The welfare rights phase of the war on poverty -- which I had a *little* bit more to do with -- began and ended later. Francis Fox Piven, one of the coolest women in the universe (I wish I had been a contemporary so I could have asked her to marry me) and associates undertook to flood public assistance offices with applicants and insist on strict adherence to rules, rather than allow discretionary operations to deny and limit benefits. The aim was to force states to go begging to Washington and effect the Federalization of the program.
They succeeded and the program endured until Hillary's husband "fixed" it. Just typing that puts me in an evil mood. In my view, Piven & Co. saw welfare recipients and the long-term unemployed as part of the reserve army of labor. They sought to strengthen benefits as a way to strengthen the claims of employed workers.
Lord knows AFDC was not perfect but the official poverty rate did in fact decline through much of the late 60s and 70s. Inflation was allowed to eat away at real AFDC and Food Stamp benefits, but the sharp blows began when Reagan was elected (the latter story told in "By the Few, For the Few" by Tom Joe and Cheryl Rogers.
(Chuck Grimes) wrote:
> ``...Piven argued that one of the main reasons why the War on Poverty
> set about empowering local activists was that this was the only way
> welfare payments could actually be delivered. As I recall, the
> argument went that until then, local welfare officials, who Piven
> dubbed the "Poverty Police", simply refused to grant claimants even
> their legal entitlements..'' Bill Bartlett
>
> ------------
>
> Let me put it this way. The War Poverty programs had little to do
> with getting your welfare check. The whole point was getting out of
> poverty, which would include getting off welfare, if anything.
>
> I can only really speak to what I know about, and I have read very
> little history. It's something that I have become interested in, while
> I was thinking about various posts on LBO lately...
>
> By welfare, I take that to mean AFDC (or SSI and the like). AFDC was a
> New Deal program created by the Social Security Act and under Social
> Security Administration. It was a federal program funded with matching
> money from the States. Local Social Security offices interviewed
> applications and managed case loads and oversight of AFDC
> regulations. The checks themselves were mailed to the recipent,
> probably from State Treasury offices---although they might have come
> directly from the US Treasury---I don't remember.
>
> Technically, if AFDC program offices at the local level were engaged
> in discriminatory practices, it was the US Department of Justice,
> Office of Civil Rights (OCR) who were supposed investigate and then
> turn over possible prosecution to the Attorney General's office. In
> other words there were other agencies (also part of War on Povery
> programs) specifically charged to `police' federal agency practices.
>
> In any event, one of the main functions of Legal Aid was to provide
> civil legal services on the ground and part of most Legal Aid offices
> was the development and traiing of paralegals, people who carried out
> various not-in-court legal services such as developing background
> materials, arguing and appealing through various city, state, and
> federal administrative agencies. (*see quote below for more detail)
>
> The latter could have been seen as ``poverty police'' in somebody's
> mind. You have to remember though that the main thrust of the War on
> Poverty wasn't about welfare, it was about breaking down barriers to
> equal economic opportunity.
>
> Here in Berkeley, the community service programs (under OEO and Model
> Cities) developed their own welfare advocacy component staffed with
> local poor people often on welfare themselves and highly knowledgable
> in welfare regulations, housing regulations and so forth. They were
> very familiar with local state, county, and city administrative
> offices. The community service program welfare advocates worked in
> conjuction with Legal Aid, but not as part of their program. Legal Aid
> could be drawn in if need be.
>
> So, I have to imagine that in much less liberal minded regions there
> were tremendous problems with AFDC, Social Security, Vocational
> Rehabilitation, VA, and other state and federal benefit agencies.
>
> On the other hand, in my experience and memory (which is always
> questionable by the way---and open to correction), the development of
> welfare advocacy grew out the experience of OEO programs opening
> store front operations and getting down to the street level, as it
> were. Once on the ground all sorts of problems were discovered,
> that had never been anticipated at the original policy planning level
> that drew up the OEO legislation. Many of the War on Poverty programs
> were `works in progress'.
>
> CG
>
> -------
>
> *quote:
>
> ``As its designers had intended, the new program soon resulted in major
> changes in the legal circumstances of low-income Americans. Major
> Supreme Court and appellate court decisions in cases brought by legal
> services attorneys recognized the constitutional rights of the poor
> and interpreted statutes to protect their interests in the areas of
> government benefits, consumer law, landlord-tenant law and access to
> health care, among others. Advocacy before administrative agencies
> assured effective implementation of state and federal laws and
> stimulated regulations and policies that helped shape programs that
> affected the poor. Advocacy before legislative bodies helped the poor
> redress grievances that were otherwise not addressed by the
> courts. Equally important, representation before lower courts and
> administrative bodies helped individual poor clients enforce their
> legal rights and take advantage of opportunities to improve their
> employment, income support, education, housing, and working and living
> conditions.
>
> Inevitably, these successes led to efforts in Congress and within OEO
> to limit the activities of legal services programs. Even more
> threatening, however, was the continuous political interference in the
> operation of many local programs. The most serious fight occurred when
> Governor Ronald Reagan vetoed the grant to California Rural Legal
> Assistance, a program known for its advocacy on behalf of farm workers
> and its successful challenges to some of the governor's welfare and
> Medicaid policies. Although OEO retained the power to override the
> veto, it responded instead by appointing a blue-ribbon commission to
> investigate the charges of misconduct, most of which had been
> instigated by the California Farm Bureau. The commission's report
> concluded that the charges were unfounded, and Governor Reagan was
> persuaded to withdraw his veto in return for a $2.5 million grant to
> set up a demonstration judicare program.
>
> The CRLA controversy, along with similar fights in other states, made
> it increasingly clear that political interference would continue so
> long as the program remained within the Executive Branch. Within the
> organized bar, the Nixon Administration, Congress, and the legal
> services community, the idea of an independent Legal Services
> Corporation began to take shape. In 1971, both a study committee of
> the ABA and the President's Advisory Council on Executive
> Reorganization (known as the Ash Council), recommended creation of a
> separate corporation to receive funds from Congress and distribute
> them to local legal services programs. A bipartisan group in Congress
> introduced authorizing legislation in February of 1971. In May of that
> year, President Nixon introduced his own version of the legislation,
> calling the Corporation a new direction to make legal services "immune
> to political pressures . . . and a permanent part of our system of
> justice." ''
>
> (from http://www.nlada.org/About/About_HistoryCivil)
>
> Reading between the lines you can see that Nixon in effect
> `privatized' legal aid, and of course `imune to political pressure',
> actually meant, make the Nixon administration immune to legal threat
> from within the Executive Branch itself from the likes of Cesar Chavez
> and the UFW! This is about the same time Tricky Dick privatized the
> Post Office as `efficiency' move on the theory it would keep postal
> rates down, and was in the process of forcing OE's Special Services to
> Regionalize under the New Federalism.
>
> So getting back to my point about radicalization, I think you can
> begin to see what I mean. If the UFW had two direct lines to DC
> through the Rural Legal Assistance program and the DOJ OCR that was
> something very new and worrisome indeed...
>
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