Wit' and Wit'out

by Bruce Schimmel

At the Philadelphia Unemployment Project's (PUP) first-ever resource fair for the jobless, two sorts of folks showed up: those wit', and those wit'out.

About 120 people wit'out jobs came to the old Arch Street Methodist Church — a stone's throw from City Hall: more women than men, more black than white, many older. Some were well-groomed, others ravaged by unemployment. A fair cross-section of Philadelphians.

Weaving through the jobless were about a dozen journalists, to be counted, for now, among the wit's. The reporters chatted, jotted and clicked at the assembly who'd come to hear the tidings.

From the altar, Marc Stier, Jannie L. Blackwell and Lee Huang spoke about the attendees' prospects for health care, political power and jobs. The news was not good.

Remember Reaganomics — how a rising tide was supposed to lift all ships? Never did. Now our economy is more like Katrina. The banks are broken and the sludge is climbing.

Only, unlike Katrina, there's no escape. Except maybe for the ultra-wealthy ... for now.

The flood has already reached the relatively well off. It's sucking down the settled middle-class, like the reporters who came today to hear from the wit'out. As news organizations collapse, they'll have their own sad tales.

Like my good friend who got pink-slipped last week. An experienced TV guy with a shelf full of Emmys, he was easy to replace with a cheaper, chipper new version. Two decades, no warning.

The chronically poor know the disgrace of joblessness. They know that we — the country — "hate the poor," as my friend, city consumer advocate Lance Haver, puts it. "We must hate them, because we punish them so much." They know about begging an indifferent bureaucracy for the basics of food, warmth, a place to live and a chance to do something useful.

"I'm not telling you anything you don't already know," said PUP chairman Thurston Hyman, to those in the pews. "But this time is different. Everyone is touched."

Well, almost everyone. Yes, to be sure, bankers have been told to cap their salaries at a mere half-million. That's a start.

But the message of the rich few helping the poor many has yet to reach some of society's upper echelons.

Take, for instance, the ugly hypocrisy of WHYY, a public broadcaster that's supposed to embody civic and democratic values. CEO Bill Marrazzo's pay is nearly three-quarters of a million. Finding himself as a posterboy for greed, Marrazzo recently asked reporters for an off-the-record discussion. But then he suddenly canceled.

Yeah, that particular "Y" would be hard for the WHYY head to explain.

As I watched a WHYY reporter — who makes like a 20th of what Marrazzo makes — interview a jobless person, I wondered how soon she'd find herself on the other side, and when Marrazzo and other overpaid civic leaders would be called to account. (This would make an illuminating "This I Believe" series.)

Soon, I'd say. Last month, nearly 600,000 Americans lost work. That's the third straight month with losses over a half-million. The pace is quickening. In the flush of Reaganomics, the unemployed could be ignored. But as more wit's become wit'outs, the unemployed will be empowered.

And not just politically, but morally. Because the demands of the jobless are basic human rights. Rights that every American deserves, and which no one, however high they perch for now, can presume to ignore.

Water's rising.

(bruce@schimmel.com)

For more info on the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, call 215-557-0822 or visit philaup.org.