Regional Report; 3; Skirmish with Poverty

[beeping] [music] The following program is from NET. The National Educational Television Network. The war on poverty. What's been done so far in the mighty campaign to better conditions among those who live on the outskirts of hope. [music] The National Educational Television Network presents Regional Report, a program of fact and comment by reporters around the nation. Today's subject, the War on Poverty. Here again is National Editor Edwin Bayley.

- For 25 years, the overriding concern of the United States has been foreign policy. Now under the Johnson administration, the focus has turned to domestic issues, education, civil rights, conservation, and most of all poverty. Poverty has always been with us, but its discovery in the midst of abundance has seemed shocking. By the end of June, the administration will have spent most of $760 million in its first attack on poverty. What's happening? Regional Report looks at programs in five states to make this appraisal. But first, in Washington, Doug Kiker of the New York Herald Tribune asks the man in charge. - Mr. Shriver, your office has been in official existence for about eight months now. Can you bring us up to date or can you tell us exactly what is the Office of Economic Opportunity doing along this whole front? - Yes, I'd be happy to do so, Mr. Kiker. First of all, we got our money from Congress just five months ago. The authorization was passed eight months ago, but we've only had money to work with for

five months. And in those five months, we've done these things. First of all, we've committed about half of the total amount of money given to us. That has made it possible for us to fund about 200 different cities and towns across America in community action programs to combat poverty. Now, it's true we've had almost 500 requests for this type of assistance. We haven't been able to handle all of them. The demand has been so great, but 200 towns and cities are right at work today, combating poverty in their own way, under their own local leadership, across the country. A second, we've organized a new institution called the Job Corps. Job Corps is a residential program, providing work and training, job training to young men and women between 16 and 22 years of age. This program was announced on the 1st of January. And as of today, we have about 145,000 young men and women who have applied to join the Job Corps.

Obviously, we can't handle that many so quickly, but we already have upwards of a thousand in training. By June the 30th, we expect to have 20 or 25,000 in training by the fall, maybe 40 to 50,000 in training. So that program is off and swinging... winging and swinging. We've also organized a new program called the Neighborhood Youth Corps. There are today about 25,000 young men and women in that operation, which provides part time work in their own neighborhoods, the young men and women who might have to drop out of school unless they've got additional financial help through part time work. That program will grow rapidly, probably get up to 75,000 young men and women by the end of the summer. We've also organized a new program called the Vista program. This is the domestic counterpart of the Peace Corps. Peace Corps, as you know, of course, operates only overseas in the underdeveloped world. Vista works here at home, using volunteers here in the United States to work for poor people and with them, much in the same way that Peace Corps volunteers work overseas.

We've had about 10,000 applications for that program, and the first 50 Vista volunteers have already gone to work. They're working in institutions for the mentally retarded, for the mentally ill. They're working as special tutors for slow learners in school systems. They're working on Indian reservations and a number of other enterprises of that type. About 3,000 loans, very small loans have been made to impoverished farmers and others living in rural America, and the Small Business Administration has begun to make loans helping young men or older people, for that matter, who are interested in starting their own business, getting a start in the free enterprise system. People who don't have the assets to get a normal loan from a normal banking situation. All these things have been done in five months. - And so the anti-poverty program is already beginning to bite in. - Oh, it is. There's no question about it. - The problem is how to get started.

In Georgia, we see some of the spade work that has to be done before any kind of action is possible. This rainy city is Gainesville, Georgia, a relatively prosperous town on the edge of Appalachia, and incidentally, my own hometown. I am Sylvan Meyer, WGTV, University of Georgia Television. It was on the square in early 1964 that President Johnson came on his tour of areas that might need anti-poverty legislation. The legislation has now passed, and it's up to local communities to develop programs that will reach their needy people, their school dropouts, and the men whose job skills happen to be outdated. And devising these programs, the communities are thrown on their own local resources and leadership. It's up to them to put together a package that will bring federal money in to aid in solving their problems. - The Georgia Mountains Planning and Development Commission incorporates 12 counties and some

