WIC, The Black Panthers and Marion Wright Edelman

People tell me things, and I want to know whether they are true. So I look them up. 

The latest statement that I have looked up is that the Black Panthers began the W.I.C. (Woman, Infants and Children) Program. The person who told me this suggested I watch the movie, Panther, so I did. The link is the 1995 free online movie, in its entirety.

My curiosity was not satiated. I consider myself an advocate for social justice, and I like to know the truth, and the story behind these statements. For one, I had never been aware that the Black Panthers began as a community help organization.

After spending the last couple of hours looking it up, and getting sidetracked by looking up a lot of other things I ran into, and posting and commenting some partially related finds on Facebook, I can say definitively that the Black Panthers did not single-handedly begin the W.I.C. Program. They may have been instrumental in it starting, but even that is really difficult to discover in the murk of Google searches and link-following. That statement is not to diminish the real possibility that they may have inspired the W.I.C. program. It very well may never have begun if it had not been for the organization.

Most of my acquaintances who are mothers have benefited from W.I.C.. I benefited from it as a new divorcee in 1993, with children aged 1, 3 and 5. I might never have bought Juicy Juice if it weren't for W.I.C., although back then, I did not like that it was the only juice option I had to buy. I wanted the canned juice, which was cheaper. I did not like them sticking my daughter's finger for blood, and the nutritionist telling me to limit her milk intake because it was affecting her iron levels. I nearly quit the program because it upset me so much. But years later, I must admit the nutritionist was right. I did not quit. Free peanut butter was too convenient.

For years, I erroneously have believed that my grandfather's second wife's sister-in-law, Emily Cooper was instrumental in starting the W.I.C. program. I even had the page bookmarked in her husband, Wilmer A. Cooper's book, "Growing Up Plain". When Grandpa remarried Wilmer's sister, Sarah, we all received copies as gifts. However, Wilmer's wife merely helped open their first clinic in Wayne County, Indiana in 1979, and helped grow it. Because Quakers do things like that. She did not help begin the actual program. I set out to find out who did.

 At first, I followed the Black Panther trail. I found a meme that never made it onto my Facebook feed about the Black Panthers starting W.I.C.. I found this Forbes article that claimed to have the dirt on the "sanitized" film. It was interesting, but given the state of the U.S. in the 1960's, I have trouble believing the stated facts in the article.

And then I found Marian Wright Edelman. Oh my. 

According to this "Freedom" article by George Michelson, Marian was arrested in 1960 in an Atlanta, GA sit-in, and was inspired to go to law school. She was the first woman to pass the Mississippi Bar. Dr. King inspired her to coordinate the Poor Peoples Campaign, and in D.C., she began the public interest law firm, the Washington Research Project, an entity which created the Children's Defense Fund in 1973. 

What does this have to do with W.I.C.? In 1967, according to this YouTube video uploaded by Maryland WIC  Marion Wright was an attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As such, she testified for the Senate Poverty Subcommittee. Nick Kotz, a prize-winning journalist, wrote about it. As a result of the publicity, a study was launched. Senators James Thornton, Hubert Humphrey and Robert Leonard drafted legislation to create the WIC program.

Did the Black Panthers inspire the W.I.C. program? The NAACP is much older than the Black Panthers, and differed from them, as an organization, regarding self defense. However, some in the NAACP did have connections with the Black Panthers. The Black Panther's 10 Points spelled out clearly a mission to end poverty. They certainly drew a lot of attention to their cause. They began food programs in Oakland, California in the early 1960's, before Marian Wright became politically active, and she likely heard about them.

While they did not legally begin the W.I.C. program, they may very well have inspired it. Marian Wright Edelman might be the one to answer this question. She is still living, and writes for the Huffington Post.

O Tannenbaum

Our high school German teacher, Vibike was a little crazy, which also made her sometimes a lot of fun. But after three years, she got pregnant and had Heidi, and she did not come back. I was one of those high school students who loved foreign language. so took more than required even for college prep. The school could not find another German teacher, so they hired a retired French professor to teach French. I took a year of French my senior year. He was not as charismatic as Vibike, but he was also fun in his own way. He was especially fun when he let me knit in class, but told the underclassmen that they could not knit also until they were carrying an "A" like I was. This inspired me to knit even more than I might have. 

The German stuck enough to test out of two classes in college. I remembered enough after a year of not practicing it much. Taking three years of high school German saved money and satisfied the college foreign language requirement.

Vibike's native tongue was Danish, and she informally taught us a little bit of that too. When we adopted German names, mine was supposed to be Greta, but she usually called me Gwenchen instead. In German pronunciation, that sounded like Gvenchen. In fact her default was all of our real names with "chen" at the end, which made us all "little" us's. At Christmas, we made black forest German chocolate cake and had a party at her house. She taught us German Christmas songs, and we serenaded our fellow boarding school students, even when she was not around. 

