Jonathan P. Baird

For the third time in recent years, there is a legislative effort to raise the minimum wage in New Hampshire.  House Bill 1278, a bill sponsored by Rep. Sandra Keans and Rep. Terie Norelli, is before the Legislature.

The bill proposes to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.65 over a three-year period with 50-cent increases each year.

New Hampshire remains the only state in New Hampshire that has not raised the minimum wage above $5.15, the federal minimum.  Vermont, Rhode Island and Massachusetts increased their state minimums to $6.75.  Maine moved up to $6.25, and Connecticut sets the standard at $7.10, almost two dollars above New Hampshire.

While the economy has not been good, none of these states have experienced any adverse economic effects from raising the minimum wage.

A surprisingly large number of New Hampshire workers are currently paid very low wages.  The Department of Employment Security reports that 31,000 workers in our state earn between $5.15 – $7.15 an hour with 10,000 more earning $5.15 or less.  Many thousands more earn under $9 an hour.

These low-wage workers are a forgotten and invisible constituency.  They have no movement or powerful organization championing their cause.  They are the equivalent of political background furniture.  They merit attention only during primary season among the laundry list of issues.

They do not earn enough to provide for their families and pay for basic necessities of life.  Part of the changing face of homelessness is the reality that more homeless people are employed full-time but cannot afford the high cost of housing.  Many are working at jobs which offer no health insurance, no pension plan, no sick pay and no other benefits.  The lucky have 40-hour-a-week jobs rather than the 24-hour jobs increasingly favored by business.

Pay is so low for these workers that many qualify for government assistance from state or local welfare.  In effect, the government is subsidizing business.  Because workers are paid so little, they must turn to food stamps, Medicaid, fuel assistance and other survival programs.

Is the treatment of low-wage workers considered a scandal?  No.  A scandal is Janet Jackson’s breast at the Super Bowl.  It is Mel Gibson’s movie, Ben and J. Lo’s breakup, Britney’s marriage or Martha’s trial.

Lousy treatment of low-wage workers is not a scandal.  It is business as usual.  It is normalcy.

The House Republican leadership is fighting the increase in the minimum wage.  Rep. Lee Slocum, a Republican member of the House Labor Committee, has introduced an amendment substituting an entirely different bill for the minimum wage bill.  Slocum’s bill proposes a study of tax credits for businesses that hire some minimum wage workers.

The idea of a bill that actually helps workers is apparently too much to fathom.  Possibly there will be other amendments.

Raising the minimum wage will not end poverty.  It will not even create a livable wage.  It is, however, a positive, incremental step.  It will pay more rents, utilities, car payments and food bills.  Even a little more can make a difference.

In all the other New England states, Republicans and Democrats came together because raising the minimum wage was the right thing to do.  This is not a partisan issue.  Surely, the Legislature can do the right thing here too.

When he has not been busy cutting services to poor people and laying off his staff, Health and Human Services Commissioner John Stephen has launched an initiative promoting abstinence.  Stephen has created a New Hampshire Abstinence Education Task Force.

In announcing the creation of this group, Stephen stated that teens who practice abstinence live healthier and more fulfilling lives.  As a former teenager and a child of the 1960s, I protest.  The elevation of abstinence as more fulfilling does not register with me.

Abstinence was never a condition to which I willingly aspired.  Since my teen years, I wanted a satisfying love life, not empty privation and repressed longings.  Turning abstinence into some great virtue smacks of sick religiosity and phony piety.  However, I do not doubt that there are some snake handlers, Bible thumpers and elected officials who agree with Stephen.

While in general sexual pleasure needs no promoting, there is an apparent need in New Hampshire to put in a good word for it.  Unlike the abstinence promoters, I support the right of young people in their later teens to be both sexually active and responsible.

As the father of young men, I believe young people need full information about contraception and safe sex.  They do not need lectures from moralistic adults who are promoting abstinence for others.  I would worry more if my sons went through their teen years without romantic relationships.

The focus on abstinence reflects misguided public health priorities.  New Hampshire is one of 10 states with the lowest birth rates for teenagers 15 and older.  Over the last decade, teen birth rates in our state dropped significantly.  No persuasive case justifies why an abstinency initiative is necessary now.

To the extent public health dollars are available, it would make far more sense to spend money on either anti-smoking or anti-drug and alcohol efforts.  Teen smoking is epidemic, but the geniuses in our Legislature completely raided tobacco settlement dollars in a misdirected effort to boost revenue in the general fund.  Similarly, legislators have just authorized a $500,000 cut to drug and alcohol programs at a time when these programs are already drastically underfunded considering the extent of the problem.

Sadly, Stephen’s initiative is not some isolated effort.  The Bush administration and social conservatives have lobbied for and increased federal funding for abstinence-only education.  If you can believe it, the federal budget contains $137 million in fiscal year 2004 for this purpose.

If New Hampshire wants to access some of this money, it must put up three matching state dollars for every four federal dollars spent.  In light of the painful $20 million cut just experienced by Health and human Services, do we really want to spend state money on this?

