Read more about the path Nayantara and her colleagues have followed to challenge California’s punishing Maximum Family Grant rule.
At AFJ, we urge advocates and their funders to think broadly about evaluating the effectiveness of advocacy. We recognize that advocates don’t always reach their ultimate goal on the first try, and we point out that there are other measures of success to consider besides the ultimate goal. Now I get to put those lessons to good use.
The bill’s author Holly Mitchell in center, surrounded by WPI team and allies. Credit: Jonathan Iocco
Since December 2012, I have been working with a coalition of advocates to repeal California’s Maximum Family Grant (MFG) rule, which denies an increase in aid to a family receiving CalWORKs when a new baby is born into the family.In September 2013, it became clear that our bill was stalled in the legislature and we were out of chances to move it forward this year.
Disappointed but not defeated
It is a huge disappointment. In part because we invested so much time and energy into our advocacy this year. But what is especially painful is the fact this policy—that invades the personal and reproductive choices of poor women and drives struggling families even deeper into poverty—will continue for another year.
Even worse, the continuation of the shameful MFG rule comes as California’s leaders are discussing spending hundreds of millions of dollars to relocate prison inmates to deal with the state’s unsustainable prison population. The priorities these decisions signal are depressing.
Now for the less dispiriting part! Our core coalition consisted of my Women’s Policy Institute Reproductive Justice team, the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC), and the Western Center on Law and Poverty. We were effective at expanding our list of supporters and widening the circle of concern.
I noted in my last blog post that this issue—a policy that punishes poor families based on outdated and offensive stereotypes of people on welfare – has struck a chord with a range of groups working on disparate issues. We had hoped that with such a mighty effort and broad coalition, we would be able to repeal the MFG rule this year.
We didn’t—this year.
But we know this is the start of a process of change that is not going away. My eyes were opened to a policy that I didn’t even know existed last year, and I know many people – including the very state legislators who we will be calling on again to repeal the MFG – had the same experience.
Just the beginning of the fight
Luan Huynh from EBCLC put it well:
“We didn’t win the battle today, but we made many gains. We used this platform to build advocates, women on welfare learned skills and developed capacity that was previously invisible – even to themselves, and we talked about race and gender and all those ugly stereotypes in the welfare program that continue to keep our clients impoverished. We had a chance to talk about God and hypocrisy in our system and although we did not win today, which is immensely sad, we shaped the public discourse on this and exposed this nasty policy in the way it needed to exposed.”
The bill’s author, Assemblymember Holly Mitchell, left us with these words of encouragement:
“While this defeat may seem crushing, know that this is just the beginning in our fight to repeal this unjust and discriminatory rule. This movement has gained incredible momentum, and it would not have been possible without your passionate support. There will be a day soon when we no longer hand a blank check to the prison system while short-changing our most vulnerable children with a promissory note. But it can’t happen unless we continue to fight.”
What’s next
The energy we mobilized this year, and the outrage at this policy, will find an outlet. Our team of advocates will work with the bill’s author and supporters in Sacramento to find a way to move forward next year, whether it’s bringing the bill back in the second year of a two-year session or exploring the budget process as a way to solve the problem. Stay tuned.