The Poverty of Antipoverty (a series of firsthand reports on the Poverty Program)
Judge, Joseph B.
In Brownsville, a section of Brooklyn once almost entirely Jewish but now radically changed, the War on Poverty is a misnomer. The wars that occur in Brownsville are mostly wars of the poor...
...An evening teen-age program is attracting a large number of youngsters who in the past have proved most difficult to engage in any organized activity...
...it was to the city a voice of a few among the poor to whom no political debt was owed and who had no political strength...
...At the present time they appear to have closed ranks and to be standing together...
...The first is a good, clear-thinking, tough-minded director, Major Owens, who knows and understands the community and who has the good sense to abstain from any public participation in Council squabbles...
...In their struggles to remind the political power structure of its obligations to Brownsville, they found that their voice was too weak...
...Yet due to its rapid population changes in the last decade, Brownsville had no community-based political or social organization...
...Unfortunately, a large percentage of people in Brownsville does not read newspapers and consequently has heard nothing about the War on Poverty...
...Hasn't the War on Poverty changed all this...
...From these centers they have organized demonstrations against slum-lords...
...The Council's planning, with the help of the Youth Board Community Organization office, was sound, but the Council lacked a clear purpose and attracted little interest—until the announcement that Brownsville would be a poverty target area...
...The Negroes really control the Community Council, which is perfectly proper since they are a majority in the community...
...One of the big reasons for this, I think, is the consciousness of one common bond uniting practically everybody in Brownsville— poverty...
...Efforts to organize the Council and to give it purpose lagged until it became clear that Brownsville was to receive funds through the Economic Opportunities Act...
...In the most recent primaries, the Puerto Ricans presented a slate of candidates for the first time...
...This is the Summer Program...
...There was exactly one, able to accommodate about 100 teen-agers out of 7,500...
...Finally, there was no unique Brownsville Plan which had been funded, although a vast Total Action Plan had been presented for funding...
...None has any political ambition...
...Whether it is the result of a new awareness of their potential strength or a reaction to the Puerto Ricans' political opposition is not clear at the moment...
...The poor do not forget their quarrels very quickly...
...they have helped to enlist members in the Welfare Clients League whom they guided in a demonstration at City Hall...
...This continues to be the obsession of the average Brownsville resident...
...Strangely, they are in far closer contact with the real hard-core poor of Brownsville than are any of the Negro or Puerto Rican leaders...
...In one public school, from September to January of last year, there was a 100 percent turnover of school population, 1,500 on register and 1,500 on transfers...
...This new attitude is curious in view of their past divisions and dissensions...
...And promises are all they have received...
...This time, their primary candidates were badly defeated by the entirely Negro opposition...
...It all began with reapportionment of the State Assembly Districts...
...This realization was the beginning of the formation of the Brownsville Community Council...
...The meetings of these young priests are dedicated to clarifying their purpose and to avoiding any personal gain or aggrandizement from their involvement in the community...
...Another feature of the plan, a Released Energies Program for teen-agers which, because of its crucial character, was presumably earmarked for approval, was rejected the day it was due to begin...
...Now, however, political contention has taken a new turn...
...This Puerto Rican effort was the culmination of tensions between the Negroes and Puerto Ricans on the Executive Board of the Community Council...
...Questions from the audience ran along the same lines...
...There are frequent, and at times intemperate, clashes between Negroes and Puerto Ricans at Board meetings...
...Exactly two days were given to hire a staff, obtain materials, and provide space for the Program...
...The wars that occur in Brownsville are mostly wars of the poor against the Economic Opportunity Board and the poor against one another...
...The Brownsville population of 125,000 Negroes, Puerto Ricans, and aging Jews presents to the rare visitor a microcosm of all the city's social ills...
...The myopic bureaucrat who turned it down explained that there were similar teen-age programs elsewhere in Brownsville...
...Unfortunately, the number of Puerto Rican applicants for higher paying jobs in Head Start is small because they lack the qualifications demanded by the Board of Education...
...Once again it appears to the poor of Brownsville that the white middleincome political establishment is the enemy...
...Politically, the community was linked with East Flatbush, Canarsie, or East New York, all white middle-income communities which provided the leaders...
...Brownsville became a geographic assembly district, and the first local political battle took place in the primary of 1965...
...But the efforts of the community itself have been increasing, and may yet provide an example of how the poor can help themselves if once they are given some initial means for help...
...Their achievements were indifferent, but at least they brought out people who were interested in community improvements...
...It is almost unbelievable, but up to July 4, 1966, exactly one half of one percent of the total funds sent to New York City under the Federal Economic Opportunity Act had found its way to Brownsville...
...Although tensions are present, there has been no major racial outbreak in Brownsville...
