The “War Against Poverty” is not unlike a military war. We have our war correspondents, our rumors and counter-rumors: We have changing battle fronts and almost daily reports on different individual battles. We have no censorship, it is true, but despite total freedom of the press in this war, there are still a large number of issues where the public is uninformed, or worse misinformed, about the very facts themselves.
For example, right here in Chicago when we announced the appointment of Theodore Jones as Regional Director, one of the newspapers editorialized that Jones’ appointment proved that Mayor Daley — Boss Daley as they saw fit to describe him — was running the War Against Poverty by selecting and dictating personnel.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Mayor Daley did not nominate, let alone dictate, the nomination of Ted Jones. The Mayor was informed, and he was pleased, naturally, that a man of Jones’ ability, experience, and intelligence was willing to take on this difficult regional job. Mayor Daley has also cooperated fully with Ted Jones’ predecessor, Bill Downs, who compiled an excellent record here in Chicago and who continues here with my full endorsement and support. Both Downs and Jones gave up better paying jobs to go to work for OEO. We are proud of the patriotism and humanitarianism of both men. And we are pleased with the help and understanding they have received from Mayor Daley. When, in fact, has Chicago ever had a better mayor?
Another popular item of misinformation concerns the Job Corps. To read some newspapers one would believe that the Job Corps is characterized by riots, fights, violence and mismanagement. The facts, however, reveal that:
1) There are 17,000 young men and women in Job Corps today. Out of these 17,000 less than 1% have ever been involved in any disturbance of any significance.
There are 70 Job Corps centers in operation today. Most people have never heard of 95% of them because “nothing” ever happens there — “nothing,” that is, except education, work, and rehabilitation of youngsters formerly out of work and out of school.
Think back just 10 months — what were the allegations and charges then? Have they proved to be accurate?
First was the hubbub about the governors’ veto. What are the facts on that one?
The governors have had more than 6,000 chances to veto projects – and they have exercised that veto only 3 times. Republicans like Scranton and Romney and Hatfield have competed with democrats like Hughes of New Jersey, Brown of California and Smith of West Virginia: to get more projects for their states. None of them has vetoed anything. We nave met here today to discuss the War on Poverty nationally – and more importantly and specifically to discuss the War on Poverty here in Chicago.
The War on Poverty has many facets — some are not even in operation here in Chicago: Like loans to farmers, Foster grandparents, or an actual Job Corps center here in Chicago
Other parts of this war are proceeding here on a fantastically successful scale.
There were 23,000 kids in Head Start this past summer — that is one of he biggest Head Start projects run anyplace. The same goes for the Neighborhood Youth Corps. Program here with 10,000.
There’s broadly based support here too:
32 major private social welfare agencies and 25 smaller ones are involved. That’s a total of 57 private agencies teaming up in a community wide effort.
And that’s still only part of the Chicago story.
Hull House is a training center for VISTA Volunteers.
The University of Chicago Law School on its own just sponsored a conference on consumer problems — and one of its most famous faculty members, Professor Soia Menschikoff is serving on our National Advisory Committee on law and poverty.
The principal focus of discussion, argumentation and debate — here in Chicago — is the Community Action Program. But that’s true everywhere — nationwide.
Community Action is a new idea. It’s a new institution. It’s a new approach. And new ideas are difficult to understand and to execute.
I was reading, the other night, a report which summed up our experience in the Peace Corps on different ways to fail:
— One can fail by never getting engaged.
— One can fail by withdrawing after the first frustrated effort.
— One can fail by doing for others what he was unable to get them to do for themselves.
— One can fail by decreeing the impossibility of progress!
The job is tough. That some succeed is more surprising than that any fail.
The same goes for the War on Poverty where we have already learned that there are 3 cardinal principles absolutely essential to success.
First, we say don’t prejudge the poor. They have much to teach us all. Second, don’t prejudge the so-called “establishment.” It has the capacity to listen, and to respond. And third, don’t cry failure at the first sign of controversy! Criticism, experimentation, and even mistakes are what make democracy work.
