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Part of the Citizens' Forum series

The last of a series of Citizens' Forums organized by Minnesota Public Radio, the Star Tribune, KTCA-TV, and the Minnesota Journalism Center developed questions about poverty and welfare to ask the gubernatorial candidates. The citizens want to know how each candidate would improve education, childcare, and transportation options for those in poverty. However, their discussion shows their attitudes towards those using welfare vary widely.

THE FORUM LINKED CITIZENS at conference sites in St. Paul, Rochester, Crookston, and at Lucille's Kitchen in north Minneapolis. The goal of the program is to formulate questions the media will ask candidates during the gubernatorial campaign. Emmett Carson, president of the Minneapolis Foundation, asked participants to think about what kind of a welfare system they'd like to have in place if they found themselves in poverty. He stressed that most people in poverty don't want welfare and want to work. With that in mind, citizens considered what tools people need to get and hold a job. Elmer Nelson of Minneapolis says a good education is the most important way to acquire job skills.

Carson: My parents were immigrants from Sweden with an eighth grade education. I was able to graduate from Northwestern University because of the GI bill. Was it expensive? Yes. Did it pay off? All three of my sons are Ph.D.s. So I think government investment in graduate school or college education is extremely valuable and a good investment on the part of the government.

Brooks: We value childcare as a factor in alleviating poverty. Do you have a specific program to: One, improve quality - this all refers to childcare - to improve quality; [two,] to improve availability; three, to improve child care workers' salaries?

Bateman: My concern is getting people involved personally. Not just on a mentor sort of basis, but a whole community working together, may be two or three families working with one family, maybe under the direction of somebody who has information about the family to give them ideas of how to go about it, but I think everybody has to be involved.

Macabee: It never ceases to amaze me that every time we talk about poverty, although the numbers bear out, especially when it comes to race, who's on poverty most of the time. But yet whenever the question is answered, or raised, or we comment on it, we always put it on a black context. I don't understand that.

Marnocha: It is protection money that we pay so poor people don't take to the street to take away from what we have. It happened in the 60s, they took to the streets, they were hungry, you know what hungry people will do to a government, and/or a society. It's protection money that you and I pay to keep what we have. That's what my definition of what welfare is.