Karl Rove And Newt Gingrich Are Attacking Everyone Who Wants A Level Playing Field

Elizabeth Warren's video speaks for itself-- elegantly and effectively. Syracuse congressional candidate Brianne Murphy is less well-known and doesn't have the resources yet for web ads like the one above. Instead, she wrote a letter to the editor of the Syracuse Post-Standard. Elizabeth responded to the vicious attack directed at her personally by Karl Rove and his secretive, Wall Street-financed super-PAC. Brianne, who has to face a conservative Democrat and then a brain dead teabagger, is addressing Newt Gingrich's desire to end child labor laws. What follows is the unedited version of Give poor students a book, not a broom!

Newt Gingrich is in the news this week for saying: “really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.”

While Gingrich’s sound-bite may rally Tea Party champions to sound their drums of personal responsibility, it highlights just how dangerously out of touch our Washington career candidates are with the real struggles of many Americans today.

Not only is this sentiment inaccurate, offensive and classist; Gingrich’s proposed solution (to repeal child-labor laws and train really poor children to be janitors) suggests that offering poor children positions in manual labor, rather than education is his answer to addressing the widening gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans.

When I attended Fowler High School in the 1990s; the Post Standard ran an article titled: Two Schools, One Question What Makes Westhill and Fowler Differ? (Post Standard, March 16, 1997, Paul Riede) analyzing the link in Syracuse between poverty and performance. In his research for the article, Mr. Riede interviewed 17 students in the Class of2000, nine at Fowler and eight at Westhill. According to Riede, “in separate group interviews, members of the Class of 2000 at Fowler and Westhill high schools described radically different life experiences, but similar aspirations.” While all expected to go to college, and most were hopeful that with hard work they'd be able to land professional careers; their different realities were stark. In 1997 at Westhill High School, only 2 percent of students were from low-income families, and 94 percent were white; compared with 55 percent low-income and over 50 percent minority at Fowler.

In 1996, 71 percent of Westhill's graduates received Regents diplomas, one of the highest rates in the state; compared with 7 percent at Fowler, one of the lowest in the state. And contrary to Mr. Gingrich's "facts": four of the Fowler students held down jobs after school; while none of the Westhill students interviewed did.

While correlation between poverty and low achievement is nothing new, in order to address the widening gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans and revitalize the American Dream policy makers need to understand the cyclical nature of poverty, the challenges facing our poorest students and acknowledge the struggles of our working poor.

At a time when more Americans are unemployed and underemployed; free school lunch lines are increasing and the number of Americans hurting are soaring; the elitist premise of Mr. Gingrich’s sentiment hits home for me on a very personal level. Central New Yorkers on either side of the aisle may disagree on how to address the issue of reducing poverty, improving the economy and creating jobs; nonetheless many of us see the struggle facing the working poor: parents faced with a choice between working late for overtime or helping their children with homework; juggling debt, choosing between groceries and heat; and barely making it paycheck to paycheck. Our working poor, and most vulnerable members of society, our poorest children, cannot remain invisible to the Washington elite.

Education, not manual labor, is the only way to break the cycle of poverty. Investing in education, offering students assistance and supporting programs like “Say Yes to Education” will create a more educated work force and level the playing field, just a little bit, for poor kids like me that want to do better than their parents. As a child of limited means, I was able to work my way through the George Washington University and Brooklyn Law School, with the help of federal programs and hard work. As a server at Morton’s Steakhouse in Georgetown, every day was a choice between working and studying; and my need to pay rent often outweighed the importance of grades. Many nights I waited on my more affluent classmates. During college, I spent a year living on a friend’s couch and I graduated in three and a half years to save money. It was not easy, but it was worth it.

So to Mr. Gingrich, I would say-- poor kids work harder; their very survival often depends on it.

Our children are not simply a source of cheap labor and method of cost-cutting for corporations; they are the future of this country. Instead of a broom give them a book.

Brianne Murphy