35 communities and has, as one of its responsibilities, the establishment of the economic opportunity programs within this area. We do not establish programs, but we work with the community people in developing their own local programs. We found one of the problems in this area is overcoming local inertia, that is getting people to act for themselves. In order to overcome this, we have on our staff Mr. John Jones, our program developer. - I found that the people in our area are generally very enthusiastic about the economic opportunity program, and they're most anxious to take advantage of the opportunities that it provides them. However, they don't really have much experience in this type of work. The directives that come out of Washington on the economic opportunity act are fairly complex, and I feel that it's my job to interpret these directives for them, to act as a spark

and to guide their thinking. This morning, I'm going over to Lumpkin County to Dahlonega to see if I can start them on a program. - Fine, John. Who are you going to see over there today? - Well, I thought I'd start off with the elected officials first, the county commissioner, the mayor of Dahlonega, then I'll go to the public agencies and then depending on what leads I can get from them, I'll take it from there. - Good. We'll see you this evening. - I'll see you. - Our cameras will follow Jones to a typical conference in his territory. He hopes that some official agency in Lumpkin County will accept local sponsorship of a program in its 7,500 population area. - Lumpkin is a rural mountainous county, an old gold mining county, about 60 miles from Atlanta. In this historic courthouse in Dahlonega, Mr. Jones will talk with Clyde Fortner, chairman of the Lumpkin County Commission.

Incidentally, this courthouse is soon to be replaced by another built with federal aid. - Help the folks in our area develop a community action plan under the economics opportunity act. Now, the first thing I have to do in any community is to meet some folks and tell them about this thing. Now, this is why I came over to see you here, you're the elected official in this community, and I thought maybe you might be able to put me on to some meeting, a group of people, a public or civic group that I can talk to about this so we get something started. You know of any such meetings that's going on anytime soon? - Yes, sir. We have a meeting next week on a community council meeting to which you can come, yeah. - Well, now, this community council, is it pretty widely represented by people in the county? - Yes, sir. Practically all over the county, schools and industries, you know. - Welfare people and that sort of thing on it. - Yes, sir.

- Could you get me an invitation to address this group? - Yes, I'd be glad to talk to Bill Lawrence, the President, and see what we can work out. - I see, well, that's what I came to see you folks for, and I won't take up any more your time, so I'm going to say, thank you very much, and I'll see you all later. - Sure. - There's one thing I think we'd best keep in mind, and that is in this program we have to involve the poor, those people for which the programs are intended. - Getting started on the program in Georgia meant training even the administrators. The Georgia office of the Department of Family and Children Services and the University of Georgia brought together on the University campus the people who will try to make the act effective at the local level. - ...organizer, to help the communities develop their programs, the program developer is not a welfare worker. - But who is the community, the community you're talking about is probably these same leaders that have developed all the other programs, and if we don't involve the poor through your efforts, they'll never get involved, and this program won't be any different than the

others. - Well, isn't it true, though, that it's a part at which the community becomes involved, the decision as to power, it seems to me, ought to be made by the leaders, the top leaders in the community, and then you get the decision makers among the poor or the indigents, as you might call them, when they get to participating in the program. - Yeah, but now the decisions have been made by these same people in the past. Why, what you're talking about is no different than what we have. The poor people have to help make these decisions, as I say. - But we have to start off with the recognized leaders in the community first. - Program developer Jones held a typical preliminary community conference in Dahlonega with the local school superintendent, civic leaders, and the manager of the town's largest industrial plant. They showed interest in and asked questions about programs designed to prevent school drop outs and to help students who have dropped out of school already. They wondered about remedial reading training and the possibility of raising reading levels

to such a point that people could at least begin to take vocational training. The Act might pay college and high school students extra money for teaching these people. In Dahlonega, they discussed the possibility of taking a survey perhaps through the Junior Chamber of Commerce to see what kind of training is needed there, and they figure if they can come up with a good enough program, they can include funds for administration. They talked earnestly with Mr. Jones, but the problem of getting started remains elusive. - Oliver Terryberry, as director of the local program and I as editor of the local paper have discussed the economic opportunities act several times in my office. - We have the responsibility of implementing this program at the local level. One of our major problems is the lack of cohesive and positive directives from Washington to the local regional offices.