Abstinence education is the sexual equivalent of the “Just say no” approach to drug use.  Abstinence educators teach that sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful physical and psychological side effects.

Recipients of federal money may not provide teens with any information inconsistent with the abstinence message.  The result is that recipients of abstinence-only dollars may not advocate contraceptive use or teach contraceptive methods except to emphasize their failure rates.

There is real danger in this remarkably blind approach.  Young people will not get the full and accurate information they need about condoms and other methods of birth control.  Without correct information, young people will not be able to protect themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.

The abstinence promoters totally erase gays and lesbians from their equation.  If marriage is the only venue for sex, where does that leave the non-straight world?  I suspect the abstinence promoters do not support gay marriage.

Whether social conservatives like it or not, young people are having sex.  By age 18, more than two-thirds of all American teenagers have had sexual intercourse.  Each year, nearly 4 million adolescents are infected with sexually transmitted diseases.  One-half of all new HIV infections occur among people under 25.

It is the abstinence promoters themselves who are dangerous to the health of young people.  They are peddling fear and ignorance in the serve of an ideology.  They actually discourage young people from using contraception and exaggerate failure rates to scare youth into abstinence.

There is no proven evidence that abstinence-only education works.  No peer-reviewed research demonstrates the effectiveness of any abstinence-only program.  I expect it will not come as a surprise that George W. Bush has repeatedly championed abstinence education and has worked to increase such funding.

An objective assessment of the last 20 years shows that the abstinence promoters have had considerable success in promoting their programs while restricting more comprehensive sexuality education, including information about both abstinence and contraception.

Abstinence education is a good example of the dumbing down of America.  It makes our state look stupid.  I safely predict that vast numbers of teenagers will pay no attention.

Recently U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke out about the sentences of criminal offenders being too long.  It was rare and refreshing to hear a conservative jurist speak critically about the harm of mandatory sentencing.

There can be little doubt that as a society we are big on punishment.  We are good at putting people away.

Where we are not so good is thinking rationally about treatment of ex-offenders after they have served their sentences.  This is important because most incarcerated offenders will, at some point, be released.

Instead of encouraging positive approaches to promote a fresh start and reintegration into a community, we have constructed legal barriers that make it harder for ex-offenders to resume a normal life.  In housing, public benefits, employment, parental rights and student loans, the fact of a criminal record is often the basis for a second, civil punishment.

More often than not, judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys are unaware of these collateral consequences.  They do not consider it at sentencing.

The consequences happen after the criminal case is over.  You get denied the job, the apartment, custody of your child or a student loan because of something criminal in your past, even your distant past.  In effect, it is the punishment that keeps punishing.

Here are some routine examples from my law office at New Hampshire Legal Assistance:

●  A public housing authority denied readmission to a husband who
wanted to return to his previous residence, where his wife lived.
The husband had completed his jail time.  Because of his criminal
conviction for drug possession, he was deemed a threat to other
tenants.  Under the Section 8 rules, he was barred readmission for
five years.

●  Fourteen years ago, a mentally disabled woman stole food from a
convenience store in Massachusetts.  She did not show up at her
court hearing on the charge and she had an outstanding warrant.
After moving to New Hampshire to escape domestic violence, she
rebuilt her life.  She qualified for disability benefits, found a modest
apartment and was quietly living her life.

The Social Security Administration cross-matched computer
information about her criminal record.  Based on the assumption
that she was a fleeing felon, Social Security terminated her
benefits and sent her notices that she was liable to repay over
$17,000 in benefits she had received over past years.

She lost her only income, $545 a month, and is now fighting
eviction.

●  A developmentally disabled high school student faced eviction
from the federally subsidized housing project where he lived
with his even more disabled mother.  The young man violated
the terms of his probation by contacting the underage girl with
whom he had been in love and with whom he had previously
engaged in some consensual touching.  The girl had been
writing the young man and he wrote back.

The housing project evicted him because his probation violation
had again landed him in prison.  He and his public defender had
previously plea-bargained a simple assault charge.  Although
popular and well-liked in his home community, has was considered
a risk to other children in the project.  He is now without income,
living in a homeless shelter and trying to finish high school.

In all these situations, a criminal past led to some additional civil punishment.

This makes little sense.  There is no evidence that piling on civil punishments makes us safer in New Hampshire.  They are based on demonizing ex-offenders.

The typical ex-offender is not Hannibal Lecter.  Movies and crime novels give maximum exposure to super-predator psychopaths who kill remorselessly while competing for first prize in the evil department.

These dehumanized stereotypes distort a realistic view of the offender population.

We know a fair amount about this population.  Most prisoners report incomes of less than $8,000 a year in the year before going to prison.  A majority were unemployed at the time of their arrest.  Seventy percent of parents in state prison do not have high school diplomas.

While the government does not keep statistics on pre-incarceration earnings and employment histories, some generalizations seem safe.  Most prisoners are poor with limited education and job skills.  A high percentage have severe mental impairments.  They often have drug and alcohol problems with histories of being physically, psychologically and sexually abused.  Most ex-offenders have convictions for drug-related or property crimes, not violent crimes.

