It was two years ago this month that a working single mom turned anti-poverty activist from Wheeling, West Virginia, named Amy Jo Hutchison sat before a U.S. House committee on Capitol Hill and tried to educate members of Congress about the relentless hard work of being poor in America in the 21st century.
Hutchison told them about some of the other single mothers that she'd met while organizing in Appalachia, including one who lost food stamps and insurance because of the red tape when her kids took low-paying fast-food jobs and thus stopped taking her blood pressure meds — until her daughters finally quit their part-time gigs. She explained what it had been like for her when — despite working two jobs — she cashed in a jar of change for her own daughter to enter a music competition, while describing the nights she went to bed hungry so her kids could eat a second helping. She contrasted life for the working poor with the $40,000-a-year allotment that lawmakers get to buy furniture for their district offices.
The anti-poverty activist told Congress that millions of Americans are "working while they're rationing insulin and skipping meds because they can't afford food and health care. Shame on you. Shame on you and shame on me. And shame on every one of us for not rattling the windows with cries of outrage at a government that thinks its offices are worthy of $40,000 a year but families and children aren't!"
