10The Nation.August 26/September 2,1996 JILL NELSOlV Apocalypse Now n Thursday, August1, the elevated platform on 125th Street and Broadway is crowded with peo- ple waiting for the subway. It is finally a sunny day. It should be cool to sit on the platform and read the paper while waiting for the train. But the &eofThe New York Emes reads,Clinton to Sign Welfare Bill That Ends U.S. Aid Guarantee and Gives States Broad Power, and instead of sun and busy people all I cansee is thedevastation that is sure to come. This is the story the media did not convey. The a few dollars, or breaking and entering, so be it. I am terrified by what will likely happen. Here, we are already on the edge; there is no shoulder by the side of the road. Many of my neighbors are el- derly legal immigrants, long out of the work force andsometimes pensionless, subsisting onS.S.I. Many are families with children, who receive food stamps or Medicaid because, even working a 111- time job, they cant put quite enough food on the table or purchase health care. Some of the young women I can see coming outside with their babies superficial and dishonest coverage of the provisions and likely impact of the welfare bill-witha few exceptions-isyet an- other example of the mediasfailure to inform the citizenry be- fore it is too late. With the announcement that he will sign the legislation, Bill Clinton has revealed himself as the ultimate political whore, a man who stands for nothing and lies down for anything. Listen- ing to his pollsters and not his policy-makers, he did what was politically expedient. In so doing, he became the driving force behind the government-sponsoreddestruction of community. It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes only one immoral President to impoverish millions of them. Forthegovernment toshift theresponsibility, butnot the money, for welfare programs to the states and expect states to administer them adequately or fairly or, lets face it, intelligently, is absurd. Historically, the power of the federal government is necessary when the states will not do what is right. None of us should forget what the cry for states righis meant for black Americans living in the states of the old Confederacy before the Southern civil rights revolution of the fifties and sixties. Youcan see a good chunk of Harlem from the el platform on 125th and Broadway,a few blocks from where I live. It is a community populated by the poor, the working poor, the middle class. It is acommunity in which more than 250,000people, citizens and legal immigrants, receive some sort of government subsidy, from Supplemental Security Income to Aid to Families with Dependent Children, to food stamps and Medicaid. It is a community in a delicate balance, and it will be devastated by the impact of the welfare bill. It is not just Harlem that will be cruelly affected but communi- ties all over this nation. Those on the edge will either die or be shoved into the abyss of permanent economic exclusion. Those whothought theyweremovingawayfrom theedgewill be pushed onto it. The impact will beimmediate on those most vulnerable: women, children, the elderly-butit will not stop there. Denied S.S.I.benefits, kicked off welfare after two years and told to find a nonexistentjob, denied food stamps-essential- ly told,You are expendable-fewwill roll over and die, disappear, just go away, as the House, Senate and President would prefer. In- stead, they will do what any of us would do: survive by any means necessary. If that means stealing food from the supermarket, or hitting someone over the head on their way home from work for as soon as it gets warm receive A.F.D.C.Then there are all the other people who get no direct benefits from social welfare pro- grams (although many, like myself, once did), but coexist peace- fully with those whodo-beneficiariesof the fragile state of grace thatsuggests weare our sisters and brothers keepers. That is what community is fundamentally about. The welfare bill will destroy that state of grace. In its place will come massive and deadly poverty, sickness and all manner of violence. People will die, businesses will close, infant mortality will soar, everyone who can will move. Working- and middie- class communities all over America will become scary, violent wastelands created by a government that decided it has no obliga- tion to its neediest citizens. In such a landscape, each of us be- comeseither predatoror prey.Wellallbefairgame toone another, the ones who used to be our neighbors, back when we had a co&unity. The billdoes notsignal simply theend of welfare as we know it but the end of any idealistic notions of an America we thought could be.In stripping awaysocietyssupports for the weakest-whetherchildren born in poverty, or young mothers in need of a leg up, or legal immigrants who came here in search of a better life, or unemployed workers in a time of record corpo- rate profits and rampant downsizing-thegovernment announces the death of a dream of America. Forget you heard the words engraved on the Statue of Liberty, written in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Allthat is simply obsolete lip service. The only sound now is the death knell of any government-supported vision of an equitable, egalitarian America. Sitting on the el platform reading the paper, I want to shriek, grab my neighbors who wait alongside me, thrust the newspaper in their faces, scream, Have you read this? Do you believe this? Wehave to organize and do something! Instead, I lean against the railing and look out over Harlem, prematurely nostalgic for thegood old days of today,when things are bad enough, but inconsequential in the face of what is to come. When the train finally pulls into the station, the screech of wheel against track could just as well be a national howl of pain as this odious bill squeezes the life out of us. JillNelson,whowillbewritiiigthenextthreeMedia Matters columns, is the author of Volunteer Slavery (Viking Penguin). Her new book, Straight, No Chaser, will be published next year by Putnamk