If They Only Listened to Us by Melinda Henneberger

Author:Melinda Henneberger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2007-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sacramento, California

May 22, 2006

The View from the Bottom

“Bush was the only one who was a

good candidate on helping the homeless.”

My first surprise is that nearly all of the formerly homeless women who show up for their regular Monday-night women’s group meeting on what used to be McClellan Air Force Base voted at all in the last presidential election. But I have to say, I am kind of blown away by the number who, on November 2, 2004, were living on the street and voting for the GOP. “Bush was the only one who was a good candidate on helping the homeless,” says one of them, Jesse Miller, who stays now in the recycled military housing here at Serna Village, named for Joe Serna, Jr., a former Sacramento mayor who was a farm worker and running buddy of César Chávez.

Jesse is forty-three but looks a little older because she’s lost some teeth along the way. She grew up in Texas and describes herself as a cowgirl, then says that had nothing to do with why she cast her ballot for her fellow Texan. “He said Democrats had too much power,” she recalls, an argument that made sense to her in 2000, after—“Who was it who went with that floozy?”—Bill Clinton had served two terms. “And I didn’t want to vote for Gore or Kerry.” Of the latter, her impression was that “he was trying to promise to make the world a better place, but he talks so fast, I said no, I can’t vote for this man; he’s a liar.” I could close my eyes, in other words, and be back with the moms’ group outside Boston, or in the high school teachers’ lounge in Fairfield, Illinois; even without a fixed address, Jesse got the rundown on what kind of candidate Kerry was.

The women of Serna Village wound up homeless in the usual ways. Domestic abuse is a highly dependable ticket to the bottom, as is self-medicating. Often their previous address was an encampment down by the American River, not far from the capital—or from the Hyatt where the governor and his wife, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, stay when they’re in town. While living by their wits on the streets, here where the Gold Rush began, these women lived lives more chaotic than those of us capable of stressing out in line for a latte might easily imagine. Their perspective on past election campaigns is not only the vista from the low rung of the economic ladder; it’s something like the view you’d get looking up from the bottom of the ocean. And it’s worth noting, I think, that for Jesse and the others here, the little bit of light that does get through at that depth all seems to be coming from the Republican Party. As a friend of mine sighed recently, “The Republicans are better at everything. Well, except governing.” “Everything” in this case being another word for marketing.

Jesse doesn’t remember where she picked up the impression that

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