Let’s take these — one at a time.
Five days ago, a high level conference sponsored by the President’s Committee on Equal Opportunity in Housing took place in Pittsburgh. It was a major meeting called by Governor Lawrence, Chairman of the President’s Committee, held at the Hilton Hotel — admission five dollars a head.
Two days before the conference, a local organization called. CASH (Citizens Against Slum Housing) asked to be represented. As slum dwellers, they felt they should be heard, but they had not been invited.
Then they were told that they could come. All they had to do was pay the $5 registration fee. And they said: “That’s just the point; we don’t have the five dollars.”
Finally, they were told that they could send a few representatives, free-of-charge.
And a few came. Three hundred in the hall, and two hundred circling the Hilton ballroom with pickets. Their spokesman, Mrs. Dorothy Richardson, did have something to say:
“A slumlord is a person who makes a profit out of providing a disservice. He takes advantage of poverty: He takes advantage of prejudice.”
And she went on: “In Hazelwood, for example, white tenants were paying $35 a month rent to live in certain homes. They moved out and Negroes’ moved in, and the rent went up to $55.”
“On the first cold night this winter, eleven people died in fires in Pittsburgh. Four of them were children were suffocated because firemen couldn’t reach them in time. The firemen couldn’t reach them because a slumlord had subdivided their house and there was no outside fire escape.”
And she pointed out:
“This costs the city an amount that we know it cannot afford to lose. One Slumlord in the Hill District is reported to owe $50,000 in unpaid sewerage and water bills. Slumlords cost the city thousands in tax dollars every year. This is not to mention hidden costs. Taxpayers pay for the numerous services necessary to police these properties. Health and condemnation inspections cost money. Hospitalization and clinic care, combating frequent fires; the need of follow-up by the Red Cross, Salvation Army and other voluntary agencies to sustain burned-out families; the time and energy of the neighborhood and citizens’ groups, the deprivation of our children and the resultant programs to take them out of their homes—all of these and many more are some of the hidden costs.”
Do you know what the response to that kind of straight talk was?
“Applause” — prolonged applause —
And later that same day, Ralph McGill, the luncheon speaker and publisher of the ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, said:
“I never heard of Mrs. Richardson until today. But I’d single her out as a good example of our finding leadership in the grassroots of our ghettoes.”
The President’s Committee sponsored other conferences on housing in Boston, Denver, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and other cities — but the Pittsburgh Conference was the best. That isn’t my opinion. That was what Governor Lawrence, the director of the committee, said publicly.
Why was it the best?
The poor made it the best because —,'they had something to say. And they felt — perhaps for the first time — entitled to say it. As Mrs. Richardson put it:
“We know that President Johnson wants to know about our problems, and we are here to ‘tell him, through you, his representatives: We also know that the President wants us to help ourselves and we are here to tell you how we can do that.”
Yet, these very People could have been locked out of a conference discussing their problems — locked out by prejudging their ability to contribute — locked out by a five-dollar admission fee — locked out because in the past the Hilton Hotel has been “off limits” to the poor. But nonetheless, they beat on the door, they demanded to be heard — and somebody had the courage to say: -Unbar the door. Let the poor in. Let them be heard.
The very same thing happened right here in Chicago this past Thursday.
The American Public Welfare Association unbarred its doors and `listened to the voices of the poor. Welfare workers have listened for years –- but never in this way. They have listened, in the past to determine eligibility — to determine the size of the welfare allowance — to take punitive action. But this time they listened because they wanted to learn.
And this is some of what they heard. One of the poor, elected to the Community Action Committee in Philadelphia told how she had spent one day campaigning to get elected — but spent election day taking in wash. She told them she never thought she would be elected.
In her words:
“I didn’t think 220 people even knew me. I guess I can’t be so bad when 220 people vote for me. I guess somebody likes me.”
Another poor person told the audience: “The attitude is different (when you apply for public assistance) if you happen to be unmarried.
The caseworker said to me “Come in, ‘Miss Williams.’ But the way she said Miss Williams — I knew what she meant.”
