Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
At 8:14 PM -0500 25/2/08, Max B. Sawicky wrote:
>My understanding is that Chuck's war on poverty -- which I had
>relatively little to do with --
>was strangled in the crib in 1967 with the passage of the Green
>Amendment, which moved
>control of local anti-poverty programs from independent African-American
>activists to local
>government officials, the latter urban white ethnic machine types. In
>this 'empowerment' phase
>community groups organized in decentralized fashion for job training,
>housing, jobs, etc. You
>could say it was a project on economic development by means of
>grass-roots mobilization.
>
>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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