Uncovering the Political Efficacy of the Philadelphia Poor: Representations of Theoretical Models in Media Accounts

In the last century, and visible in four distinct social movements (depression-era\ud movement, union movement, the Civil Rights movement, welfare rights movement) and poor\ud people were engaged, at the least through machine politics. The past century also saw the\ud dissolution of legal barriers to political participation, such as women's suffrage and greater\ud enfranchisement of people of color.\ud Today, the words powerful and visible don't describe our popular perception of the poor\ud as political actors. The last Poor People's Movement to have last been studied was that of the\ud Welfare Rights struggle. Since the 1960s, there have been no movements of that capacity\ud despite significant retrenchment in welfare and labor policies. Why, during a period of the\ud greatest social and economic inequality in U.S. history is there no class-based movements?\ud There are three nationwide trends which contextualize the current situation of the poor:\ud (1) growing economic and wealth inequality (2) this is even more clear when we take race into\ud account, and (3) the feminization of poverty. The situation of the poor today looks like this: the\ud steadily declining relative value of the minimum wage, increasing wage and wealth inequalities,\ud and decreased accessibility to health care, and government support. The other characteristic is\ud inequality and poverty is racialized. "Inequality in the United States has increased to the extent\ud that the gap between the rich and poor is larger now than at any point in the past 75 years--\ud greater than that of any industrialized nation" (Kearl). There are wage inequalities between\ud white and people of color, as well as among people of color. Additionally, women on the whole\ud make seventy five cents to a man's dollar.\ud The poor, or people of low socio-economic status are underrepresented in social\ud movement theory. Popular attention, as well as social research, has been focusing on more popular "new" social movements. I will break with this modern trend, and I will attempt to\ud answer, "What is the capacity of the poor to bring about positive change in social and economic\ud policies? In a case study of Philadelphia, I will discuss how Philadelphia media's portrayal of\ud the poor as political actors.\ud The notion of political efficacy is an important theoretical concern in Social Movement\ud Theory. Research on the poor is underrepresented in Social Movement Theory. Many Scholars,\ud on the other hand have studied representations of gender, race and class in various media\ud formats. I am choosing to focus on media accounts of the poor\ud Notions of poor people's self-perception of political efficacy as well as the media\ud (popular (and consequently cultural) perception of the political efficacy is an important\ud theoretical concern because in social movement theory