Seeking Voices of the Poor
CORRIGAN, FAITH
NATIONAL REPORTS Seeking Voices of the Poor By Faith Corrigan Cleveland Much is being made of the apathy of voters in special elections to choose "representatives of the poor" for local...
...NATIONAL REPORTS Seeking Voices of the Poor By Faith Corrigan Cleveland Much is being made of the apathy of voters in special elections to choose "representatives of the poor" for local councils leading the War on Poverty...
...One of them, a Negro grandmother raising the five children of her imprisoned son, accepted the honor...
...In a money oriented society, where to admit poverty is to acknowledge failure, no one could predict who would come forward as a candidate...
...The elections themselves have not sprung from a deeply-felt demand among the poor for more voice...
...The grandparents wanted custody given to the county...
...The most highly vocal and insulting protestor polled the lowest number of votes in his area...
...When asked her reason for running for the unpaid post, one candidate responded, "I was born in poverty along with seven other brothers and sisters, I know the feelings and heartaches of other people with large families, and I want to use this experience to help others...
...In Juvenile Court the day before the election, child welfare authorities sought permanent custody of his three children under three years old who had been taken from him for neglect...
...And those that were employed held jobs not covered by Federal minimum-wage laws...
...2,000 for a person in a family of two...
...As the candidates-most of them intelligent and dignifiedcampaigned, often in borrowed clothes, respect for them grew...
...and $3,000 for a person in a family of four-with $500 additional allowed as the maximum income for each other member of the family...
...But whether in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Kansas City or Cleveland, it is now clear that the issues have been vague to most residents of the neighborhoods participating in the balloting...
...The other, wishing to protect her children from publicity, refused...
...Reverend Younger's group succeeded in electing only one of the five candidates it endorsed...
...The highest number of votes received by any one candidate went to a traditional leader of the Negro poor, a clergyman whose sole income consisted of a veterans pension...
...With the discovery of this respectable group of candidates, an air of relief swept over CEO officials running the election...
...Coming from a world where toilet paper, soap and light bulbs were luxuries, they asked for enforcement of child support laws, better welfare allowances and more education for their children...
...Product of an alcoholic father, mother of three bastards by different fathers, this destroyed human being appeared to find the demonstrations mostly a source of amusement...
...Election rules disqualified anyone holding any type of political office...
...When the nominating petitions were filed on January 18, with 100 signatures apiece from residents of the neighborhoods, it became apparent that the election and its issues had appealed to a new group evidently unknown before to the power structure-the women of Cleveland...
...2,500 for a person in a family of three...
...It was led by a woman whose whorish reputation was well known in her white West Side neighborhood...
...There has been a clearing of the air in Cleveland, and the city is now keenly aware of the diverse causes and effects of poverty...
...The city fathers privately said "Never...
...For the first time, the CEO and the city saw the poor plain-or certainly a very important segment of them...
...The few that were living with their husbands had many children, 12 in one case...
...Expansion of education, better vocational training, interest in early childhood development-all programs that can be carried out by government-will sift out many now trapped in poverty...
...The average candidate was in her middle 30s, with four children, an eighth grade education, and in most cases living on a meagre Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) grant...
...Up to this point, most of the pressure for more representation of the poor on the 25-member CEO had come from an arm of the Cleveland Council of Churches, the Protestant Ministry to Poverty, led by the Reverend Paul Younger...
...One of the beneficiaries of a $100-aweek job spent most of her six weeks of employment calling up Adam Clayton Powell's Committee on Education and Labor in the House of Representatives...
...Appoint from this group of Madame LaFarges and Lee Harvey Oswalds...
...In efforts to compromise with Younger and fulfill Federal requirements, the composition of the CEO was changed several times last year...
...Admittedly, the poor who were pushing hardest for representation lacked the social graces...
...In one shift, social agency leaders who dominated most of the initial planning departed to make room for civil rights leaders and clergymen from poverty areas...
...The hearing revealed that the unemployed white father had lived in three cities, two states, and had 10 addresses over a two year period...
...One demonstration, organized by Younger last fall, consisted of a rat dumping expedition to city hall...
...Forty of the 48 candidates were women, and all save three, mothers...
...But the demonstrators were being heard in Washington and two important grants made late last fall, one to expand a work-study program for high school dropouts and the other for remedial reading in the Cleveland schools, carried the precondition that five additional board members be chosen from the ranks of the poor...
...He's using the poverty program," the candidate's parents testified against him...
...The annual income limits set by Washington were $1,500 for a single person...
...Another attempt at a compromise tried to add two ADC mothers, both carefully screened to eliminate anyone with illegitimate children...
...For these people ingratitude was the last gasp of human dignity...
...Divorced, deserted, separated or widowed, she was a woman without a man, and a woman who because of her educational lack and maternal duties could not do much to help herself...
...The Cleveland election, while it did not attract a great number of voters, did accomplish something that is perhaps more important: It removed much of the fear of the poor which was responsible for initial reluctance to involve them...
...Almost all were church members: some were officers in parent teacher associations...
...In the case of the Cleveland election, the most important fact to emerge was not the four per cent turnout here on Ash Wednesday but the number of responsible candidates who entered the race...
...All told the candidates numbered 127 children among them...
...Privately, many on the CEO felt that the poor would be too selfengrossed, bitter and neurotic to make a real contribution, or they doubted that suitable representatives could be found...
...To run for one of the five places on the Council for Economic Opportunity (CEO), one had to qualify officially as impoverished...
...But even if the Economic Opportunity Program is carried on for a generation, it is apparent that poverty will not be eliminated without more attention to marital and mental health problems...
...Nor was the cause of the poor helped in the larger community when television interviews carried comments on the need for prostitution to supplement welfare allowances...
...Behind the scenes attempts to find jobs for some of the most vocal demonstrators in Head Start and other economic opportunity programs failed to silence them...
...And they revealed a new type of 20th century illness, the ADC headache which strikes shortly before the 10th of the month when checks are mailed...
...the concept came down from the Federal government...
...a few (including, significantly, three of the five winners) were members of Democratic party ward clubs...
...Faith Corrigan, a new contributor, reports on welfare, economic opportunity and mental health for the Cleveland Plain Dealer...
Vol. 49 • March 1966 • No. 6