It was not uncommon for students to break out singing at boring moments like standing in line waiting for the last food bell to ring. Things like that happen at boarding schools. Food bell means dinner bell. There were 3 leading up to dinner to help boarding school students make it on time - the 15, the 5, and ready, set, go. If you went over at the 15, you had to stand around and stare at people, so it was more fun to sing sometimes.

Particularly, my friend and classmate, Imi worked out harmony with O Tannenbaum, and I sang melody. We bee-bopped around campus singing it together when the inclination took us. Sometimes we sang it in line waiting for the last dinner bell to ring. By our Junior year, this was a three-year tradition, and when we met up years later after high school, we sang it some more, for fun, even though it wasn't Christmastime.

I had to take a resident's vital signs the other night, and administer some medications. She happened to speak German, and I happened to know this. I asked her if she knew "Die Gedanken Sind Frei." She did not. I asked if she knew "O Tannenbaum." Her face broke into a big smile, and she began to sing it. I joined in, while I finished her cares.

Night Shift Discouragements

"It takes a special kind of person to be a nurse." 

 Huh. I must be that kind of person then. It has been 18 years, and I'm still in. I went back to nursing in August part-time to supplement my income because the specific medical copy editing job I took did not pay well in comparison with nursing. On October 1st, regretfully, I left the editing/advertising job altogether and went back to being a night shift nurse full-time.On the whole, it was a good experience because I discovered that I was very good at something. My parting thoughts are that there is corporate exploitation and personal competition everywhere. If I go back to that work, I expect to be payed the going rate for my experience and skill, and I will be careful to work with those who understand what that skill requires.

You know, there really isn't that much good reading out there for night shift nurses. Many articles focus on students. Light-hearted blogs and articles give the same statistical rundowns, and it is not helpful. There are a lot of studies that tell us discouraging statistics. We're going to get more fat. We're going to be depressed. Our family life will suffer. We will get into car accidents on the way home, and will die or become permanently disabled. The administration will not see us, and so will not care about us. When they do see us, it will nearly always be for a negative reason.

The truth is, I am 51, and my idealistic days are long over. The aspirations I had fresh out of nursing school have met many brick walls of reality. At the grocery store parking lot, I walk across empty handicapped spaces after work, on my way in to buy groceries - and wine - at 8am, and my gut instinct tells me to walk around the blue paint as if it is a grave. I defiantly walk across it. No superstition is going to mame me. I took care of those people all night. I am allowed to walk across the blue paint. Out of respect. They are my charges.

The past two years have been a little heartbreaking for me. I have 15 or so years before retirement. I was only going to be a nurse for 5 years. I was going to work in pediatrics or OB. I was going to move on to another career. My honesty, my hard work, and my integrity would see me through. Not so, all of it. Do not let that part of you jump out and say, "But..." because I get that I am worthy. That is not what I am talking about here. 

The nursing profession does not work in that way. It is a problem that I care. It is a problem that I have integrity. It is a problem that I work hard, and am thorough. It is a problem for all of the wrong reasons, and it always will be one. I am pretty certain that any night shift nurse who has been a nurse for five years or more who is reading this will understand. Corporate interests and ethics do not mesh in a good way. They pay lip service, and they like to think they do, but they just don't. For the rest, I am not going to explain, because I am just too plain tired, after 18 years, of trying to make things better. Things are worlds worse, for everyone in a hospital or a skilled facility, than they were when I started. Nearly everything I have done to try to improve things has backfired on me, mostly in the form of others' need for self-preservation. No matter how one avoids finger-pointing, someone always feels pointed at. I do too, even when I try not to. After a 12 hour shift, when you are bone tired, that is when the day shift staff comes in, and wants to talk with you about all kinds of shit (excuse my language, but I earned the right to use it), and has a list of charting for you to fix, and you just want to go home and go to bed. That is just the way it is.You did a lot of things wrong.

I find this extremely sad. I have heard, "It is getting better," and "It is going to get better," so, so, so many times; and have watched it get worse instead, so, so, so many times. 

What keeps me there is the faces of the people I have cared for, and their families. And money. It is not just the paycheck though, but the paycheck is certainly a big part of it. Faces keep me from quitting. I see them. They wake me up at night.

There is supposedly a way to go about nursing, and to go about improving things. I have found this to be mostly false. We try, and that is all. Hope is ever in our favor. I work with some excellent nurses. Some of them do not think that I think this of them (that they are excellent), because I am sometimes a little light on the compliments and heavy on the complaining. Most nurses are the same way. 

This is not a disillusionment. This is an attempt to discuss the reality that has gone on now for 18 years, and to not sugar-coat it. Sugar becomes pretty icky after too much of it.