Hidden History: The War on Poverty at 50

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http://truth-out.org/news/item/21980-hidden-history-the-war-on-poverty-at-50


The day President Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act, August 20, 1964. (Photo: LBJ Library via Wikimedia Commons)

In the totalitarian world of 1984, Winston Smith was assigned the job of changing news accounts of past events so the total rule of the Party could never be challenged by facts that contradicted Big Brother's propaganda. Control of the past isn't quite so total in the United States, but to read about the 50th anniversary of the "War on Poverty" in the American press is to appreciate how significantly history is rewritten in this country, how information that doesn't square with the interests and propaganda of elites has disappeared down the "black hole" of memory.

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared "unconditional war on poverty" in his first State of the Union address. The centerpiece of the poverty program was passage of the Economic Opportunity Act, which featured most prominently the Community Action Program (CAP) and the Job Corps. The long-invisible history of empowerment, struggle and ultimately defeat and abandonment of America's poor under CAP contains powerful lessons of hope and despair that Americans need to understand. That hidden history holds important lessons about both the possibility and erosion of democracy in America.

In signing the Economic Opportunity Act, Johnson boldly proclaimed, "Today for the first time in the history of the human race, a great nation is able to make and is willing to make a commitment to eradicate poverty among its people." CAP provided federal funding for projects designed to improve the lives and communities of America's poor. The aim, according to the government's Community Action Handbook, was to empower the poor. The novel feature of the program was that local Community Action Agencies (CAAs) that would petition the government for grants would be created with the "maximum feasible participation" of the poor themselves.

That phrase, of course, meant different things to different people. In a number of cities - notably Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlanta - mayors retained control over membership of the CAAs, and thus federal grants provided funds for the mayors' agendas as well as additional patronage jobs - i.e., government as usual. In long-time community organizer Saul Alinsky's critique, this meant empowering "positive" community leaders (those who would "do as city hall says&quot as opposed to "negative" community leaders (those whose "primary loyalty is to the people of your community&quot .