We file several programs in Atlanta and find that several of these offices do not have any idea whatsoever on how to handle these problems. - Oliver, haven't we also got the problem of small communities who simply don't have the resources and the leadership to implement this program, that it's very complicated just to get started, to get into it, and they just aren't able to handle this phase of it. - That's right, Selvin. Perhaps the best way to put it is that the lack of local sophistication, lack of sufficient people, the lack of know-how and familiarity with governmental red tape, is bogging this thing down at the local level. - Well, actually we have two programs underway now. We have the Economic Opportunities Act, which is a people bill. We have the Appalachia program about ready to start. It has been called the nuts and bolts or the brick and mortar of the same sort of design on the part of government. One of the great problems is that the well-financed, well-administered large city centers will preempt the money from this program while the smaller communities, the more underdeveloped

communities, are fumbling around for the machinery with which to get started. One local official has called this program the greatest boon or the greatest boondoggle which this country and its creative ingenuity has ever devised. Oliver Terryberry, who knows as much about the program as anyone else, still hasn't made up his mind how it will turn out. - Now, Texas, where programs are underway, but even here where the president made a special effort, local politics is an obstacle. This is Ronny Dugger of the Texas Observer. Under the definition, based on $3,000 income a year for one family, 40 million Americans live in poverty. Ten million of those live in five southwestern states. Four million of them, a tenth of them, live in Texas, the president's state. No other large and populous state has so much poverty.

These are slums in San Marcos, Texas, where the president went to college. Only one-ninth of the poor in Texas are on welfare. Texas has comparatively strict eligibility rules. Those poorest of the poor who are on welfare don't get much. The average old age pensioner gets $70 a month. The permanent and total invalid receives $57 for the month. Among the states, Texas ranks 34th in helping the aged, 44th in helping families with dependent children and 45th in helping total invalids. Texas has two large minority groups: a million and a quarter Negroes and a million and a half Mexicans. One out of five of the Mexicans has never gone to any school at all. The state has 700,000 adult illiterates. As the state welfare commissioner says, Texas is an excellent place for the war on poverty

to begin. - We propose that San Marcos be the first city in the entire southwest to organize and to begin to fight the war against poverty. - President Johnson announced last November in San Marcos, Texas, that a center would be open there to train 2,000 young people for skilled jobs. Senator John Connolly of Texas, a close friend of the president, has appointed Terrell Blodgett his director of the Texas Office of Economic Opportunities. Mr. Blodgett, here in the president's state, how is the war on poverty progressing? - Moving along very well, Ronnie. State office is getting organized, communities are beginning to get interested in ever increasing numbers and we're moving along we feel in good shape in various directions. What programs are coming to fruition now?

Well, of course, the Job Corps training center down at Camp Geary is of interest, I think, to many people. Ronnie, some 300 boys will be there very shortly and by October 1st, 2000 boys will be in training there, studying some 14 different vocational trade areas in a residential vocational training school atmosphere. We have high hopes for that training center. The community action programs are moving. Austin and Corpus Christi both have approval for community action programs. San Antonio, Laredo and a number of other cities have applications virtually ready to send in for approval. - Austin, the state capital, has been given a federal grant for poverty research. El Paso's project has a good prospect. Several groups of three rural counties in South Texas plan to go together on a multi-county basis. However, in San Antonio County Commissioner Albert Peña says that two-thirds of the members of the Central Poverty Committee have missed three meetings in a row and are going to

be dropped from it. The mayor of Houston, which is the largest city in the South, says the federal legislation is confusing. Nothing has been done there yet. In conservative Dallas, no committee had been formed by early March. Laredo, down on the Mexican border, has been told that there are not enough poor people in on its program for the poor. In the eastern part of the state, where most of the Negroes live, there has been a silence. By far the most successful program so far in Texas has been Corpus Christi's. Corpus is a jewel of a city on the Texas coast. It is named after the body of Christ. However, ten thousand of its houses are substandard. Of its 225,000 people, 58,000 live in families that make less than $3,000 a year. An estimated 16,000 adults here are illiterate.

