Washblog

DSHS normally has in place a system that will replace food lost to a disaster within a few hours so long as the disaster has limitations to its size and scope - particularly in its numbers of victims. Furthermore, the usual DSHS food-replacement activity is limited to replacement of food purchased by DSHS clients through food assistance programs

Replacement of food lost by the general public (and not necessarily the low-income clients of the DSHS) is only possible after federally signed authorization. That authorization happened in Grays Harbor and Lewis Counties this past week.

That authorization is what will happen tomorrow in Mason, Thurston and Pacific Counties.

Emergency food assistance will be issued in the millions of dollars to families that many consider low to middle income - those whose storm-related losses for the month of December effectively deplete their cash resources and cancel out or diminish normal paychecks to an eligibility level that is much more generous that that required by federal food programs.

This past week, from 7:00 AM through to as late as 9:00 PM, the Aberdeen CSO was a crowded scene of residents in long lines that extended outside to the streets in unbelievable numbers.  During bad weather if the sheer number of citizens were not able to be housed in the outer and inner lobbies of the DSHS building there were some still out in the streets.

The scene dwarfed any visual one might have of the lines formed to purchase I-Phones, a Harry Potter book, a new Microsoft gizmo or something  of similar excitement. These folks were excited by the urgent - that much is true. These were lines of the needy.

Now many who work at DSHS and know me will tell you that I tend to be outspoken and openly critical of the agency, its policies and procedures. But I will be the first to tell you that from the start, DSHS local and Olympia leadership was involved engaged and very much part of the tragedy's resolution. The services and issuances will continue at extended levels and hours into this coming week.  

But hopefully I'll be in my home county helping do the same thing in South Bend.

When the federal authorization was granted and the first applicants were admitted last Monday at 1:00 PM there were 3 or more translators available as well as a few  additional staff including retiree's who agreed to come help out.

The action was fast, furious and unrelenting.

We seemed to roller-coaster our way to the late evening hour when the state data system has to shut down for overnight processing,  we had managed an exceptionally large number of applicants whose number exceeded anything ever seen in that office prior to this storm.

However, we all knew - that like a bell curve - the action was only beginning and the peak was still out there beyond Monday.

Now please understand that the normal interview and processing of a food assistance case is accomplished rarely in less than 30 minutes. These of course have not been normal times and "expedited processing" does not do justice to what we were dealing with.

As early as Tuesday and Wednesday we were already initiating applications and interviewing more than a thousand persons each day. We had been augmented by volunteer staff from all over the state including a surprising number of state-certified interpreters who were badly needed.  

We evolved toward a system where the next available worker grabbed the public-address microphone and stated the name on the application in hand. By Tuesday  in any given moment there were 3-5 workers waiting to get the microphone for their next interview. Yet the applications were piling up at a pace three to four times that rate, accumulating in a box where the oldest app was the one on the bottom.

Non-English applications were color coded so the bilingual workers could easily find their next interview.

In fact, if a peak truly occurred, it was Thursday or Friday night.

When the scope of a disaster generates a federal declaration of disaster-area status, that scope almost by definition will exceed the individual man-power available at any DSHS office.

What went on in that little Community Services Office in Aberdeen was - from my point of view - an incredible and astounding joint exercise in patience and cooperation on the part of thousands of citizens in need.

Those citizens were at the mercy of a combined staff of perhaps 100 state workers including support personnel who were determined and willing to remain on the job for as long as necessary in order to respond to those in homes with little or no food.

I saw the highest paid administrators and supervisors working the reception counters and interview desks alongside the newest or lowest paid staffers - all doing the same tasks.

The following is an excerpt from a report we received online Friday morning. The writer happens to be an administrator at another CSO more than 200 miles away and who personally volunteered her time to help out. I suppose she felt herself to be the person most able to leave her duties in someone else's hands while she came to help out.

Among other things she is quoted as saying:

"I have not experienced anything like this since I first began as an FSS in the early 80's.

