“Taxation without representation is tyranny.”
That was the successful slogan of a successful revolution – the political revolution which created the U.S.A. “Jobs without representation is tyranny” That was the slogan of another successful revolution -- a revolution that made unions a permanent part of the industrial scene. That revolution -- your revolution established the principle of collective bargaining as a democratic right. And that slogan is being updated again by the poor across this nation and around the world.
They, too, are objecting to domination as tyranny -- whether it be domination from downtown or domination from abroad!
The poorest people in our nation say:
Welfare without representation is tyranny.
Housing without representation is tyranny.
Education, counseling, handouts, without representation, without a chance to be heard and represented -- that is tyranny; And, overseas the peoples of the world are crying out for the same kinds of representation, or participation in the political and social activities of their own countries!
That’s what the world-wide struggle is all about: -- whether in Viet Nam, or the Congo, or the Dominican Republic, or Panama.
There are some fainthearted among us and there are the selfish among us who say: America is not wealthy enough, or strong enough or productive enough to fight two wars at the same time -- the war against communism in Viet Nam and the war against poverty at home.
But I say we’ve got to fight both wars, and win both wars, at the same time. Why? Because we can’t “win” the war in Viet Nam, and lose the war in Watts!
John McCone knows the truth of that statement, after months of studying the riot in Watts, and that’s why his report to Governor Brown warned: “We are convinced the negro can no longer exist, as he has, with the disadvantages which separate him from the rest of society, deprive him of employment and cause him to drift aimlessly through life.”
“We are seriously concerned that the existing breach, if allowed to persist, could in time split our society irretrievably.”
McCone is right only at the gravest national peril can we minimize the need for action now: In Watts and Harlem, In Chicago and Birmingham, On the Iron Range and in the Ozarks, and on the borders of the Rio Grande. The poor cannot be made to pay the cost of the war in Vietnam!
The Peace Corps has taught us a number of lessons concerning the social and political revolution now going on all over the world.
The Peace Corps Volunteers have learned to say to poor people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America: “Maybe our way isn’t the best for everybody. We’re here to help you on your terms -- not to make you do things exactly the way we want you to.”
Tom Carter, a Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Chimbote, Peru, wrote:
“Our school has no roof. It would be a $10 project and about one day’s labor for two or three Peace Corps men to build that roof. Yet, we don’t do it. If we gave my school a roof, it would always be that, a gift, the ‘gringos’ roof. When it needed fixing, no one could fix it. If it takes me a year to talk my neighbors into putting on that roof, it will be worth it. Because then it will be their roof, on their school. It would be a small start, but in the right direction. Maybe then we would take on a little harder project, and step by step build up a powerful organization interested in progress and strong enough to do something about it.”
You in the labor movement know what Tom Carter meant. Translated into union slogans, it meant:
We want our own union, our own organization:
We want no company unions:
We want our own leaders, no paternalism from the boss:
We want no doles -- no sops -- to cool off discontent.
In the labor union movement it meant grassroots of organization, rank-and-file democracy!
Here in the United States -- in the war against poverty -- we are following those union principles through a three-fold strategy.
First, we require the boards of all local agencies running antipoverty programs to have adequate representation from the poor. That representation is not token. It is participation; Participation in policy, in plans, in action!
By actual body count, there were 3,706 representatives of impoverished neighborhoods sitting on local community action governing boards --and that figure is based on reports from only 68 per cent of all CAP grantees.
And yet, when the program first began, all the critics said that was impossible. The so-called “establishment” would never permit representation of the neighborhoods to be served.
Second, we are hiring the poor giving them jobs. During the first ten months of the program, 70,000 new jobs for the poor were created. This figure excludes the positions created for Job Corps enrollees and Neighborhood Youth Corps members -- programs for youths who are earning money while working and learning.
Finally, we have financed a series of projects to train indigenous leaders capable of organizing the poor! Special schools like labor union schools! For instance, in Berea, Kentucky in Manhattan Community College, and at New York University -- special programs are underway for students who never would have been admitted to college. From NYU comes the report that within the first six weeks of the program, these youngsters had jumped three years in reading level. Those are the kind of young men and women who will provide a new supply of teachers, civic leaders, hospital attendants and advocates on behalf of the poor.
And in other cities -- we have funded programs to prove that the poor can organize -- to improve their own conditions -- housing, and schooling, and unemployment. Do you know what the critics said? They said the poor would learn “union organization tactics” to enable them to stand up on their own two feet and speak out for what they wanted. -- That’s just what the poor are learning. And, that’s why -- in this war -- at home or abroad we don’t count our victories just in terms of roofs repaired --or buildings rehabilitated -- or even in terms of job placements.
The real victory -- the real accomplishment is measured by a sense of self determination and hope. You may call those intangibles. But those are the intangibles on which the union movement was built.
This war against poverty -- this war for the self-determination of individuals -- and neighborhoods and communities, requires many weapons -- as varied an arsenal as any we are employing in Viet Nam.