A majority do not have long conviction records.  Almost a quarter of male inmates and 35 percent of female inmates were never previously convicted.

As a new study from the U.S. Department of Justice demonstrates, there are over 5 million people in the United States with experience in state or federal prison.  this does not include those in local jails or those who were arrested and never charged or had charges dropped.  Clearly, the stigma of a record is of great importance to many millions.

A rational public discussion should reconsider whether rehabilitation is served by policies that make it more likely ex-offenders will be without income, employment or a place to live.

●    Americans must unite in the belief that poverty is an unacceptable situation.

Poverty appears to be a permanent fact of life in the United States.  Poverty may be bemoaned, but few question its inevitability.  It is part of the economic and political landscape, a given.

Neither political party stands for the systematic elimination of poverty.  No major American political figure calls for an end to poverty.  If you believe poverty should be attacked and ultimately abolished, you are outside the mainstream.  You are considered unrealistic or utopian.  You might be considered a crackpot.

This is especially true in New Hampshire.  Our perennial animating issue is taxes, not poverty.  There is a list of labels to dismiss anyone who challenges the New Hampshire status quo:  tax-and-spender, big-government liberal, socialist.

Rather than address poverty, our state government stands posed to cut essential human services, using the pretext of a fiscally responsible budget.  It is hard to imagine ending poverty when your state is gearing up to further shred the safety net.

Thirty-six years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached that America’s greatest problem and contradiction was that it harbored 35 million poor people at a time when its resources were so vast that the existence of poverty should be an anachronism.  We have not heeded King.  He was right then and he is right now.  We have not followed through with a persistent war on poverty.

Instead, we have witnessed a huge backward step – an explosion of economic inequality.  It is not simply that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  A declining share of income is going to middle-class families while the richest of the rich hog ever more.

The evidence for this assertion does not come from some left-wing think tank.  A recent study by the Congressional Budget Office found that between 1979 and 1997, the after-tax income of the top 1 percent of families rose 157 percent compared with only a 10 percent gain for middle-class families.

There has been a dramatic shift in income to the super-rich.  The total income of the wealthiest 1 percent equals that of the bottom 40 percent.  Even among the very wealthy, riches are concentrating so that the very richest have more.

The writer and economist Paul Krugman says we are living in a new Gilded Age.  He argues that few people are aware of how much the gap between the very rich and everyone else has widened over a short period.  Krugman says America has the highest per capita income in the world because our rich are much richer, not because the middle class has done well.

In fact, the middle class and the poor have been hammered.  Massive job loss, prolonged unemployment, increasing numbers without health insurance – it is all too familiar.

History’s Examples

We need a new abolitionism to end poverty.  We must persuade our fellow citizens that poverty, homelessness and gross wage inequality are unacceptable in the 21st century.

I am not advocating any brand of extremism or fanaticism.  We have seen more than enough of that.  We need a long-term historical perspective.

In the early 19th century, slavery was a settled institution.  Leaders of all political stripes agreed that it could not be ended.  Business leaders argued that the property rights of slaveholders had to be respected.  The only people who believed slavery could be abolished were a handful of despised reformers.

Abolitionists were denounced for decades before the Civil War.  It was politically safe to abhor abolitionists, and polite society made accommodation with slavery.

Hatred for the abolitionists went far beyond vitriolic newspaper criticism.  In 1835, a mob seized and bound the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and dragged him through the streets of Boston.  In 1837, another mob killed abolitionist preacher-editor Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois.

Yet somehow abolitionists did the impossible.  In roughly 30 years, they reversed the verdict on slavery.  It took a civil way, constitutional amendments and Reconstruction, but slavery was ultimately abolished because a group of citizens decided they would not accept it.

American Apartheid

The fight to end racial segregation parallels the struggle against slavery.  Again, an overwhelming majority accepted segregation.  Business leaders invoked their sacred property rights.  Owners of restaurants, hotels and stores claimed the right to serve and do business with whomever they wanted – white people only.

Segregation was the law of the land.  For more than 50 years, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld “separate but equal.”  A long history of disgraceful laws and court decisions reinforced American apartheid.  For example, in 1908 the Supreme Court upheld a Kentucky statute prohibiting the education of blacks and whites in the same place.  In 1926, the Supreme Court upheld racially restrictive covenants.

As the Trent Lott debacle has reminded us, this was a world in which Congress refused to pass a law to make lynching illegal.

Who would have believed in 1950 that segregation was on its last legs?  In a relatively short historical span, the civil rights movement emerged and overcame segregation.  People of remarkable courage and moral fervor stepped forward and waged campaigns of direct action.

Inspiring Words

These heroes faced a far bleaker reality than present-day opponents of poverty.  Abolishing poverty should not be as difficult as overcoming slavery or segregation.  Activists today do not face the threats to personal safety experienced by the abolitionists and civil rights workers.

Our task is to make poverty an unacceptable condition.  History shows that poverty can be ameliorated and wage inequality can be decreased.

As New Englanders, we have the wonderful tradition of Thoreau and Emerson to emulate.  go back and read Thoreau’s essays “Slavery in Massachusetts” and “A Plea for John Brown.”  The inspiration and intensity of conviction are right there.

