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 Here in West Virginia, we have a long history of poverty
and a long history of business coming in and getting
rich off our backs. Our poverty serves big business.
Our state courts big business. If you have jobs our state
wants them and will do almost anything to get them. It
doesn’t matter if you only pay minimum wage and don’t
provide any health care. Any job is better than no job.
Take Wal-Mart. Just for building one store here, Wal-Mart pays no taxes for 50 years. 50 years! In exchange
for the honor of having this store built, the people who
live in Kanawha County get to work for minimum wage.
No health care, no vacation, no sick days, no nothing.
It’s been this way for more years then I can remember.
The coal industry did the same. The timber industry
did it. The chemical industry did it. These big businesses
from out of state clear-cut our forests, ripped open
our mountains, polluted our air and water, their owners
became billionaires. And in exchange we got nothing.
What federal money we got to help people go to work
and get off welfare has often been misspent. I wonder
whose making the money off this. Most state programs
benefit the people who run them. Our state government
is one of our biggest employers next to Wal-mart.
A few years back our state was doling out federal
welfare money. In exchange for 1 million dollars in
funds one of our universities set up a job readiness program.
This program taught people on welfare how to
apply make up and deodorant. I think they may have
had about 20 people in that 6-week program. Imagine
their profit. For that million dollars, these people could
have had an education or learned a trade. Instead of
knowing the proper way to apply deodorant, they could
have known the proper way to weld a pipe. And gotten
out of poverty for good.
This doesn’t just happen in West Virginia. This happens
everywhere. It’s happening right now. Business
makes profit off the backs of the poor. They give people
just enough to keep them from starving but not enough
for them to make it. That way they can always have a
handy little pool of cheap labor whenever they need a
ditch dug. They figure that if they keep people just a
little bit satisfied it will keep them from rising up.
And until we do rise up, it’ll keep on working.
by Evelyn Dortch
former welfare mother and Executive Director of Direct
Action Welfare Group, an advocacy group in West Virginia
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