That’s why we have 1) Head Start, 2) Job Corps,3) Neighborhood Youth Corps, 4) Job Training Programs, 5) Legal Programs,.6) Health Programs, 7) Rural Programs, 8) Programs for the Hard-Core- Unemployed.
And, in less than 13 months over 800 Community Action Programs have been set up; over 1 billion dollars has been allocated and spent, benefiting directly over l 1/2 million poor.
That’s the record to date -- in terms of dollars and cents. But that doesn’t really give a feel for the whole program. It doesn’t really communicate how the war is going. I have my own point of view on that. But-fortunately you don’t have to take my word for it. Just as I was leaving Washington, a story by Louis Cassels came over the UP wires. These are his words – not mine.
And from Louis Cassels of United Press International comes this story this week:
Washington, November 29 (UPI)-- “A year ago, the war against poverty was little more than a slogan. Today it is a massive program pumping federal money into 2,000 American communities at a rate of $30 million a week.
In quest of an objective judgment, United Press International assigned reporters in all parts of the nation to conduct the most comprehensive investigation yet of the poverty program. They were asked to bring in “a fair and balanced report of achievements and failures” in the war against poverty. Their findings, which will be set forth in this and four subsequent dispatches, do not bear out charges that the program is a vast boondoggle, riddled with corruption.”
And this is what he has to say about particular parts of the program. I’ll start with Community Action:
UPI’s reporters found some community anti-poverty programs which have gotten off to a smooth start and which seem to be yielding real benefits. Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New Haven, Conn.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Atlanta, Georgia, and Oakland, California, were outstanding examples in this category. But in some other cities -- examples are Boston, New York, and Kansas City -- poverty projects have been rocked by scandals or embroiled in political controversy.
“Job Corps installations are somewhat like the little girl in the Mother Goose rhyme. When they are good, they are very good: and when they are bad, they are horrid!”
And only 6 out of the 70 centers now in operation have even been nominated for the category “Horrible.”
NEIGHBORHOOD YOUTH CORPS
“Although newspapermen kept a beady eye on the projects, watching for ‘shovel-leaners’ of the WPA tradition, they found little evidence of loafing.”
“In several cities, police credited the Youth-Corps with helping to bring about a significant drop in juvenile crime and rioting.”
In Sacramento, California, George Sorenson, the public school official supervising the Youth Corps project, told UPI reporter Arthur J. McGinn:
“I’m a hidebound republican; I am pretty conservative and don’t go much for giveaways. But this program is working. It’s really breaking the welfare cycle of dependency. These kids enjoy working. They are accomplishing something.”
HEAD START
“About 560,000 children ages 4 and 5, were enrolled during the past summer in 10,000 Head Start Centers across the nation.” “Most of them came from homes so blighted by poverty that they had never colored with crayons, listened to a story, visited a zoo, or enjoyed any of the other pre-school learning experiences which middle-class children take for granted. In some instances, the growth of their minds had been so stunted by deprivation and neglect that they had speaking vocabularies of less than 100 words.”
VISTA
“The only complaint UPI reporters heard about VISTA Volunteers is that there aren’t enough of them.”
“No VISTA Volunteer commutes from a comfortable suburb to put in eight hours of “good works” in a poverty-stricken neighborhood. He lives there 24 hours a day.”
But even this doesn’t tell the whole story.
We’ve won victories over some ancient enemies. Take the religious issue -- the Church-State issue: Just three or four years ago it was practically impossible for a federal agency to give a direct grant to a religious group. Today we have given hundreds without violating the principle of separation of Church and State. In doing so, we’re fulfilling the mandate of Congress -- to mobilize “all the resources of the nation.” And all denominations are working together. In San Antonio, Texas, a Jewish Synagogue rented a hall to a Lutheran Church Group to conduct pre-school classes for kids from a predominantly Catholic area!
Take the race issue -- in mid-September Martin Luther King came to our office in Washington along with other members of the local Community Action Program -- white and black. The Mayor of Atlanta, Ivan Allen, was there -- a press briefing was scheduled for 4 P.M. As the hour approached, the biggest press assembly we ever had was milling around -- waiting to see whether “it” would really happen. And “it” did. Elevator doors opened and out stepped Herman Talmadge and Richard Russell of Georgia to shake hands and have their picture taken with negro leadership. White and black-had joined forces in the war against poverty.
That has never happened before in the history of this country. And Senator Richard Russell had never come to the Executive Branch to announce any grant in all his years in Congress.
Take the birth control issue. Eighteen months ago it was like Syphillis. Politically you couldn’t talk about it. Today, OEO is the first agency in the history of the federal government to give public money directly to private agencies for family planning purposes. We’ve been doing it for a year. We’re still the only one. And we’ve done it in a way which avoided arousing the sensitivities or religious convictions of any group.
