Outraged by such declines, students on welfare at several colleges in Baltimore are organizing to bring their fight to Annapolis to tell the Maryland General Assembly that the new requirements are unfair and need to be changed. She writes for the student newspaper, sits on the school's governing board and is a campus leader in the fight to convince government officials that school is important. She applied for a campus job and was denied, she said. If she must find a job for 20 hours a week, as required, Williams said she will have to leave school. The rally in Baltimore was part of a lobbying campaign led by the Solidarity Sponsoring Committee, an alliance between the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development, an activist group formed by Baltimore's black churches and the Industrial Areas Foundation.
States do have some flexibility to address the issue.
In Maine, for example, legislators recently approved a plan in which 2,000 of the state's 15,000 welfare recipients can attend school without risk of losing welfare benefits. Because the benefits will be paid only with state money, the recipients are exempt from the tough federal work requirements. The welfare system should not be used to support people while they are going to school. But many advocates for the poor say the expectations are unreasonable. It's not being judged by whether it's bettering the lives of people.