“Our purpose is to strengthen local government by equipping a community with the resources, to realize its own needs, make its own decisions, and put those decisions into action. [...] We believe in democracy and in local government. We oppose the theory that the Great White Father in Washington, D. C. always knows best.”
Our Quote of the Week shows Sargent Shriver’s awareness of the diversity of the communities that make up the United States, and his profound belief in their right to opportunity and self-determination.
In a speech given during his tenure as Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (the administrative office of the War on Poverty), Sargent Shriver addressed an association of counties in New Orleans, Louisiana. During the speech, he stresses the importance of having communities govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion. He also deals with concerns that the War on Poverty would impose rigid rules or requirements on citizens wanting to participate in local programs, or that it would undermine local political leaders. He describes how Community Action, the cornerstone program of the War on Poverty, makes local decision-making possible and empowers residents as well as administrators:
“Where the CAP [a Community Action Partnership] is run by a, so-called private non-profit organization, that agency is private only in the narrowest, legalistic sense. In reality, it is a public body, directly accountable to the people with broad representation from the entire community. The Corporate Charter is a kind of constitution—a compact through which the entire community pledges it self to cooperate in the pursuit of a common goal—the elimination of poverty. All CAPs are, at bottom, public institutions accountable to the public. And that is why, regardless of whether the Community Action agency is run as a government agency or as a private non-profit corporation, it is not an attempt to undermine local democratic processes but rather to expand them, and include within them, persons heretofore alienated from our democratic life.”
During his tenure as Director of OEO, Sargent Shriver objected to a centralized, cookie-cutter approach to the programs. He believed in having community leaders devise solutions to local challenges, and he wanted to provide resources to allow those communities to empower themselves. It should be noted that Shriver had seen the effectiveness of local empowerment in the Peace Corps, an institution that he had successfully built from the ground up, and he knew that it would work in communities at home, as well.
It is also worth remembering that Sargent Shriver tended to mobilize groups to rally around a common cause. In the speech, for example, he makes references to meeting with the country’s governors and mayors as well as country leaders. His approach of uniting people with differing points of view to work together towards a common cause, in this case, the elimination of poverty and the empowerment of all citizens, is one that we can definitely learn from today. In a moment when Washington, D.C. is working to increase its power at the expense of its citizens, particularly in communities with fewer resources, it is up to all of us to unite in protecting our democracy and our right to self-determination.
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