If you don’t speak English around here, you’re out of luck.

The face of New Hampshire is changing.  Although little discussed, the 2000 census figures show more than 84,000 people in New Hampshire speak a language other than English at home.  Almost 24,000 speak English less than very well.  These are surprising numbers.

Particularly in the southern tier of our state, the demographic shifts are dramatic.  Yet the subject of how well our New Hampshire institutions, public and private, are accommodating non-English speakers has received little attention.

Sadly, New Hampshire has done poorly both in recognition of language accessibility issues and in implementation of change.  In practice, the state clings to a mythology that it is homogeneous and white only.

The state has not coordinated data-gathering about immigrants across agencies.  Nor has it studied the need for translation services even though the population of non-English speakers is growing.

The harm is that people who lack proficiency in English are frequently unable to obtain basic knowledge of how to access various services and benefits for which they are eligible.  Whether health care, social services or public benefits like Medicaid and unemployment insurance, the lack of language assistance leads to denial of help.

State agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Employment Security have largely failed to provide translated materials in Spanish or other languages.  Application forms, notices and determinations are typically not translated.  The lack of bilingual staff in state offices is a barrier to both applications and appeals.

Let me illustrate with a story.  Mr. Chan worked as a cook at a Chinese restaurant in a southern New Hampshire city.  He took an approved leave of absence to care for a newborn child.  Upon his return to work, his employer advised him he no longer had a job.

Mr. Chan went to Employment Security to apply for unemployment benefits.  Mr. Chan is Chinese and did not speak, read, or understand English.  His employer told Employment Security that Mr. Chan had voluntarily left his job to accept other work.  Employment Security tried to obtain more information, but Mr. Chan did not respond.  The agency did not know he failed to respond to notices because he could not read English.

Mr. Chan was denied unemployment benefits.  He did not make a timely appeal because he did not understand he had been denied.  The notices from Employment Security were in English.  He sought out a person who translated the notice, but the interpreter did not explain he had been denied.

When Mr. Chan finally understood he had been denied about two months later, he asked Employment Security to allow a late appeal.  The agency refused, saying his grounds were insufficient.  It did not explain.

At a loss about what to do, Mr. Chan sought legal help at Greater Boston Legal Services, where he found an attorney who spoke Chinese.  That attorney contacted New Hampshire Legal Assistance.

As Mr. Chan’s counsel, I argued that his inability to understand the notice justified his late appeal and that the agency’s English-only notice violated his right to due process of law.  Once Employment Security understood what had happened, it quickly agreed he should be allowed a hearing on the merits of the case.

At the hearing, a qualified interpreter came, and Mr. Chan was able to tell his side.  The hearing officer found Mr. Chan was discharged while on an approved leave of absence.  The decision meant over $2,000 in back benefits to Mr. Chan.

This story demonstrates both the importance of translated written materials and qualified interpreter services.  New Hampshire’s need to provide such service is not based on some abstract moral good.  The law requires it.

Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act requires that recipients of federal money serve people of limited English proficiency.  There is extensive case law during the last 30 years supporting this proposition.

Contrary to possible expectation that language accessibility is a partisan political obligation, recent history demonstrates it is not.  Both the Clinton White House and the Bush Department of Justice have supported guidance to federally funded agencies about how to comply with this legal obligation.

Certainly, there is room to disagree about the extent of the obligation.  But the mandate is clear.

The United States remains the ultimate melting pot society.  We are a nation of immigrants.  New Hampshire is now catching up and joining the melting pot.  By taking steps to be more language accessible, we are only acknowledging the changes that have already happened.  We will also put ourselves on the right side of a civil rights issue.  There is no going back to the good old days.

It is estimated that 4 million Americans have been infected.  This is four times more people than have been infected by HIV.

Before I met Ira, I did not know about Hepatitis C.  Ira came to me for legal representation after he was denied Social Security Disability benefits.  He had been diagnosed with chronic Hepatitis C in 1997.

Ira initially went to the doctor with complaints of fatigue and dizziness.  He did not feel well and was no longer able to work at his job as a landscaper.  After lab tests and a liver biopsy, his doctors recommended treatment with Interferon, a highly toxic medicine.

The treatment was rugged.  Even though Ira was young and strong, he experience profound fatigue and incapacitating headaches.  He quickly lost 30 pounds.  He said it was like he had a flue that never went away.  He described many days in which he lay exhausted on his couch holding a pillow over his head to stem the headaches.  It was too much effort to do dishes or walk the dog.

In spite of how lousy the medicine made him feel, it was Ira’s only hope.  Fortunately, the Interferon has helped Ira function better.  After 18 months of total disability, he is still struggling with fatigue but is back to work.

Ira is not alone in battling Hepatitis C.  It is estimated that 4 million Americans have been infected.  This is four times more people than have been infected by HIV.   Yet AIDS has been a far bigger story.

If you were a science fiction writer dreaming up spooky plots, you would be hard put to come up with a more sinister virus and epidemic.  Imagine a virus that infects you without any sign or symptom.  Then imagine that you may not even be aware you have been attacked for 10 years until after your liver has been severely damaged.

