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| 2/15/2007 10:34:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article
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Chieftain/Elane Dickenson
Dr. Donna Beegle talks about generational poverty from personal experience last Thursday during one of Fishtrap’s Big Read project events. |
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Poverty issues personal for Big Read speaker
By Elane Dickenson
Wallowa County Chieftain
After living her first 26 years in abject poverty, today Donna Beegle is a professional woman with a doctorate degree - someone who's looked up to and respected.
She's also someone who has never forgotten her roots and the world view she shared with others who have lived in generational poverty.
"I never knew a soul who'd benefited from education," she told an engrossed audience at Stage One in Enterprise last Thursday. "I never knew anyone who didn't have to decide every month whether they'd pay the rent or their utility bill." She also had rarely attended the same school more than three or four months at a time, and grew up never having enough of anything.
The speaker challenged every person to examine the stereotypes of poverty and the obstacles faced every day by the poor and homeless.
Beegle was here for a two-day visit to Wallowa County as part of Fishtrap's Big Read project, exploring John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" and the issues it raised, including poverty. In addition to a public presentation, Beegle gave well-attended workshops to social workers and teachers, giving them insight into the mindset of poverty and things that can make a difference.
Beegle grew up as the daughter of migrant workers, traveling with the crops from Arizona to the Northwest and living in cars or rentals, always on the edge of eviction.
The only girl with five older brothers in a family who'd subsisted for generations on menial jobs and migrant labor, Beegle said that she is the only member of her family who has never been incarcerated.
She noted that, to those in poverty, school is viewed in the same light as jail; factors adding to the negative experience are such things that being judged wearing church basement clothing and the feeling that no one really cared about you or your problems. Teachers are viewed as the enemy - akin to police officers, who are known only for taking people you love to jail or serving eviction notices. Teachers had absolutely no understanding of her or people like her, she said.
Beegle dropped out of school after one term of 9th grade. "The only goal I had in life was to be a mother," she said.
When teachers talked about getting an education to get a job, Beegle said they might as well have been talking a foreign language. She recalled her father, who struggled to pay the rent and feed his family after working 16 hours a day, explaining that, to a poor person, a job is something you do and still can't pay the rent - something that takes you away from the people you love.
Beegle did work through the years, as a migrant farm worker, a factory worker (from age 15 to 17, until they found out she was too young), at Pizza Hut and similar menial jobs
She married at age 15 to a man who couldn't read or write. "Every job he ever had, I got for him, because I could fill out the application," she recalled, adding that when they split up after 13 years, he moved into a car they'd purchased for $25. "He was worse off than me, because they didn't have any programs for him," she said.
With two young children, she applied for welfare, receiving $408 a month.
When she got evicted from her $368 month apartment, the welfare agency wanted her to take money management classes.
"What was the message I received? 'It's your fault,'" she said, repeating a constant theme of blame that runs through society's attitude toward poor people.
The cycle was broken for Beegle when she was lucky enough to get into a pilot program for displaced housewives connected with Mt. Hood Community College. She remembers that she wasn't too interested at first. "They were talking about careers, and I was worried about finding a roof over the heads of my children in the next 72 hours," she recalled, adding that they finally got her interest with the mention of a subsidized housing voucher.
After receiving her GED in that program, while continuing to struggle with poverty, Beegle was encouraged enough to attend community college.
Eventually, she received an associate degree in journalism, and eventually completed a doctorate in educational leadership at Portland State University.
One challenge along the way was understanding books far beyond her frame of reference and vocabulary. Ironically, she received help from a well-read brother in prison, who used to write her 25-page letters translating book content into situations she understood.
When Beegle eventually was able to receive an education, she said her first public job was to develop a program to help keep kids in poverty in school. It happened to be in the high school she'd dropped out of many years before. "I felt like I'd been given a magic wand," she recalls.
Understanding the perspective and worldview of people in poverty is necessary to help them move forward, Beegle said, adding that people need to believe in having a future. Taking away "the blame and shame" stigma, channeling the resourcefulness of poor people and becoming mentors, are all things that help. Thanks to a mentor, Beegle said, "I am now bi-lingual - I can speak middle class."
Among the many problems poor people face in addition to such obvious things as the lack of affordable housing and health or dental care, Beegle said, is the lack of "an address book," one that most middle class people have filled with contacts that can help them in life.
Beegle noted that her own family is very proud of her success, and because of her example ("If Donna can do it, then it must not be so hard"), two of her brothers now have bachelor's degrees, her mother has a GED and a number of cousins are getting a higher education.
Beegle is the author of a resource book for professionals, "See Poverty, Be the Difference," is a national speaker, and has worked for 17 years providing insights and developing strategies for communicating more effectively across class barriers. Her work on poverty is being featured in a documentary entitled "Invisible Nation" on public television this fall.
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