Address to the Second Annual Convocation of the Opportunities Industrialization Center

"Yes -- we do have the wealth. That’s no longer the question among national leaders or economists. The question now is this: Do we have the will to win? I say we do have that will -- that we must have that will and that we must will to win this war at home."
Philadelphia, PA • January 26, 1967

Three years ago this month in his first message to Congress on the State of the Union President Johnson said:

“We shall wage an unconditional war against poverty -- and we shall eliminate it.”

Immediately the skeptics and cynics said: “It can’t be done. Poverty has always been with us. No country can eliminate it.” But in the Economic Report to the Congress issued today the best economists in the USA endorsed the President’s position. The Economic Report says:

“The United States is the first large nation in the history of the world wealthy enough to end poverty within its borders.”

Yes -- we do have the wealth. That’s no longer the question among national leaders or economists. The question now is this: Do we have the will to win? I say we do have that will -- that we must have that will and that we must will to win this war at home.

Why? Because we can’t afford to lose.

It’s already late -- very late. Poverty has already destroyed the initiative of thousands of young men and women. It has driven millions to big cities from small rural communities without the skills to get a job. It has robbed the aging of hope. It has initiated millions of little children to the cruelty and the filth of the city slums. It has robbed good minds of development, good bodies of health, good families of happiness. Poverty offers 32 million Americans a hopeless future that promises more failure than success, more futility than fulfillment. This is what poverty has already done. That is why it must be destroyed.

Poverty is too big and too deeply dug in to be eliminated with a single weapon or a single blitz. We need a whole arsenal to fight injustice, we need lawyers to fight ignorance, we need teachers. To fight disease, we need doctors and nurses. But these are only three of poverty’s many ugly faces. There is another that is just as brutal -- unemployment. Having a job is as important as eating and sleeping -- because if you don’t have a job, you don’t eat well and you sleep even worse. You lose heart because you are forced to search for a job without finding one. You lose pride because you are forced to accept welfare. And you lose hope because you are forced to despair.

Over 12 million Americans live in big-city poverty. The rate of joblessness in the center city is 7.5 percent -- more than double the unemployment in the rest of the country. The teenagers in the center city have it even worse -- nearly 25 percent don’t have jobs.

For the Negro, the situation is tragic. Negro unemployment is 1 1/2 times greater than white. And when a Negro does get a job the hours are longer, the pay is less, the work is dirtier. But joblessness is not just a Negro problem. It is a Mexican-American problem -- a Puerto Rican problem-- a problem for Indians, Negroes and poor whites. There is no Negro solution to joblessness -- no Puerto Rican solution to joblessness -- no Mexican solution to joblessness. Joblessness is an American tragedy. And there has got to be an American solution. And that’s what Leon Sullivan has, discovered -- an American solution to an American problem.

This dynamic leader has given us more than advice, more than letters to the editor, more than flowery oratory. He has followed the leadership of the one who went out where the people were, by the seashore in fishing boats, around the ancient wells, in the marketplace.

Leon Sullivan decided to bring religion out of the pulpit, and put it to work in the offices of corporation executives, in labor union halls, in small groups gathered on street corners.

In 1964, OIC was launched in an old jail house in the darkest poverty pocket in Philadelphia. It was the first massive self-help training program of its kind in the history of America. Unlike other programs which often tend to screen out candidates, OIC decided to screen everyone in. People with no money, no skills, no experience, no nothing. OIC went down to the people in order to rise with them.

What are the reports from this front?

The young people who have enrolled in the Job Corps are in critical need of education and training. When they signed up, 40 per cent were illiterate, 90 percent had never been to a dentist, 85 per cent had never been to a doctor, 80 per cent had never held a job, and 46 per cent came from broken homes.

What has the Job Corps done for the young men and women who stay with it-- and who make up an impressive 70 per cent of all those who enroll? There are 33,000 for whom we have definite placement information. Most of these have found jobs--jobs where they are earning an average of $1.71 an hour instead of the 90 cents they averaged before Job Corps training. Others have enlisted in the Armed Services--and many are fighting and dying in Viet Nam. Still others have gone back to school.

They have made good on a lesson learned in their first Job Corps reading text “I am not an ant. I am a man.”

When I was in the Peace Corps, I was told a story which illustrates what we are trying to do in this country. One of our volunteers was walking through an African village and heard a little boy say, “Look, mother, there’s a white man.”

His mother replied, “No, that’s not a white man. That’s a Peace Corps volunteer.”

We are working for an America where no one will say:

“Look, there’s a white man.”

“Look, there’s a black man.”

“Look, there’s a rich man.”

“Look, there’s a poor man.”

But only say: “Look, there’s an American.”

Volunteers have played a vital role in the “war on poverty"--just as they have in the Peace Corps. We have VISTA Volunteers, volunteers on Community Action Program committees, volunteers in Head Start and Upward Bound.

But we need more volunteers--here in Philadelphia, where the Continental Congress met nearly 200 years ago, and throughout the country. Volunteers won the American Revolution. Volunteers will win the “war against poverty.”

Yes, we’re fighting against poverty. But what are we fighting for? Taxation without representation is tyranny--that was the cry in the Revolution. We got political democracy, political representation through that most famous revolution in history.

Today and tonight we say:

Education without representation is tyranny. Welfare without representation is tyranny. Jobs without representation is tyranny. What America needs is the “will to win"--not the wealth.

We get that will through democracy.

And that’s what OIC stands for--action. It stands for job training and education by the people, for the people, of the people.

That’s why OIC cannot fail.

That’s why OIC has the will to win.

That’s why we cannot lose the national war against poverty.

Peace requires the simple but powerful recognition that what we have in common as human beings is more important and crucial than what divides us.
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Sargent Shriver
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