Doctors do not know why a person can be infected and have no symptoms while the virus destroys his or her liver.  That is why Hepatitis C has been widely described as both a clandestine and insidious virus.  It spreads under the radar.

It is believed that only one-quarter of all cases in the United States have been diagnosed.  that means 3 million Americans do not know they have been infected with the virus or that they could be passing it on to others even though blood tests could be done to determine the infection.

There is not a lot medically known about Hepatitis C.  Data is scant, and the ability to predict the virus’s effect on a patient is poor.  Some people with the infection escape entirely.  Others develop irreversible liver disease.  About 20 percent  of Hepatitis C patients progress to cirrhosis of the liver, liver cancer or both.

Hepatitis C is spread when blood or body fluids from an infected person enter the body of a person who is not infected.  The most common route of transmission has been injection-drug use.

Sharing contaminated needles and syringes increases the chance of infection dramatically.  Body piercing and tattooing are another possible route of transmission.  You can be infected if the tattoo artist’s tools have someone else’s blood on them or if the artist or piercer does not follow good health practices such as washing hands and using disposable gloves.  Ira has multiple tattoos.  His doctor believed that was the source of his infection.

Hepatitis C can also be spread by sex, but this is rare.  There is no evidence that the virus is spread by kissing, hugging, sneezing or drinking from an infected person’s cup.  It is wise not to share personal care items that might have blood on them like razors or toothbrushes.

Once the disease advances to cirrhosis, the symptoms are horrible.  When the liver is severely damaged, its ability to clean blood of toxins and clot properly is compromised.  Death can result from uncontrolled bleeding.

At present, no vaccine exists to prevent Hepatitis C, and it is unlikely there will be one soon.  Due to the shadowy nature of the disease, no powerful lobby has stepped forward to advocate for more research money or better public education.  In 1997, The National Institute of Health spent $1.5 billion on AIDS research.  At the same time, $25 million dollars was spent on Hepatitis C research.

Hepatitis C is not a far-off medical problem about people in some distant ghetto.  It is a New Hampshire story.  Ira is from the Upper Valley.  An informal poll I did of New Hampshire Legal Assistance paralegals and lawyers revealed that we are representing at least 10 disability clients around the state with this diagnosis.

We ignore this epidemic at our peril.  Without better efforts to contain Hepatitis C, its death rate will surpass that of AIDS.

I still remember my first domestic violence client.  She was a married woman.  When her husband drank heavily on weekends, he would grab her by the hair with one hand while punching her in the face with the other hand.  He regularly gave her black eyes.  He broke her collarbone.  He told her she was a little slut who deserved the punishment she received.

When my client attempted to leave the relationship, her husband physically attempted to stop her.  He punched in the hood of her car.  He took the top of a rubbish can and threw it at her vehicle, breaking a tail-light.  As she drove away from her home, he got in his car to follow.  When my client stopped to avoid further chase, her husband told her that he intended to burn down her mobile home and kill her and himself.

I think of this case when I consider efforts by the government to oversell the idea that the reason many women are on welfare is because they refuse to stay with their husbands.  The fact is, for many women on welfare, the presence of men in their lives keeps them dependent on government help rather than helping them give it up.

For my client, fortunately, welfare was part of the answer to a better life.  She managed to get a restraining order and a divorce.  She was able to pull her life back together.  The fact the she and her children could get temporary help from welfare made it possible for her to leave the relationship.

But efforts to pressure women to stay in bad marriages continue.  Some members of Congress have announced that a new emphasis on marriage should be a major part of welfare reform.  Rep. Wally Herger of California, chairman of the House Ways and Means welfare subcommittee, proposed that states be required to spend part of their welfare money on pro-marriage activities.

The idea that welfare recipients are trapped in poverty primarily due to being unmarried is flawed.  Poor women do not need government ayatollahs telling them to get married.  They can decide for themselves when to get married.  Government cannot legislate relationships and force people to love each other.

A new body of research raises big questions about the marriage emphasis in welfare reform.  Organized and popularized by Jody Raphael of the Center for Impact Research in Chicago, the data show that the prevalence of domestic violence in the lives of many welfare recipients has been grossly underestimated.  for many, the path from welfare to work has been blocked by the sabotage of violent abusers.

The typical welfare recipient is not an unattached single female head of household.  More often than not, welfare recipients are at least intermittently involved with men, many of whom are physically and emotionally abusive.  These abusive me, motivated by the need to possess and control their partners, intentionally undermine their partners’ steps toward economic improvement in order to maintain dependency.

Researchers have consistently found that 20-30 percent of women receiving welfare benefits are current victims of domestic violence.  About two-thirds are past victims.

Abusers’ sabotage takes many forms.  They forbid women from getting jobs or going to school.  They cause school failure and dropout by destroying books and homework assignments.  They hide car keys, refuse to give rides, slash tires and mess up child care arrangements.  They traumatize partners by physical violence, sexual assault, and emotional abuse.

