University Dialogues for Activism explore poverty, debt and more

Texas State’s Philosophy Department held its second Dialogues for Activism that explored the subjects of poverty and debt Friday at the LBJ Musem of San Marcos.

Friday’s panel discussion featured Diann McCabe as emcee; Faylita Hicks, with Mano Amiga and Arrondi Creative Productions, as moderator; activist Yunuen Alvarado, with Texas State University SCOPE; Executive Director of Community Action Inc. of Central Texas Carole Belver; and Texas State University Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice Dr. Scott Bowman.

Hicks started the discussion by asking the panel members about the city’s and Texas State University’s responses to poverty in recent years.

Belver, who has overseen Community Action for the past 12 years,  said that even though Central Texas is one of the fastest-growing regions in the country, funding for programs remains stagnant.

“Even though we’re having this huge influx of people, we’re not getting any more dollars," Belver said. "We’re being given the same amount of money that we have been for years and years. And the money that we usually get in is earmarked for specific programs, so we don’t have a lot of extra fluff — we have no fluff at all — to serve the number of people coming in that need our help.” 

Alvarado said that over the three years she’s lived in San Marcos and attended Texas State University, she has witnessed many of her friends experience poverty and even homelessness. She said an issue she observed was these people were also experiencing various degrees of social exclusion — sometimes racial or immigration status disparity other times gender or sexual orientation discrimination.

“I have way too many friends that have experienced homelessness and homelessness looks different for everybody I think … I have a friend that experienced homelessness for a while and they were from the Valley, so the resources they knew were four hours away, but it was also very difficult for them because they are queer,” Alvarado said. “So their family isn’t supportive and they are experiencing homelessness and can’t reach out to their family because of their identity.”

Alvarado also recounted a personal experience when her check from being a student worker at Texas State University didn’t deposit for over a month and left her in a bind for rent, groceries and other essentials.

“I couldn’t buy rent and I couldn’t buy groceries and it was a really difficult situation,” Alvarado said. “When I reached out for help from the university, I was told that I should have planned better, that I should have saved because I knew that I had to pay rent. But for a lot of people, specifically people of color, that’s difficult. We have to live paycheck to paycheck. And it was also difficult for my mom to help me because she’s also living check to check. The reality of the situation is if she misses a check, then she would experience homelessness as well."

Alvarado said although there are services meant to help disadvantaged students at the university, they are often set up in a way that makes them inaccessible to those that need it most. She brought up the university’s food bank program Bobcat Bounty that distributes food from the Family Consumer Sciences building every Thursday from 5-7 p.m.

“I know a lot of people that can’t go on Thursday to get food because they’re working really hard to make rent but they don’t have food to eat," Alvarado said. "And I’ve been to Bobcat Bounty several times and sometimes they just don’t have good food. I remember I went last February and there was just a bunch of cupcakes — that’s not really food. It’s a struggle.”

Bowman said most students are experiencing poverty in some form, it’s just not always recognized as such.

“The majority of students are impoverished in some form or another. If you pay enough attention you can hear it…. Even myself as an undergrad, having  a buddy that needed to find a place to crash until his financial aid check came and then it didn’t come. I would have never considered him homeless, but he was homeless by a standard definition.” Bowman said. “I don’t think that we understand or have scratched the depths of what student poverty looks like — we just kind of explain it away.

“A majority of students are living in poverty or are poverty adjacent and I think that needs to be addressed more than anything else, including rethinking what those resources are that students need,” Bowman said.

Alvarado brought up the extenuating circumstances of undocumented immigrants and DACA students trying to pull themselves out of poverty and being afraid to apply for resources that are available to them for fear of bringing unwantd attention on themselves and their families.

“As an undocumented student myself, when I first came to Texas State it was terrifying because we are told there are all these resources but then people without status, we don’t want to put ourselves on the radar because we don’t want to try to draw attention to ourselves ... there’s always a sign up sheet, there’s always those people you just don’t know,” Alvarado said.  "There is always that consideration of your status."

It’s really difficult to reach out for help because you don’t want to draw attention to yourself because there’s a stigma in the immigrant community that we need to work hard for it and not take any handouts,” she said.

Bowman talked about the way that poverty is often discussed as if it exists in a vacuum, but that in reality, it is a multi-faceted problem with many contributing factors.

“You can’t talk about poverty without talking about mental health. You can’t talk about poverty with talking about criminal justice, juvenile justice, immigration status — you can’t cover it without talking about everything,” Bowman said.

He said that the criminal justice system sustains itself on vulnerable populations because it is more inclined to be efficient than it is to be accurate or just.

“The criminal court system that is designed and structured for efficiency and not for justice and accuracy thrives on the backs of those that are most vulnerable,” Bowman said. “The most efficient way to run a criminal court system is to have everyone plea bargain, to not have attorneys that are well-trained and well-paid or well-resourced and to have defendants or accused that are not necessarily clear on their own rights and certainly don’t have the funding to support their own rights.”

Bowman went on to talk about how underrepresentation of women and minorities in political power affects not only decisions made about programs that are meant to help people in poverty but also the way conversations are framed around those programs.

“If you have full insurance, you can talk about entities like Planned Parenthood as this other space, this other place that other women go to that aren’t ‘us.’ So it affects those that are most vulnerable, those in transition, those that are without insurance, those that are vulnerable to paperwork and documentation, those that are from multi-generational and abject poverty — those people that that has become the doctor, the place for healthcare,” Bowman said. “So allies really need to be thinking about who they are voting for in office, because this isn’t a pro-life or pro-choice discussion; it’s a power discussion. That’s those with power that don’t have to experience it making decisions for other individuals that do not have a voice.”

Dialogues for Activism will host the final dialogue on Friday, June 21 at 9 a.m. The last dialogue will be focused on Mental Health Activism.