One other issue has drawn a great deal of attention: The high salaries allegedly paid to top OEO officials. We did a run-down on the salaries of the top 20 officials and compared it with what they had been earning previously. Do you know what we found?—
That, in the aggregate the top 20 officials were earning $3,249 less than what they had been earning before they joined the OEO staff.
That comes out to a cut of $171.00 per person. That’s what I call patriotism. That’s what I call dedication.
Let’s turn for a second, to another hot political issue – the Governor’s veto. As of midnight last night those 50 different umpires had been standing behind us for 11 months calling “safe or out.” They’ve had to make 6,000 decisions on 6,000 different specific grants. And only four times have they said, “you’re out.”
That gives us an average of 99 and 6/10,000ths percent. How pure can you get? Like Ivory Soap we’re floating! And like Ivory Soap, we will stay afloat, no matter what the turbulence of the sea around us.
These aren’t dollar achievements, but two years ago no one could have bought them with the entire federal budget; Ivory Soap got started in 1879 and it’s still selling. We may not be as durable and I hope we won’t have to be, but we are in this war to win.
That’s the box score so far as governmental activities are concerned -- but the war on poverty is not simply a governmental effort. Our best efforts can only help the poor to help themselves. But whether we eliminate poverty depends on how the poor are treated and welcomed into “the other America,” the affluent society in which most of us live.
Government officials don’t usually talk about failures – but I want to relate one such failure -- because it sums up the whole problem in a nutshell.
A month ago, we graduated four boys from a Job Corps Center. They received jobs -- good paying jobs -- starting at $2.53 an hour as welders, in Chicago. All of them were skilled. They had the technical proficiency and they had learned the steady work habits it takes to hold down a job. Within three weeks after starting work, all four had departed for home --one because of a family illness -- the others without explanation of any sort. But I think the explanation is pretty clear. These boys had to deal --not just with a job -- but more important with a whole city --.with the vast, impersonal life, the complexity, the temptations and the pitfalls of a great metropolis.
Within a month, they were lost, swallowed up -- they felt like they were nothing. But if there had been a union steward or a group of union members who had taken personal interest in them -- if the union had recognized and acted in advance to respond to the needs of these lonely young men -- maybe they would have stayed! That’s what unions have always done -- for newcomers, for immigrants. And trivial though it may sound, the fate of many a Job Corpsman will depend on whether there is an opening for that youngster -- not in a factory – but whether there is an opening in the union’s bowling league!
And that’s where you come in. These Job Corps boys need half-way houses -- kind of like USO Centers for veterans in this war against poverty. They need community orientation programs, guidance and counseling services. And they need help and sympathy and patience in doing so. They need, -- in short -- to be adopted by the unions. I hope the AFL-CIO -- nationally; I hope the AFL-CIO – locally can organize -- and I don’t have to tell you the meaning of that word -- can organize a systematic welcome for every Job Corps graduate.
To welcome them to their job.
To welcome them into the union.
To welcome them, not just with a membership card and a handshake, but with a hand extended.
To welcome them into the life of your union, into your picnics, your benefits, your soft-ball games, and your bowling leagues and yes, into your own homes.
To win this war, we need labor’s leadership and, we don’t have enough of it yet.
OEO is willing to pay to train union leaders as a special force in this new war against the most deeply entrenched foe of mankind --poverty. We ask you to go.-- without green beret or jaunty cockade --without camouflage suit or silent stiletto -- but wearing only your work-a-day clothes and offering only your knowledge, your experience, and your dedication to a just cause.
110 labor union men have already committed themselves to this training and work. They are studying now at West Virginia University. Theirs is not a brush-up or a refresher course. It isn’t a two-week paid vacation. Instead, they are learning to fight poverty by using all the new weapons in our arsenal -- how to organize local community action programs, how to steer the poor into new programs for jobs and education, how to avoid the flame-out of frustration and despair.
First comes training, then comes field work, then more training and more field work, until they are tried and tested veterans of this new kind of warfare.
I know this training and these men will be successful, that the program will work -- because the participants are laboring men, chosen by labor, dedicated to labor, and trained in a course of instruction designed by labor. For labor isn’t soft at the top. Miles Stanley, the Special Assistant to your distinguished President, George Meany, put that program together.
And we need all of labor -- to organize the poor, to train new troops, to develop new programs. We need new leadership – your leadership. We need new resources -- new private funds invested in new weapons -- new credit unions, new co-ops, new private low cost housing, and we need new troops -- to organize the poor, to organize the unemployed and the, underemployed, who work and still live in poverty.
I’m not interested in raising interest rates! I am interested in raising wages! That’s why we can’t win this war without labor, without your brains, without your know-how. You have flexed so long fighting for the poor. And in the presence of that fiery redhead -- the man who led labor to a great victory at the height of the depression – I want to say to you, in his presence, if you were able to sit down in 1936 to win freedom for labor in Detroit you can stand up in 1966 to win the war against poverty.