Abusers will often try to prevent their partners from using birth control.  They exercise control by keeping their women pregnant.  That way the woman will be less likely to attract other men and will be kept out of the labor market.  Contraception is a threat to abusers who think women use birth control so they can have relationships with other men and not get caught.

It Gets Worse

When women separate from their abusers and attempt to leave the relationship, abusers escalate their tactics.  Many abusers stalk and threaten their former partners.

Law Professor Martha Mahoney coined the phrase “separation assault” to described abuser efforts to prevent leaving and force return.  If the abuser cannot stop the separation, he will focus on punishing the woman for ending the relationship.

The domestic violence victim is a hostage, trying to find safe haven between accommodation and resistance.  The domestic violence-related murders we routinely experience are the most graphic, extreme aspect of separation assault.  Less well-known are the abusers’ efforts to regain control by calling the welfare department to make allegations of welfare fraud and child abuse.

A client of mine, previously on welfare, obtained a copy of a log kept by her former husband about her whereabouts once they separated.  The log reflected his active stalking of her.  In military-like fashion, he detailed her comings and goings, her visitors and his suspicions about what was going on inside her apartment.

This stalking went on for an extended time as my client had been afraid to take any assertive steps.  When he had the opportunity, her ex-husband used to flash his guns and knives to intimidate her.  Even years after they divorced, he continued a form of low-level warfare to gain ground in his never-ending custody quarrel.

Reliving the Trauma

The net effect of the abuser’s sabotage is to undermine self-sufficiency and to force women out of work or education.  The abuser fears a loss of control.  He actually prefers his woman to be on welfare because he is threatened and shamed that his breadwinner role may be usurped.

Leaving an abusive relationship is often a protracted battle to escape captivity.  The battle takes a huge toll on domestic violence victims.  A significant percentage suffer symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder.  Symptoms include chronic anxiety, memory loss, insomnia, dissociation, nightmares and flashbacks during which the person relives the trauma as if it were actually taking place.

Trauma and depression can  undermine women’s ability to concentrate and function effectively in the work world and in training programs.  The symptoms may continue to be experienced long after the abuser is physically gone from the victim’s life.  Trauma survivors have trouble planning or believing in the future.

In considering how domestic violence affects welfare recipients, special attention should be paid to psychological and emotional abuse.  Many welfare recipients suffer from poor reading skills.  If, over a period of years, they have been repeatedly told that they are unintelligent and incompetent, they are likely to experience significant vocational and intellectual deficits.

Sensitive Response

To its credit, our state Department of Health and Human Services elected to implement the Family Violence Option under welfare reform.  This option allows an individualized and sensitive response to the needs of domestic violence victims.

Domestic violence and welfare have usually been seen as separate and distinct issues.  Neither conservatives nor liberals have appreciated the full implications of the interconnections.

Assuming marriage will be a cure-all ignores what we know about domestic violence.  Even worse, such an emphasis may work to pressure women into staying in abusive relationships.

There are still people who say Martin Luther King Jr. shouldn’t be celebrated with a holiday.  Here’s why he’s a hero despite his flaws.

As we all know, New Hampshire took a long time to recognize the Martin Luther King holiday.  This was not due to some accident.  there was a sizable opposition within the state to this celebration.

Various reasons have been voiced for why King did not deserve this recognition.  These include a  negative assessment of King’s character, especially his marital infidelities, the charge that King was a communist, and the conclusion that he was not worthy of an honor of this magnitude.

Because I believe this is a holiday we should celebrate, I want to make the case for why the state was correct in honoring King with a holiday.  I also want to respond to the arguments of the opponents.

The primary reason for the holiday is the superb quality of King’s service to the nation.  With style and passion, King led the struggle for civil rights for all Americans.  Devising many creative strategies, he repeatedly put himself in harm’s way to make equality a reality.

He certainly did not have to play this role.  He came from a comfortable background.  He could have lived a private life as a prosperous local minister in Atlanta.  Instead, accepting the challenge of leadership, he made choices that meant he would risk his life and live in peril constantly.  Virtually his entire adult life, King encountered death threats, culminating in his assassination at age 39.

It is hard to imagine the world King confronted before the civil rights movement.  Black people could not vote freely, eat at restaurants, buy houses in white neighborhoods, rent motel rooms, go to certain public schools, get certain types of jobs, swim at public pools or drink at public water fountains.

Belief in the superiority of the white race justified this institutionalized discrimination.  The Klan and other white racists backed up the established order by terrorizing, lynching and murdering.

The courage displayed by King and his cohorts in confronting this vicious system was enormous.  It is easy to forget that not only did King often fail to receive police protection, but he also had to contend with the police assisting his enemies.

He was the object of constant snooping by the FBI.  In last 1964, the FBI sent King a cut-and-spliced tape of his sexual encounters with numerous women.  Accompanying the tape was a letter in which the FBI suggested King should kill himself because of his alleged moral depravity.  Yet King never hated his political foes or denied their humanity even in the face of their dirty tricks.