And another of the panel told how she had seven children and was expecting an eighth when her husband deserted her. She said,
“I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown... I would have had it. But I didn’t have time!”
Another mother told how case workers in Minneapolis discouraged clients from attending a meeting of public welfare recipients because the mothers might get around to comparing budgets. Before our national war on poverty, such voices had never before been heard at a public forum. Not before an audience of all the heads of public assistance in the country. But right there in Chicago somebody said, unbar the door. And the experts, the professionals, they listened — and they gave those women -– those clients — those mothers on public assistance — entrance.
They didn’t do it because I asked them to or because any official directed them to. They did it because they wanted to — because they felt they could learn from the poor.
In community after community that’s what’s happening; The poor are speaking out and the rest of us are learning.
This idea, this approach has been challenged. Many well-meaning people say: “Why ask the poor how to conquer poverty? If they knew they wouldn’t be poor?
It’s alright for them to have jobs in the program — but they shouldn’t design the campaign.”
To which we reply:
When a man goes to a doctor, the first thing the doctor usually does is ask: “What’s wrong? How do you feel? Where does it hurt?” He lets the patient talk. Only after the talk and the examination does the doctor make his diagnosis. And in making that diagnosis, he knows he has to take account of what the patient has told him.
That’s what we are asking the poor. “Where does it hurt?” And then later on we will have to ask and keep asking them, “Is the medicine helping, is the pain going away?” We have to ask those questions — and keep asking them. That’s what involvement of the poor is all about.
Or to take another example — when an architect is asked to design a house for a family, the first thing he does is talk to the family –and ask them —what are their needs? What do they want? What kind of taste they have and when he gets down to the drafting board, he keeps those things in mind. And if he doesn’t, he may as well scrap the plan, because his client is boss and his client’s tastes and needs prevail.
Syracuse is another example. In Syracuse the university is training people to ask “Where does it hurt?” The poor are answering and the entire community is listening. We know they’re listening because those poor people asked the Syracuse Housing Authority to install 250 new refrigerators, new stoves and, new linoleum. And the Syracuse Housing Authority listened and installed the new equipment.
This brings up my second point. Don’t prejudge the capacity of the so-called “establishment” to listen, to respond and to be concerned. Friday’s New York Times reported — and I quote:
Syracuse, Dec. 2 - Nine federally aided groups here representing the poor declared war today, not against poverty, but against the Office of Economic Opportunity.
The groups and their organizers are protesting a decision by Sargent Shriver, Director of the Office, that could kill in three months a controversial anti-poverty program here that has been organizing the poor to fight city hall.
Mr. Shriver has told leaders of the program, the Syracuse Community Development Association, that after three months they will no longer receive financing directly from, Washington.
I want to set the record straight both with regard to Syracuse and to the similar situations elsewhere.
OEO has not backed away from funding organizations which encourage social action by “social action” by the poor. I don’t mean political action — Republican or Democratic or Socialist — party political action, but I do mean we are willing to support organizations like two here in Chicago provided they get community support.
Right here in Chicago we gave $78,000. But it got that money only after it went through the community action organization. In Syracuse, we gave $441,000, thousand for the program to train community action leaders which I just described. In Pittsburgh, we provided funds for the organization “CASH,” the group I mentioned earlier — the group that Mrs. Richardson headed. But it will have to apply for funds to the city’s official anti-poverty agency, the Crusade for Opportunity.
“One of the reasons why we were organized was to give us some dignity,” said Elwood Edwards, president of one of the groups. “I guess we now have to fight the O.E.O. to attain it.” In fact we seem to have a passion for funding our credits.
Some professors at Rutgers University recently criticized a Job Corps center at Camp Kilmer. That criticism made page one of the New York Times. We paid for it.
Martin Deutsch, a pioneer in the field of child development, is one of the few outspoken critics of the Head Start Program. We gave his Institute for Developmental Studies at NYU Medical School $72 thousand dollars. We made that grant because if Deutsch has got a better way than Head Start of helping poor children, we want to know about it. If anybody has a “better mouse trap” than we’ve got, we want it.