There are hundreds of people waiting to be seen. They are lined up in the inner lobby, outer lobby and the staff lunchroom...

Even though the clients have to wait a long time to be seen they are so grateful and nice. All the staff are cooperating and doing what they can. Everyone worked until 9 - 9:30 last night

... The stories are very Katrina like - people's roofs blew off, windows blew out while they were huddled in the corner, etc."

Tomorrow, I understand that we'll begin anew in my own office in South Bend.

My advantage will be in having been already blooded - having had the initiation and experience of last week as a buttress against panic when the lines form, the crowd looks impossibly large  and the urgency again rises.

It may be perhaps a bit more volatile here as the feds for some reason dragged their feet while my fellow Pacific County residents have gone an additional week short of food.

Although having been bilingual and spoken Spanish daily for most of my adult life I have not spoken Spanish as constantly, as rapidly and as intensely as I have in the past week in which I was on duty from 7:00 am until 9:00 PM.

I have lots of thoughts and observations about this experience and those perhaps will be offered at another time.

However, I do have one strong opinion that needs to be repeated over and over again to every political knucklehead and every knuckle-headed citizen who believes that English should be the only and official language of this country; that we should force ALL residents - whether they sneaked in here or were invited here - to learn and use only English.

There is nothing praiseworthy in the jingoistic perspective from which many express that attitude.

Although it's true that any immigrant will fare better in this country by learning English, it's also true that our greatness and our wonderful history as a democracy has nothing to do with forcing the newly arrived to speak English and punishing them or withholding help if they didn't.

Being a victim of a disaster and worthy of assistance is not something exclusive to citizenship, legality, or any form of worthiness.

I've listened as many who are descended from immigrants and who should know better speak without thinking when they talk about discriminating against those who don't speak English - as if their own immigrant ancestors arrived here fluent in some formalized  "American English" language that was free and pure from foreign influences.

We are not a nation of excluders.

We are not a nation of mean-spirited hypocrites.

That doesn't define us.

I watched for six consecutive days as residents of Grays Harbor County (citizens  and non-citizens) waited for the most part with an incredibly surprising kind of patience, restraint and actual courtesy toward one another as they all found themselves thrown into the same needy boat.

Nowadays we're involved in a national debate about our core values; about whether or not America's core values include torture and imperialism as definitive of our national character.

We also listen to politicians try to use immigration as a personal weapon. The immigration issue is often  severely exaggerated and services politicians in a way that shames the rest of the citizenry. As in other contexts, we are treated as gullible. Regarding immigrants, we are assumed to be responsive to racially charged rhetoric.

It's insulting and it's as skin-headedly dumb as it gets.

We've also heard from political candidates who have very deliberately exaggerated the perception of an immigration problem in this country - making villains of entire families who are here literally doing work we gringos refuse to do; work that must be done by someone in order for our sacred corporate capitalism to remain intact while  we continue the lie and hypocrisy that we're the fount of market-driven freedoms and global democracy.

I know about Americans who are afraid of work  I interview American citizens who continuously refuse to work at the jobs that keep many businesses in this state viable.

I know American citizens who continuously hide behind the lie that non-Americans or non-English-speaking citizens are stealing the very jobs that those same Americans pretend to lust after.

Really?

Stealing jobs real Americans refuse to take?

Now if you think I've gone off on a non-storm-related tangent and sort of changed the subject, think again.

Your state government is doing what it is supposed to do for its citizens AND its guests (invited or uninvited).

The DSHS and Washington Administrative Code reflect the collective and legislative will of the Citizens of Washington who have mandated that the state take care of its people - especially when it comes to emergencies.

There is no such thing as a group of human beings considered to be the "worthy poor" while all the rest are not worthy.

Once the feds got off their butts and made a decision, Washington State did not discriminate in who it helped

- which is what being available to address appeals for redress in English, Spanish or any other language is all about.