This is a lovely, haunting and beautifully crafted piece. I work in the field of “workforce development,” and have long felt that the services funded (woefully underfunded) by government miss the mark. I have been leading an effort to use Human Centered Design in the redesign of government services for the unemployed, and this article makes the case brilliantly. Listen to people and to what they need, and design around that, instead of offering services. Your piece also evokes my favorite Studs Turkle quote, which I had placed above my desk when I worked at the U.S. Department of Labor during the Great Recession.
“That there are some who were untouched or, indeed, did rather well isn’t exactly news. This has been true of all disasters. The great many were wounded, in one manner or another. It left upon them an ‘invisible scar’….The suddenly-idle hands blamed themselves, rather than society. True, there were hunger marches and protestations to City Hall and Washington, but the millions experienced a private kind of shame when the pink slip came. No matter that others suffered the same fate, the inner voice whispered, ‘I’m a failure.’”
“True there was a sharing among many of the dispossessed, but, at close quarters, frustration became, at times, violence, and violence turned inward. Thus, sons and fathers fell away, one from the other. And the mother, seeking work, said nothing. Outside forces, except to the more articulate and political rebels, were in some vague way responsible, but not really. It was a personal guilt.”
Copyright © 2000 Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. Reprinted by permission of The New Press.
Thank you for your piece. With your permission, I am adding quotes from it in my future presentations about what we must do for the unemployed. (attributed of course!)