King was not in it for the money.  He never cashed in on his leadership role.  When he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he gave all $54,000 to the civil rights movement.  He earned about $200,000 a year in annual speaking fees, averaging 300 speeches a year.  He gave the movement most of that money.

His family lived in a rented house until 1965, when his wife prevailed on him to buy a very modest house in Atlanta.  King actually felt guilty about owning a house because he considered it an unnecessary luxury.

These days our societal heroes, whether CEOs or professional athletes, demand multimillion-dollar contracts and signing bonuses.  King’s life was a sharp rebuke to that mentality.  He sided with the poor and oppressed and he never separated himself from everyday people.

Black Superman?

In appreciating King, there is a danger that he will be seen as the plastic Black Superman who gave the “I Have A Dream” speech.  Freezing an image, even a fabulous image, is unreal and phony.

There is no need to whitewash King’s flaws.  He was very human.  He had a weakness for beautiful women.  He carried on several extended extramarital love affairs as well as many one-night stands.  For long stretches, he lived on the road away from his family.  He battled depression and guilt.

Those who opposed a King holiday because of his sexual liaisons have a narrow view of character.  There is a peculiar desire in this country to expect heroes to be perfect and pure.  the hero falls off the pedestal if he has a shadow side.  With that kind of standard, we won’t have any more heroes.

In his fine book, I May Not Get there With You, Michael Eric Dyson argues that King’s character cannot be understood through isolated incidents or a fixation on flaws.  Character must be understood through the long view.  King stands up well when his public accomplishments are balanced against his private failings.

As for the charge that King was a communist, the accusers lack a shred of supporting evidence.  King was not a party member or sympathizer.

Yet in fairness to his accusers, one caveat is in order.  King was a dangerous man.  He actively opposed the status quo of his day.  It is this radical dimension of King that we risk losing as his image is sanitized.

A Challenge To Us All

Had he remained alive, King would have been terribly disappointed with our blind denial of racism, our indifference to the poor and our excessive militarism.  He would have been appalled at our self-satisfaction.

All holidays have become thin excuses for three-day weekends.  It is ironic that opponents think the King holiday is unworthy.  How about Columbus Day or Presidents Day?  Compared to these holidays, the King holiday is a model of relevance.  At least it connects to real unresolved issues.

The focus on the King holiday should not be to create some cult of personality.  The best way we can honor King is to engage the issues he engaged.  In our own lives, we can make the fight against racism and poverty our own passionate reality.

*  We are failing kids by punishing them rather than nurturing them into healthy, mature adults

Adult problems with teenagers are an old story.  Every older generation complains about the younger generation.  But something new has been happening.  Adults are scapegoating teenagers and blaming your misbehavior as a principal cause of crime and violence.  A philosophy of heavy-handed punishment, not rehabilitation, has become the dominant legislative and judicial trend.

More and more states are prosecuting juveniles as adults.  Since 1992, 45 states have passed or amended legislation making it easier to prosecute kids as adults for a wider array of charges.  We have also been lowering the age when kids can be prosecuted as adults.  Many states have set the age at 14, but Vermont actually allows 10-year-olds to be prosecuted as adults.

Surprisingly, these harsh changes have occurred at a time when statistics have shown a decline in the national crime rate for serious violent crimes committed by youths.  The drop was 33 percent from 1993 to 1997.

During the last 10 years, the number of people under 18 held in adult prisons in the United States has doubled.  About one-third are there for property or drug offenses, not violent crime.  We are sending kids to adult prisons knowing that young prisoners are at greater risk for physical and sexual assault.  We also know such placement is a training school for more crime.  Yet, we do not stop.

There is a stereotype that some teenagers are beyond hope, not like us.  Allegedly, they are time bombs waiting to go off.  Anecdotal evidence offers up a generation of Ecstasy-ingesting predators skateboarding toward instant gratification and cultural illiteracy.  Writer Mike Males has dubbed them the scapegoat generation.  We need metal detectors, video surveillance, curfews and early warning systems to spot the bad apples and protect us.  On the basis of fear, we concoct a “get tough” social policy to sanction and punish teens.

The perception that kids are dangerous has been fed by sensationalistic events like Columbine and Jonesboro.  Even though Justice Department data show that schools are actually safer than ever, there is a perception that the opposite is true.  While the odds of being shot at school are minuscule, a 1999 Gallup Poll suggested that three-quarters of Americans think it is likely that a shooting will occur at their local school.

“Zero tolerance” policies at schools have become widespread.  Schools impose swift and severe punishment for offenses that previously would have been seen as minor transgressions.

Nationally, there are many examples of this trend.  Consider the case of the third-grader expelled for getting into a scuffle on the playground during tetherball.  Another third-grader was suspended for putting an allegedly threatening message in a fortune cooking for a class project.  Then there was a 9-year-old who was suspended for bringing to school a manicure kit with a 1-inch knife.

My personal favorite:  the 13-year-old Texas boy who was assigned to write a Halloween horror story.  He wrote a story describing the shooting of a teacher and two classmates.  The boy got a perfect grade plus extra credit for reading his story aloud in class.  The only problem:  In his story, the boy used real names.  When parents of the classmates complained, school officials notified juvenile authorities.  Sheriff’s deputies removed the boy from school.  After he had spent five days in juvenile detention, the charges were dropped.