Last summer, private citizens sponsored classes at Boys' Club for students who wanted to study during their vacations. In the fall, the public schools began providing after-school study centers in schools located in the poorest parts of the city. The tutors for these classes are high school students, mostly from poor homes, too. They are paid a dollar an hour. The students in this class are upper elementary. They could be playing, but they choose to study. They come either because they can't study well at home, where they have many brothers and sisters, or simply because they want to do better. Fifteen percent of them made the honor roll last time for the first time in their lives. Their principal says this opened a new world to them. Part of Corpus Christi's $300,000 grant from the federal government will expand these after-school study centers. The schools are being used to help the poor they educate.

When they start school, Mexican-American children usually can't speak English, so they can't understand what's happening. The average one takes the first grade twice and gives up after six grades. This is a class for preschool children of the poor. This is part of the War on Poverty in Corpus Christi. The teaching assistants come from poor neighborhoods, too. - What do you see in the room that you'd like to play with? - The teacher is Mrs. Jeanette Grant, who has an MA from Columbia. - You may play with clay. How does one answer the question, is the War on Poverty enough? A spokesman for the poverty program in the schools here says that to have such classes as these for all the Mexican children of the right preschool age, they need seventy such classes.

They have six. Corpus Christi has one of the highest birth rates in the state. On the premise that having many children often contributes to poverty, the Corpus Christi program officially includes teaching the poor birth control. The building in the background is the federal birth control clinic. Mrs. Tony Abarca, executive director of the South Texas Planned Parenthood Association. At this moment is opening the first federally financed birth control clinic under the War on Poverty. The aged mothers who are listening to her have thirty-eight children among them. - First, we do have the rhythm method that I would like to explain a little later on. We have jellies, we have creams, we have diaphragms and we have the Pill. In a few minutes I will go into detail and will explain every one of these methods.

I hope that each one of you will be free to ask any questions that you would like about the different methods. We will prescribe for you what you wish. Mrs. J. Gordon Bryson, the wife of a medical doctor, led the local crusade to get birth control into the federal program. And Mrs. Bryson, federal money will be here used in this birth control clinic for the teaching of birth control to people who are poor in this area. Is that right? - No, sir. It's not right. This is the family planning clinic, not a birth control clinic. We want the people to come here to have the children they want, that they can afford, they can pay for. We have methods of birth control that we will be glad to help them with, get them any information that's suitable to their religion or to their preference. But we do not wish it to be called a birth control clinic. - Each mother is interviewed and then she is examined by a medical doctor.

She has given her birth control devices right here, free if she can't pay for them. Mrs. Janet Hart, here interviews Mrs. Billy Bruce Eatman, wife of a longshoreman and mother of eight. - Now, have you been pregnant more than eight times, had you ever lost a baby? - I had one today. Well, one was born but he died. -...but he died. So you've been pregnant nine times, right? Nine times. But eight children are living. But you've never lost a baby. No. Except her. How old is your oldest child? She's 15. And how old is your baby? She's seven months. Seven months. And she was born again. What was her birth day? July 12, 1965. Have you ever had any difficulty with your pregnancies or with delivery? I had kidney. One time. Kidney infection? Yeah. Three times I was [inaudible] [inaudible] Um, How did you happen to come to us, do you not want to have more children, or...

I don't want anymore. You don't want anymore... [laughter] Because we can't... Because you can't afford it. Catholic doctrine opposes artificial birth control. I'm trying to get comment from the Catholic hierarchy in Corpus Christi about this issue, and they decided not to say anything. It has been widely reported that the Catholic Church has been reconsidering its doctrine on this subject. - What has happened here in Corpus Christi with reference to the Catholic Church and birth control? They had just left us alone. Cecil Berney, a local lawyer, is chairman of the Community Action Program in Corpus Christi. - Since that's being done in part with federal money, how has the Catholic community here responded to that? - Well, one of my Catholic friends says that he hopes nobody asks him. Maybe that's the answer to it. But so far we had no difficulty about this here. - The law gives governors the right to veto local programs, and the first crisis in the Corpus Christi program concerned not birth control, but the threat of Governor Connelly's veto.

