A few years ago, when the anti-American riots broke out in Panama, there was a demand from the “experts” to remove the Peace Corps Volunteers from the country “for their own safety.”
We thought about it, but refused. And then we held our breath.
The riots continued for three days, and then the cables began coming in. No Volunteer had been touched. In the rural villages, in every town, the villagers had repulsed every marauding band searching for North American victims, and hidden the Volunteers in their own homes.
I thought about this incident last year during the riots of the long hot summer. I wondered how many inhabitants of the ghettos of Philadelphia, Harlem, Brooklyn and Rochester would have offered the same protection to the teachers, the welfare investigators, the social workers, the building inspectors and to the politicians who work among them?
Do you think they would have taken those “professionals” into their homes – the very professionals who are dedicated to helping the poor, to serving the people of these neighborhoods? And, if not, why not?
We know “why” the Peace Corps Volunteers were safe --- as they have been safe in the midst of political uprisings throughout the world. They were trusted by the people they were helping. They had become identified with the aspirations of the poor. For a father, a Peace Corps Volunteer meant education for his son. For a mother, help services for her child. For a farmer, a better crop.
We learned in the Peace Corps that a volunteers’ knowledge could be as restrictive as his lack of knowledge. He could not go into a village or a town and say “well, boys, this is how it’s done.” He couldn’t sit in an office and have people line up outside the door and wait for his judgments on their problems. He couldn’t say to them, “that’s not my problem,” and then refer them somewhere else, where they would again wait patiently in line. For the Volunteer to succeed, the Peace Corps could not be just another job. The Peace Corps Volunteer had to share the impatience, the anxiety of the people. And for him to succeed, he needed to know as much about how to work with the poor as he did about how to make corn grow.
In a community overseas he used his knowledge to bring people together to decide what their problems were, and then to decide how they could organize to solve them. But in this country, judging from the information pouring into our Washington office, the poor think they are neither invited, wanted, or needed. For many there is no “give and take,” in which each person keeps his dignity, because each has something to contribute and something to learn.
Why is this true? I think it’s because we are too restricted by the nineteenth cents y concept of noblesse oblige, the patron showering his knowledge or his wealth on an uneducated mass of people. Our middle-class conscience is too easily relieved by the basket of food at Christmas, or a mere check to the Community Fund.
I remember an African leader who said he accepted help from anyone who gave it to him, -- “even the imperialists!” “I take what help I can get, because my people are hungry. And I say thank you, because I know if I say thank you to a white man, my chances of getting more help are enhanced.”
“But to them, I say thank you from the mouth, not the heart. For the Peace Corps, I say thank you from the heart. Your people come and live with us, work with us. They share our problems and our food. They come as friends with no strings attached.”
Few poor people in America would say that about any anti-poverty program, including our own. The poor are cynical - even the teen-agers who have made it to our Job Corps Centers and like it there! They sometimes feel that the poverty program will disappear, after the news stories have been written, that they will be forgotten after they have been used. These young men and women eat quickly and too much. They know from experience that tomorrow the food will be gone.
We have men in the Job Corps who have lived in a progressive metropolitan city for 18 years, but know no neighborhood. They’ve lived their lives being chased by progress from one slum to another. Would they offer shelter and comfort to those liberals who lead progress, but chased them?
The poor have been exploited and they know it. They are wary of new programs and offers of help. They have had their hopes raised before, only to learn that opportunity is for the other guy.
The poor have formed a hard crust around their feelings and their hopes. And the passage of time makes them more difficult to reach. We’re several generations deep already – since it is statistically clear that the children of poverty have often become the fathers of poverty. In handling today’s problem, we are also dealing with the failures of a dozen yesterdays.
On the other side of the street are the professionals, many of them with a lifetime of work behind them. They’ve been explaining their low pay and long hours to their wives and children in terms of “service” to the poor. They are dedicated men and women. Some, however, have come to think that working with the poor is their exclusive province. They reject outsiders. They are wedded professional opinions and attitudes. And frequently those in charge resist and resent questions about their own effectiveness, and their costs of operations. These facts became clear when recently it was charged we were paying too much money to directors of local anti-poverty programs. So we made elaborate inquiries to see if our salaries were out of line.
We started first with government officials. And there the inquiries went’ pretty smoothly. In the 32 cities we had just made grants to, we found that the salary of the anti-poverty director averaged: 6,000 less than the mayor or city manager 10,000 less than the Superintendent of Schools 3,000 less than the Director of Urban Renewal
Then we started a check on private charities - because, after all, they were in the business of helping people. We started making those phone calls on a Saturday. And after a few tries, it became clear that there was no point to calling the offices of these charities on a weekend. The results got better when we tried the local golf course. I remember distinctly we pulled one man off the course between the 9th and 10th hole.
And this is how the conversation went in city after city: “Could you give us some idea of the salary paid to the Director of the United Givers Fund?”
“Well, I don’t ordinarily divulge that information.”
“Wouldn’t it be in your annual report?”
“No. We don’t publish that in our annual report.”
“Can you give us some estimate of the range it will fall in?”
“Well, I just don’t see why the Director’s salary should be of any interest to anyone. That’s like comparing apples and oranges.”
“Just give us some rough idea.”
“Well, eh - some years ago it was publicly announced that he would get $18,000 a year.”
“I see - privately, what will he make this year?”
“Just between you and me it might run around 24 or 25 thousand, but of course that includes all the fringe benefits.”
