Heard believes the result will be a subeconomy of poor people who do menial work for a sub-menial wage.


Seeds of commitment

In 1994, Joan Minieri, an antipoverty organizer, and Gail Aska, a mother on welfare and an activist, sought to introduce more low-income women's voices in the growing national debate about welfare reform. With the help of Paul Getsos, a community organizer, they founded Community Voices Heard. Diane Reese, LaDon James, Jacqueline Marte, and Tyletha Samuels later became members. “When we started Community Voices Heard, each one of us was angry that there were almost no low-income women's voices in the growing national debate about welfare reform,” write the leaders. All of these women, with the exception of Joan Minieri, have been on welfare. Several have overcome such personal obstacles as domestic violence, homelessness and the pressures and responsibilities of single parenting. At a meeting of welfare recipients, a common goal emerged: the creation of an organization that represents their needs, that will allow them to speak for themselves. This became the philosophy of Community Voices Heard, which went on to interview thousands of other welfare recipients. “They all agreed that while welfare didn’t work and needed to be fixed,” the team reports today, “eliminating the whole system and denying people a basic safety net was not the answer.” New solutions were needed, but in order for that to happen, the welfare recipients’ voices would have to be raised and heard.


Accomplishments

Community Voices Heard launched and won several major lawsuits on behalf of workfare workers enrolled in WEP. In one case the court ruled in favor of a woman required to drop out of college to do "stab and bag” roadside work in order to keep her benefits. The organization has helped preserve critical components of New York State's welfare programs, stopped cuts in benefit levels and defended welfare benefits for single adults and childless couples. In April 2000, together with other organizations, C.V.H. won support for the New York City Transitional Jobs Program, designed to create 7,500 jobs for people on welfare over three years. Since its passage, C.V.H. has joined other organizations in a campaign to ensure its implementation. Some of Community Voices Heard’s most illuminating work involves its research and surveys of workfare program participants. In the summer of 1999, the leadership group conducted interviews of 649 people at more than 100 workfare sites in New York City. According to the Community Voices Heard report, “New York City's Public Sector Sweatshop Economy,” the average WEP participant in 1999 worked 22 hours a week and received no more than $5,724 a year in benefits, including food stamps. The most important contribution of Community Voices Heard is that it has created a way for people receiving welfare to speak for their own interests. The leaders have educated thousands of welfare recipients about their rights and mobilized more than 350 members who participate in grass-roots organizing campaigns. Community Voices Heard has also formed a coalition of welfare recipients, social service and advocacy groups, unions, lawyers, and religious leaders, which works for change.


Their leadership style

While the work of Community Voices Heard focuses on poor neighborhoods in the Bronx, Manhattan and Queens, membership comes from all five boroughs of New York City. Kathy Leichter, a documentary film maker, describes the group’s leadership style as moving from a focus on building membership to a focus on policy. They collaborate with and learn from the community through one-on-one meetings, community forums, membership recruitment and meetings, and innovative research projects. They rely on welfare recipients from the community to determine organizational goals. They build shared leadership into their work. “For us, this means shared decision making, shared responsibilities, shared leadership and the commitment to building and developing every individual in the group.” Central to their leadership style is fact that welfare recipients are in charge of the organization.


The future

Community Voices Heard is focused on developing new leaders who understand shared leadership: “We see the importance of building a group of leaders locally, regionally and nationally that is able to engage with policymakers and those in power, to shape public policy in the coming years.” In 2002, the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act comes up for re-authorization. Despite the gains Community Voices Heard and other organizations have won, the leaders are worried about the possible reduction of welfare benefits. Consequently, the organization is working with other groups, such as the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support and Grass Roots Organizing for Welfare Leadership (GROWL), to monitor changes in the law and work for improvements. In February, the organization held a major educational forum with national and local experts on the future of welfare reform.


More about the leadership team

“The foundation takes its Board of Trustees on site visits. One time we went to visit Community Voices Heard…the Board members were asked to take a quiz on welfare and welfare stereotypes. The people who designed it were welfare recipients themselves. They met with the Board…they were poised, articulate and extremely convincing spokespeople. The effect was electrifying. The organization works to develop leaders from the welfare community who are primed to be spokespeople; they even started a media training program so that members know how to stay on mission with the press.”
– Madeline Lee, Executive Director of the New York Foundation

“I have been documenting their work for the past three years; I’ve seen them in action, I’ve been in their meetings, I’ve been in their homes; I’ve seen them in a lot of capacities…. Their style is very low key; the leaders and the members very much blend together at meetings…. They bring out the voice in people…Community Voices Heard is really about creating a new vision of how this country is going to treat and help low-income people; that vision has come from those most affected.”
– Kathy Leichter, documentary film maker