"The Eyeball Effect"

Tallahassee, Fla. — When state lawmakers met to draft a new budget last spring, they were poised to freeze welfare benefits at 1990 levels. Instead, they received a rude awakening.

A group of poor women, many of them strangers to the state house, had gathered in the front row during the budget session. They were members of a group called Single Mothers in a Learning Environment (SMILE) — but they were not smiling.

The women, most of whom rely on welfare to support their children, had made the long van ride to Tallahassee from central Florida to make sure that they had a say in any budget decisions. “We just sit where they can see us every time they look out,” says Deborah Simms, the group’s executive director. “And we’re shaking our heads yes or no depending on what they’re trying to do. That’s what we call the eyeball effect.”

Taking new members to Tallahassee is one way SMILE endeavors to empower women who have been forced to grapple with the unruly welfare bureaucracy. “I tell them that the people in Tallahassee are the ones sitting in the big chairs,” Simms say. "But we are the people with saws to cut off the legs of those chairs if they don’t make the right decision.”

This year, the strategy paid off. After holding rallies, meeting with individual legislators, and giving them an eyeful during budget sessions, SMILE convinced lawmakers to raise welfare benefits 3.5 percent to keep up with inflation.

SMILE was also armed with a study it helped conduct for the Food Research and Action Center documenting that the majority of children in families on welfare suffer from hunger. Sixty-one percent of families experience “food emergencies,” forcing them to seek help from food pantries or soup kitchens. In Florida, 31 percent of all families with children under 12 years old “are hungry or at-risk for hunger.”

“Like a Family”

Just off Highway 441, in the rural community of Apopka, an innocuous store front office sandwiched between a job services organization and H&R Block serves as a base for SMILE. Founded by welfare recipients in 1983, the group scrapes by on foundation grants and neighborhood fundraisers like fish fries, carwashes, and yard sales.

In the office, a Hispanic woman carefully echoes an English language tape. “What is the color of the chair? The chair is green.” SMILE helps members study for the high-school equivalency exam, providing free transportation and on-site child care while mothers attend class. Unlike similar programs sponsored by the state, SMILE keeps its classes small and tailors them to the individual needs of each woman.

“It’s like a family,” says Simms, who recently taught a spelling class. The teachers are well-equipped to understand the problems students have; some, like Simms, were once welfare recipients themselves. “Basically you’re looking at faces that are ready to grasp what you’re saying. They feel comfortable that you’re not going to look down on them if they make a mistake. You say, ‘It’s okay, let’s try again.’ It’s a good feeling.”

SMILE works with women who are eager to get the education and training they need to find a good job. Many are refugees from Project Independence, the state employment and training program, where they have run up against barriers that make it difficult to move forward.

“If they start working, the check is gone and the Medicaid is gone,” explains Simms. “If they don’t know that they’re entitled to child care and Medicaid, a lot of times it’s not mentioned to them.”

SMILE tries to hold the state program accountable and help recipients understand their rights. The challenge, Simms says, is giving members the courage to assert their rights. “That’s what taking them to Tallahassee does. It lets them see that the legislators are just people, and they have to vote them into office.”

Simms encourages poor women in other states to organize groups like SMILE. After all, she says, it doesn’t take much to form a welfare rights group. “If you have five people with common concerns, that’s a start right there.”

— L.U.