What we were saying and what we will continue to say is: “don’t prejudge the local Community Action Program.”
The political process is responsive. Public and private philanthropic institutions are responsive. They are not the enemy, even though it is easy and popular to make the rich or successful look like the enemy. Poverty is the enemy — not our neighbors, who work in the YWCA or the settlement house, or the city hall.
Our faith in the ability of professional, charitable and governmental institutions to innovate, to change and to respond to the needs of the poor has been borne out time and time again. The makeup of this very audience proves the breadth and depth of concern here in Chicago.
Nationally, here are the statistics on involvement of indigenous persons. By actual body count there were 3,706 representatives of the area to be served sitting on CAP governing boards. And that figure is based on reports from only 62% of all CAP grantees. In the Chicago region alone there are 2,784 representatives of the poor sitting on CAP boards and constituting roughly 28% of the membership of those boards. And yet when this program began, representation of the poor on governing boards was viewed to be almost universally unpalatable, and it was predicted that none of the so-called “establishment” would ever permit such representation.
We were told that the American Bar Association with national offices right here in Chicago would stand opposed to governmental attempts to extend legal services to the poor. Yet last February and again in August the American Bar Association affirmed its intention to coordinate and cooperate with us, to innovate and to make a massive voluntary contribution to see that adequate legal services were available to the poor. I could cite you other examples - like:
Senators Russell and Talmadge shaking hands with Martin Luther King; A Jewish synagogue renting space to a Lutheran organization to provide preschool programs in a predominantly Catholic area; Integrated Job Corps; camps throughout the deep south; Big business making an all-out drive to help place Job Corps graduates. So our faith in the so-called establishment has been proved time and time again.
Sometimes we would like to see changes take place faster, where private groups refuse to team up, where political figures were balky. Those are the situations which make headlines, but those stand as exceptions.
Each step forward relegates today’s front page issues to the newspaper morgue. And new issues emerge as the War on Poverty moves to another front.
Third and finally, there is a broad acceptance of the fact that difference of opinion is built into any program which aspires to get 35 million out of poverty. Criticism, experimentation, and even mistakes are recognized as part of the learning process. That’s democracy.
At the beginning Head Start was criticized — Job Corps was criticized — Use of non-professionals was criticized. And I’m sure that we are by no means, out of the woods with regard to controversy. If we were that would be cause for real concern. But if newspaper headlines are any guide, I don’t think we have to be, worried about lack of controversy — at least not till next week.
Listening to the poor can be unpleasant. Trying out new approaches can threaten those who prefer to stick to present methods. Controversy is always inconvenient. Always comes at the worst time.
Recognizing problems before we are fully ready to deal with them on our own terms can generate heat.
But ignoring those problems, tuning out the voice of the poor, clinging to our past methods and approaches — can produce even more heat. It can produce a holocaust as it did last summer in Watts.
We can no longer play it safe — for soon there will be no safe place, no place to hide. The dialogue between the priests and St. Thomas in “Murder in the Cathedral” expresses the issues underlying maximum feasible participation of the welfare system. The priests urged Thomas to take refuge within the sanctuary, saying:
Bar the door. Bar the door.
The door is barred.
We are safe. We are safe.
The enemy may rage outside, he will tire.
In vain. They cannot break in.
They dare not break in.
They cannot break in. They have not the force.
We are safe. We are safe.
And Thomas replies:
Unbar the door!
You think me reckless, desperate and mad.
you argue by results, as, this world does,
To settle if an act be good or bad.
You defer to the fact. For every life and every act.
Consequence of good and evil can be shown.
And as in time the results of many deeds are blended
So good and evil in the end become confounded.
Unbar the door. Unbar the door!
We are not here to triumph by fighting, stratagem, or by resistance,
Not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast.
And have conquered. We have only to conquer,
Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.
Now is the triumph of the cross, now open the door!
I command it. Open the door!