Of the 32 cities we tried, all we could get was 15 answers. Most of them were rough estimates -- and some were obtained under a promise of strict confidentiality. So we haven’t used them. But what we found generally was that the head of the community chest -- or whatever it was called -- averaged about $4,800 more than that paid the local antipoverty director.
And then, toward the end of March, another extraordinary thing happened. There came a report from Detroit by Greenleigh Associates – a confidential report – which the newspapers somehow got hold of. This is what the authors of that report said: “There are many voluntary agencies in the group services and recreation field in Detroit; but, with a few exceptions, they serve relatively few from low-income families.”
And it went on, those few agencies that did actually reach the poor – are limited in size and, in spite of some very commendable efforts, their total impact is still negligible with respect to the total needs of the poor.
And in the same report was this even more precise – and more damning assertion: One outstanding characteristic of the use of agencies by these households was that the public -- or tax-supported -- agencies were the chief resources used by the poor. Excluding hospitals, there were only 210 households, 10.1 percent, that reported any contact with any voluntary agency. This includes the visiting nurse service, legal aid family and child welfare agencies, recreation and youth services (including Boy and Girl Scouts, YW and YMCAs, Catholic Youth Organizations, Boys Clubs) and all neighborhood church-related programs and services.
These facts about private agencies disclose the reality of our total situation as a Nation in the War against Poverty. Expressed in simplest terms the conclusion is this: No one group - public or private - can conquer poverty. Operating alone, or in well-defined and restricted cubbyholes, we shall surely fail.
Total Community Action is required -- all elements of the community must be joined in the struggle – Church groups as well as non-sectarian ones – Private as well as public agencies – Business as well as labor – poor as well as rich – Government officials, or if you prefer, politicians as well as private citizens.
This is a new concept. And it’s not surprising that almost all of the criticism of our program comes in this arena of Community Action. This is, however, something we anticipated and, candidly, something that must happen if we are to succeed in our work. If our activities did not stir up a community, then Congress should really begin to worry!
In Community Action we are asking the so-called establishments to “move over” and share their power with those whom they purport to help. We insist that this not be a token involvement, but a genuine one. And, to quote a sign hanging in our Inspector General’s Office, we “watch’em like a Hawk.”
The War on Poverty – at least the community action phase of it – is a program where an entire city, or neighborhood, or county, or state enters into a binding agreement to pull itself up by its bootstraps. In effect, it means that communities are applying to us for a new type of corporate charter. They are incorporating themselves as a new enterprise -- a new business -- the business of creating new opportunity for the very poor.
This job can’t be done piecemeal. This new enterprise -- the community action program -- will have to design and tool-up for a new model: Opportunity 1965 style.
Each of the component parts -- education and training, experience and motivation, confidence and health, hope and self-reliance -- each of these has to be designed afresh. We have to go back to the drawing boards, because, for 35 million Americans, the old product has not been selling. It isn’t reaching the consumer -- the poor themselves. And so, we have to engage in a new kind of market research. We have to find out why the old product didn’t appeal to the consumer. And only the poor -- the consumer -- can tell us.
In short, the War on Poverty is not an old fashioned hand-out program – neither Christmas baskets, nor welfare checks. It is not an individual casework program. It is part of that effort to fashion a new world where, in President Johnson’s words, “the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’s labors.”
Getting there won’t be easy. To start, we must first destroy a firmly rooted way of thinking about poverty a way which has produced the clichés in our middle class vocabulary. For example: The cliché experts told us:
No Southern official would cooperate with Negro leaders in designing local anti-poverty programs. But already they are wrong. Integrated programs are already working in the Deep South.
The cliché experts told us:
The poor are apathetic, lazy, inarticulate, incapable of formulating demands, designing programs, assessing and diagnosing their own needs. This is not true.
The cliché' experts told us:
Public School officials won’t work with parochial school officials to launch a massive educational program for the children of the poor. But already they are wrong.
They told us:
Without the exotic appeal of service abroad, nobody, age 21 or 81, would volunteer for service in a domestic Peace Corps – VISTA. But they were wrong on each and every count.
They told us:
Negroes from a big city will not stay together with white youths from Appalachia for a single day in a Job Corps center.
They told us:
No town or city would welcome the creation of a community of two hundred school dropouts in its vicinity and that no Southern governor or Republican governor would permit the establishment of a Job Corps center or a Community Action Program without exercise of their veto. But already, they have been proven wrong. Not one veto on this score has been exercised by any governor, Republican or Democrat, North or South.
Finally, they said, we would never really permit or encourage the genuine involvement of the poor. And again they were wrong.
Communities throughout the country did not receive our money until they clearly established that they were willing to involve the poor. Some of our activities in this regard were widely publicized; others were not. But, today, no public or private official has any doubt about our attitude in this area. There is a positive side of the story to tell.
We already know, for example, that the War on Poverty is having a catalytic effect. We are beginning to find out that:
-- the processes we set in motion are at least as important as the direct results we achieve;
-- the energies we release are at least as important as the specific production goals we attain;
-- the attitudes we affect, the concerns we generate, the myths we destroy are at least as important as the number of salaries we pay, directly or indirectly.
And when all is said and done, what the War on Poverty will have achieved – is to have gained for an entire people an appreciation of those words attributed to St. Vincent de Paul:
“Before you go out and help the poor, you must first beg their pardon.”
And that is what the War on Poverty is really all about.
