Born in Chicago and a diehard Cubs’ fan, Barb Jones was a teenager when she joined Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 march through Cicero, Ill., an all-white, working class, racist neighborhood. She was moved to the middle of the crowd because the white people on the march were particularly being targeted by people throwing bricks. “It was that ‘Peace, love, Haight-Ashbury era.’ We were all in this together.” A couple of years later, though, she sat out the protests and the police riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention. “I stayed home because it was pretty nasty.”
Barb has been a bartender, a sales clerk and a faculty wife, but for years she was a teacher in Chicago public schools. She taught some pretty tough kids. Across the street from one school there was a youth detention center. “So they took nine of the least problematic kids and put them in. After a while you just realize you’re not making a whole dent.”
“I had one kid. His job was to sell drugs to kids in the grammar school.” At the kid’s parent-teacher conference, she said to the parents, “You know, I’m a little bit afraid for Jimmy, because he’s starting to hang around with some of the Latin King kids,” and his mother said, ”Well, of course he is,” and his father said, “He’s third generation. Why do you think I’m driving a Caddy?’”
One of Barb’s sons was working at Microsoft. “I just fell in love with Seattle. So I decided to go there and wait and be a grandmother. After a while I asked him, ‘When am I going to be a grandmother?’ He said, ‘Didn’t I tell you I had a vasectomy seven years ago?’ And then they moved to Manhattan!”
She had trouble finding a teaching job. “I tried being a crossing guard, and I couldn’t stand that. Nobody wants to hire an old lady here. This is a town of young people.”
Because of ruptured discs, Barb can’t stand for long periods of time. But she can sit to sell her papers. “So [Real Change] was perfect. You can make your own hours, you’re not late for anything. The problem is you never get a weekend off. Real Change has done more than just give me money. It’s introduced me to people. That’s precious. People would invite me for Christmas dinner or for Thanksgiving.” When the Seahawks lost the Super Bowl, she was able to offer her customers the old Cubs’ mantra: “There’s always next year.”
However, Barb’s worried about the future. “I hope when the tsunami comes, I’m on the beach and it just gets me.” She doesn’t want to leave Seattle, but she doesn’t have much savings. “So I better make a lot of money. I better get turf! Real Change has saved me from having to move far North or far South where the rents are cheaper. It’s given me freedom to feel like I can be here.”