“We have the resources -- the national productivity to attack [poverty]. We know how to train and educate people for skilled work. We have the technology to increase the production and create jobs. We have the mobility necessary for people to move to places of greater opportunity. We have new knowledge and new awareness of the causes of poverty, and how to cure those causes. In short we have the weapons we need to eliminate poverty.”
Our Quote of the Week stresses that in the United States, we have the resources that we need to abolish poverty.
This week’s quote is from the 1964 Address to the National Farmers Union. It is an early speech from the War on Poverty. President Johnson had asked Shriver to lead the effort only six weeks earlier, and during this time, Shriver was heading an anti-poverty task force that would eventually develop the programs managed by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), the office of the War on Poverty.
In the speech, Shriver makes what would become a central point for the OEO: that for the anti-poverty programs to succeed, they must have the support and active participation of the community members in which they operate. He stresses, in fact, that the efforts would not succeed if they were managed solely by a distant bureaucracy:
"[T]he war on poverty is not going to be won from an office building in Washington, nor by a bureaucracy in any far-off city. It will not make progress under a narrow-minded strategy drafted in a distant headquarters and imposed upon hundreds of varied communities and rural areas. It cannot depend upon the resources of the federal government alone. If it is to succeed, it will demand the energy, the ideas, the resources, and the assistance of dedicated men and dedicated groups throughout this country.”
Because Shriver’s audience for the speech is the members of the National Farmers Union, he gives us specific insights about challenges facing rural communities, which continue to be relevant today:
- the fact that too many rural communities are turning into ghost towns as residents seek opportunities elsewhere;
- the fact that incomes in rural communities are often too low;
- the fact that family farming operations may need outside support to be strengthened.
Sargent Shriver was wise in soliciting support from leaders in rural areas. The economic challenges facing rural communities have only gotten more severe in recent years. New research by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) shows that in 2023, children under the age of five made up the group with the highest poverty rate in the country. Clearly, there is work to be much work to be done if we are to secure economic opportunities for all. And as Sargent Shriver reminds us, we do have the resources to abolish poverty. What we need, in order to do it, is the will.
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