Here in New Hampshire, I have seen some police treat teenage boys like they are prospective hardened criminals.  The New Hampshire equivalent to racial profiling is teenage boy profiling.  A group of teenage boys driving around, especially at night, appears to be problem cause for a police stop.  There is an automatic assumption:  Teenagers equal trouble.

This newspaper recently ran a story about the new cottage industry profiling teens at school.  High schools are hiring psychologists to assess the violent threat potential of students.  the idea is to assess risk factors so as to predict the degree of threat posed by particular students.

One Illinois school’s profiling checklist included use of abusive language, cruelty to animals and writings reflecting an interest in the dark side of life.  Other schools have scrutinized T-shirts and jewelry.

The United States has the highest rate of children and adolescents living in families below poverty guidelines in the industrial world, the result of spending fewer public resources on children than any other industrial nation.  Neither political party is willing to face the adult responsibility for youth poverty.  Another way to look at our school funding debate in New Hampshire is simply the reduction in adult support for children’s education.

No society congratulates itself as much as we do.  “We’re number one” is practically our national motto.  Yet we are failing kids by punishing them rather than providing the support systems and nurture they need to grow into healthy, mature adults.  Sociologist Edgar Friedenberg once wrote, “Adolescent personality evokes in adults conflicts, anxiety, and intense hostility (usually disguised as concern).”  Those words still capture our reality.

A credo of past generations has been to invest in the young so that kids could have a better future.  That is a tradition we should return to and honor.  No one can deny that there are bad kids who will never be rehabilitated.  However, we need to see kids as individuals with inherent worth and value and act accordingly.

It is true that restraining orders have not prevented some women from being murdered.  Kimberly Luele, Dawn Gagne, Jean Glover – these New Hampshire women, among others, all had restraining orders at the time of their death.  but does that mean civil restraining orders are a waste of time or a poor substitute for criminal prosecution?

In assessing the effectiveness of restraining orders, it is necessary to look beyond headlines at a broader sampling of cases.  Researchers recently talked to many battered women, inquiring into subjective feelings of well-being and safety after the victims obtained court orders.  They also looked into how often abusers violated restraining orders.

The study by the National Center for State Courts relied on interviews with 285 battered women from Denver, Wilmington, Del., and Washington, D.C., and with court and law enforcement personnel, and on examination of court records.

The study suggests that high-profile murders obscure many everyday successes.  The study found that 75 percent of domestic violence petitioners had increased feelings of well-being after an order was issued.  The percentage rose to 85 in follow-up interviews six months later.

Although many of those surveyed felt safer because they had left an abusive situation, advocates warn that the period after a victim obtains an order can become more dangerous.  Safety planning is necessary.

While the potential for danger should not be underestimated, the study suggests that restraining orders are by and large an effective deterrent.  After six months, 65 percent of the survivors interviewed reported that the abuser did not violate the court order, and only 8.4 percent reported physical abuse during that time.

In Denver, where the police were more likely to arrest abusers, the rate of new physical abuse after six months declined to 2 percent.  women with children reported more violations than women with no children.  violent abusive men with criminal histories were more likely to violate restraining orders.

The partners of violently abusive men reported more positive feelings of well-being after obtaining restraining orders, even though these men were more likely to violate the orders.  The study suggested that the process of obtaining restraining orders bolstered many victims’ feelings of self-esteem and security.

Evidence also pointed to the effectiveness of a temporary restraining order even when a final order was not obtained.  More than a third of the women surveyed stated that they did not seek a final order because the batterer stopped bothering them.  An additional 10 percent reported that the batterer left the area after the temporary order was filed.  The court process, even a temporary order, apparently deterred a significant number of abusers.

Other reasons final orders were not obtained will be all too familiar to those who work with victims in domestic abuse cases:  2 percent of those who obtained temporary restraining orders did not seek a final order because of abusers’ threats and another 2 percent were persuaded by the abuser to drop the case.

Interviews with those who sought protective orders revealed that their abusers generally shifted from physical to psychological abuse in the six-month period after an order was issued.  Most commonly, victims received phone calls at home (16.1 percent) and at work (17.4 percent).  Nine percent of abusers violated orders by showing up at the survivor’s home, and 7.2 percent reported being stalked by an abuser after six months.

The study notes that restraining orders do not operate in a vacuum; the quality of support services for domestic violence survivors makes a critical difference.

The report’s authors recommend that courts inform women of all the services available in the community to help them.  Most women received help, if they received any at all, in the month before obtaining the order.  Typically they were supported or sheltered by friends and relatives.

Rather than exercises in futility, this study supports the conclusion that restraining orders make a significant, positive difference for a great majority of victims.  The effectiveness of restraining orders may well depend, however, on the specificity and comprehensiveness of the relief granted, as well as on how well the victim and law enforcement agencies are prepared to enforce them.

Certainly, there are no guarantees that no harm will come to those who seek protective orders, but, in the vast majority of cases, this study suggests that restraining orders work.