[lbo-talk] More on OEO and CAP

(Chuck Grimes) cgrimes at rawbw.COM
Mon Feb 25 12:13:27 PST 2008


Below are posted the last few paragraphs of the historical background sketch I posted from previously. It covers CAP community action program with some the history and impact. It has its flaws, but over all it's good enough for email purposes.

I am pretty sure most of the list is too young to have seen these programs in action and most people in general have little reason to go back and read some of the history. I think that is shame because very briefly liberals, progressives, lefties, black, white and brown from profession middle class to poor community activist were suddenly offered limited political power to do the right thing....

CG

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....The program that generated the most intense controversies and came to dominate the politics of the early War on Poverty was the Community Action Program. Envisioned as a foundation of the War on Poverty in 1964, the CAP offered the most promise for reform, but also the most potential for turmoil. Administered by the idealistic and aggressive new OEO, the implementation of the program proved to be the most contentious part of the War on Poverty. Most controversies involved the distribution of power to poor people that often bypassed traditional federal, state, and local bureaucracies. By requiring the maximum feasible participation of the poor in Community Action Agencies, the Economic Opportunity Act substantially elevated the role of marginalized people and set off a daring policy experiment. Through community action, the War on Poverty became inextricably intertwined in the struggle for racial equality.

Almost immediately after the initiation of the Community Action Program in August 1964, the innovative program stirred a storm of protest, particularly from some southern white leaders who wished to preserve African-American subordination and from entrenched local politicians and social service leaders who found their power threatened by newly empowered people. Over the next few years, solutions to the controversies reduced the flexibility envisioned in the original Community Action Program and narrowed the meaning of maximum feasible participation to a concise mathematical formula. Through the Green Amendment of 1967, Congress effectively required that city halls and established civic leaders give their approval to actions of Community Action Agencies. Partly as a result of the Green Amendment and partly as a result of administrative difficulties for local creation of new policies from scratch, national emphasis programs came to dominate the work of Community Action Agencies. Further changes arose from the intensification of urban civil disorder after 1965. Urban unrest narrowed the War on Poverty and turned the OEO and the CAP into major anti-riot endeavors. By 1969, over 1,000 Community Action Agencies were in operation, and they offered ready-made organizations capable of dealing with tension on the streets. In that role, according to several studies, the OEO proved relatively effective at calming tensions and reconfiguring attention paid to American ghettos. With modified structures and functions, Community Action Agencies generally became much less controversial and developed into accepted social welfare institutions carrying out fairly specific service delivery. Like other War on Poverty programs, attacks on the CAP did not kill the entire project. Despite repeated calls for its termination, the CAP created agencies that actually became widespread and relatively popular. In 1999, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that 96 percent of all counties in the United States were operating Community Action Agencies or their equivalent.

[CG sidebar. What isn't mentioned is that in many cities CAP had helped form the programmatic basis for the rise of African-American urban political machines like Coleman Young in Detroit and Maynard Jackson in Atlanta---I got to see the same process in miniature in Berkeley with Ron Dellums and Warren Widner...]

The legacies of the Community Action Program and the rest of the War on Poverty remain a subject of contentious debate. Generally, the War on Poverty has been most often remembered for its controversies and its obvious incapacity to end poverty. Interpretations of the federal antipoverty effort, therefore, have tended to differ according to the political affiliation and ideological orientation of the interpreter and the spirit of the times. One example is the debate over the reasons for a startling decline in the black poverty rate from 55 percent of all African-Americans in 1959 to 33 percent in 1970 and for a drop in the overall U.S. poverty rate from 22 percent to 12 percent in same time period (in 2000, the rate for African-Americans was 22 percent and the overall rate was 11 percent).

Critics of the Great Society have tended to credit economic growth spurred by American entrepreneurism, while blaming the Great Society for impeding further economic growth. Defenders have tended to argue that the Great Society was crucial for that growth and for directly helping to move people out of poverty.

In the 1980s and 1990s, disagreements over the legacies of the War on Poverty and Great Society became especially intense. President Reagan and others on the political right convinced many that the War on Poverty represented a failure of big government. Instead of helping to alleviate poverty, the programs supposedly encouraged sloth, dependency, crime, single parenthood, and unproductive citizenship. Conservative critics, led by Charles Murray in his book Losing Ground, charged that most of the programs were misguided, mismanaged, mangled attempts at social engineering in which liberal overspending stifled market-based solutions and covered up for the faults of individuals. Defenders of the Great Society retorted that social programs despite being fragmented, under-funded, and besieged helped lower the poverty rate, reduce disorder, and absorb the shock from Baby Boomers entering the job market. Those defenders pointed out that most Americans have favored most of the Great Society programs. In that regard, support for the Great Society's contributions to the welfare state especially elements with formidable popular backing like Medicare, Head Start, Social Security expansion, and education funding limited the effect of conservative assaults.

Two presidential moments hint at the political distance traveled by the War on Poverty since its inception. In Lyndon Johnson's first State of the Union address (1964), the rough-hewn Texas Democrat declared an `unconditional war on poverty in America.' With eager bravado, he promised not to `rest until that war is won.' His audience thundered in ovation. Almost a quarter century later, in President Ronald Reagan's final State of the Union address (1988), the smooth, good-looking California Republican announced that, in America's War on Poverty, `poverty won.' His audience rumbled with laughter. The applause and the laughter on all sides may continue until much time or the next major domestic crisis closes the analytical gap and introduces a new paradigm.

Kent B. Germany University of Virginia Charlottesville, Virginia

http://faculty.virginia.edu/sixties/readings/War on Poverty entry Poverty Encyclopedia.pdf



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