著者
土屋 和代
出版者
アメリカ学会
雑誌
アメリカ研究 (ISSN:03872815)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.55, pp.75-95, 2021-04-25 (Released:2021-07-26)

The welfare rights movement, led by the National Welfare Rights Organization, is one of the least-studied social movements of the 1960s and 70s. NWRO activists insisted on the right to decent clothing, heating in the middle of winter, and other basic needs—along with the right to conduct rent strikes. They fought against involuntary sterilization and advocated for a guaranteed adequate income for all. Yet despite the significance of their discourses and influence in the political debate over “welfare,” their critical narratives have been consistently overlooked.When the NWRO folded in 1975, scholars have offered explanations for this outcome. Quoting the words of George Wiley, civil rights activist and executive director of the NWRO, Nick Cotz and May Lynn Cotz contended that poor women, like anyone else, had taken advantage of the minor perks of office, and the taste of power it offered. The NWRO eventually collapsed because these poor women were “merely interested in being leadership and maintaining their own position.” Guida West, on the other hand, argued that the demise of the NWRO was due to the contradictions and tensions that existed within the organization from the very beginning: while architects of the NWRO had set up a “new, nonpaternalistic model” that challenged the stereotypes of poor people as subordinates, middle-class, white male staff ended up dominating the movement activities of poor African American women.Yet, how had these “tensions” surfaced in the early 1970s? Based on Wiley’s papers, NWRO archives, NWRO’s newsletters, and other primary documents, this article illustrates how the backlash against “welfare mothers,” hand in hand with anti-welfare ideology, led to shrinking donations and the contract funds to the NWRO, tightening finances. Politicians and the press came to represent welfare recipients—increasingly African American and unmarried/divorced—as unworthy of public support. Due to these financial difficulties, many organization personnel were eventually fired, exacerbating “tensions” among them, as well as those between the staff and the recipients. The demise of the NWRO cannot be fully understood without considering the changing political and social climate surrounding Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which became increasingly unpopular in the late 1960s with the rapid expansion of membership rolls and its payments.Johnnie Tillmon, the first chairperson of the NWRO, believed in “working together to do something about the problems that affect poor people across the country.” Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, calls for new imaginings of public safety, addressing the need for divestment from police, prisons, and surveillance, as well as investment in the communities that are most directly impacted by “the violence of poverty.” COVID-19 laid bare “the systemic inequalities within America,” from who dies and who receives good care, to who gets to work from home and who has to choose between making money and risking their health, says William Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. Centering the voices of welfare recipients—who have long been silenced, both in the debate over “welfare” and the history of American social movements—would be one of the first steps necessary in untangling the connections between systemic racism and the “violence of poverty” in the U.S.

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全米福祉権団体の解体 ― 体系的人種主義,ジェンダー,反福祉のイデオロギー 土 屋 和 代 https://t.co/fd1ZJjMLdF
PDFあり。 ⇒土屋和代 「全米福祉権団体の解体――体系的人種主義,ジェンダー,反福祉のイデオロギー」 『アメリカ研究』55巻 (2021/4) https://t.co/k7HELzGala

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