...Since it presented its Total Action Plan for funding, it has spent its time writing letters and telegrams of protest about the failure of the government to keep its commitments, participating in demonstrations, joining other protesting groups, and publicly criticizing the vacillation of the War on Poverty...
...Each participating organization has two delegates, which prevents any large organization from taking over the Council and guarantees that it will be the voice of the poor...
...Since the candidates were all Negro, the contention did not follow racial lines...
...They have put their own personal funds into the opening and maintenance of three or four Social Action Centers, one of which is called Christians and Jews United for Social Action, and another is Brownsville Social Action...
...In their devotion and scrupulous selfexamination, they are a healthy New Breed...
...We also stand together in a common conviction that we are being short-changed in the War on Poverty...
...Another plus in Brownsville is the group of young priests working here...
...After all, the city has announced that Brownsville is one of the poverty areas where things will be radically altered...
...Despite this inner contention, the small part of the community's total-action plan which has been approved has been quite effective...
...They have numerous politically oriented organizations in the community, but heretofore they had always supported one of the regular candidates...
...Fortunately, a city agency was able to restore the program on a very limited budget...
...The economically deprived Negroes and the recently migrated Puerto Ricans who are the new residents of Brownsville were too badly disorganized themselves to think in terms of organizing the community...
...The turnover of population is alarming...
...There are two chief reasons for this success...
...In all their public statements they call for good relations between the two groups and urge both communities to live in peace...
...The first stirrings of community action were sponsored by a Youth Board community organizer, Mr...
...The second reason is that the Council is conducting its program through neighborhood member organizations who are bound to be more in contact with the people most in need...
...But the Puerto Rican members of the Community Council are not convinced of this and the present stance of some Negroes on the Executive Board is not discouraging their suspicions of prejudice...
...Its condition is the result of forty years of neglect...
...They deal with the poor on the level of their personal problems and represent them on the community level...
...The only existing program was Head Start—which is funded under the Board of Education...
...It was the main impetus for the organization of the Brownsville Community Council...
...There was no big Baptist Church to produce Negro leaders, and the Spanish storefront churches by principle disavow participation in community activities...
...They were too much occupied with the daily struggle for existence to think in any wider terms...
...They consider it evil...
...they have led clean-up campaigns and involved teen-agers in them...
...It is to the credit of both the Negro and Puerto Rican leaders in the Council that they have not allowed their differences to spill over into the community at large...
...Those few who have heard the news have become inured to promises...
...From then on, the Brownsville Community Council aspired to become the funding agency for War on Poverty money...
...They have considerable suspicion as to whether their people are getting a fair share of the jobs in the Head Start program in Brownsville...
...None can aspire to an official position of leadership in the community because they are all white Americans...
...I think that the middle-income establishment of other poverty areas have much to learn from the poor of Brownsville...
...Many members of the Executive Board were very active in the campaign and their suspicions and attacks often exploded at Board meetings...
...This, of course, pushes the Puerto Ricans into the position of having to be the opposition, a task not entirely unwelcome to them...
...Nor were religious leaders in evidence...
...Yet this is not to say that the War on Poverty has not influenced Brownsville...
...After only three days, all centers are oversubscribed, and parents are trying to transfer their children from the Board of Education summer program which began earlier to the centers funded under the Brownsville Community Council grant...
...What is clear is that Negro leaders are rallying their forces...
...Action began with the organization of two committees, one for housing improvements and the other for youth organization...
...Another by-product of the War on Poverty in Brownsville is increased political activity...
...It was not a community voice...
...In actuality, the Council has become an organization to fight the Economic Opportunities Board...
...It is a community of unrelieved poverty, dirt, decay, drunkenness, and despair...
...To achieve the widest possible base, membership was opened to organizations in the Brownsville area...
...Most despair of life ever getting any better while they stay here...
...Some have publicly expressed the opinion that only Negroes should represent Brownsville on city-wide Boards or Councils...
...In A Walker in the City, a reminiscence of his youth in Brownsville, Alfred Kazin says that his one prevailing desire was to escape...
...From what one hears, the Summer Program is reaching many more people in an effective way than programs in other, better-known poverty areas...
...The debates among the candidates tended to descend into personal attacks on one another's honesty or sincerity...
...In the beginning of the Council's history, this activity took the form of support for various contending candidates...
...Arthur Lappan...
...Just a few days ago it was announced that a badly curtailed Summer Program has been approved...
...It must be said that the Puerto Ricans did seek Negro candidates for their ticket but were unable to persuade any...
...Their object is to serve the community...
...The government's part in Brownsville's War on Poverty is both hesitant and small...
...There probably is no real justice to the complaint because the director of the Brownsville Community Council Head Start seems most anxious to employ Spanish-speaking workers...
...Under the Wagner administration, it became evident that the community organizations which made the most noise received the most money...
Vol. 13 • September 1966 • No. 5