Here's Mr. Blodgett again. - What were the governor's objections to the Corpus Christi program? - The governor had only one objection, which was of a leadership nature, and that has been straightened out in good order now, and it's progressing in on down the line. They're happy and working, and real pleased to be the first city, and he was very pleased that it was the first city to come in, and is now progressing very good. Connelly, through Blodgett, told local leaders that Sheridan Lewis had to step aside as local chairman. Lewis is president of two utilities companies. He started the city's after-school study centers. He also was Corpus campaign manager for two statewide political opponents of Governor Connelly's. Whether this or some other cause underlay the governor's position really is not known. The local committee and the Washington Office of Economic Opportunities supported Lewis,

but just two hours before the deadline for the governor's decision about the Corpus Christi program, Lewis sadly resigned. He is still a member of the executive committee. The Corpus Christi proposal for a neighborhood youth corps proposed to pay the young people in it 80 cents an hour. Blodgett, the governor's aid, took the position that the Department of Labor's requirement that $1.25 cents an hour be paid, would sabotage programs in Texas. And he said, quote, Communities just can't live with it. Close quote. The governor's appointee wired Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz, as this copy of the wire shows, quote, To require the federal minimum wage rate of $1.25 per hour would render the entire program inoperative in this state. Students would often be paid a higher rate than their parents. They also would be paid more than the full-time school employees doing the same type of work, end quote.

The budget asked in the wire that the $1.25 ruling be rescinded, and he added, ominously, quote, Otherwise I cannot foresee how I can recommend to the governor approval of any projects under Title 1(b). Since to do so, would upset the entire wage structure in each of the many communities involved, close quote. The Mexican political leader, Commissioner Peña in San Antonio, interviewed in some depressing slums there, had this to say. - May I ask you about the $1.25 wage in the youth corps program? Do you approve of that minimum? - I approve of it, and I was very disappointed to hear that Mr. Blodgett, the governor's appointment to the poverty program in Texas, has said that if we entertain any notions of paying a $1.25 an hour, that this will wreck the Texas economy. - Later in his home, Commissioner Peña added... - Well, I think this is our big problem, the fact that we have to work through state agencies, and the fact that the governor can

veto any program, this is the same group that has done nothing to prevent or eliminate poverty in the past, and it's just difficult to work with these same people. - How would you account for what you take to be the reluctance of the state government to have a thorough war on poverty? - Well, I believe that the state officials are not willing to help educate the Mexican-American and Negro minority in the state of Texas. I believe this is true throughout the South. - At a press conference in Austin, Governor Connolly said that $1.25 an hour is awkward and unrealistic, because most of the schools where the programs would be, pay less than that. But he said he will not veto programs if schools want to pay a dollar twenty-five. The same day, the Texas House of Representatives deplored the $1.25 minimum wage

by a vote of a 117 to 13. The war on poverty has begun here and there in Texas, but is still piecemeal and hesitant. The threat of veto has played a large and in one case a directing role. The controversy over the $1.25 minimum wage indicates issues that may lie ahead. Shall we have a war on poverty at eighty cents an hour? Senator John Tower, the Texas Republican, regards the whole program as a hoax and charges that it can be used for political purposes. In the long run, if it is persisted in and the poor gain ground, the war on poverty could threaten many present economic and racial arrangements as well as political power structures. We have begun to see this happen first in Texas, where people still speak plainly and

politicians take their positions with a certain simplicity. - Some of the worst poverty in the United States, where the program is needed most, is in the Negro slums of the North. The problem is acute in Philadelphia, but a requirement that the poor themselves must help administer the program, coupled with factional disputes among local officials, has blocked action. After a brief report on that situation, we go to Colorado, where our reporter, Merrick Wing of Denver, tells of an equally sticky problem in a small town. The problem is lack of leadership. - I'm Lance O'Rourke reporting from WHYY-TV. This is North Philadelphia, on a warm night last August. An argument between Negro police officers and a Negro motorist erupted into a long weekend of rioting, looting, and violence along this very Columbia Avenue. The poverty problem in Philadelphia as in other large cities of the North is essentially

a Negro problem. Though Negroes comprise only 26% of the labor force, they account for at least 43% of all unemployed. Two out of every three Negro males in this city are semi-skilled or unskilled. Into this area, the city and state pour millions of dollars annually in welfare payments. The Negro in Philadelphia is complaining that for too long, the white man in city hall and in the city's power structure has been imposing his assistance upon them. That is creating programs for the poor, rather than with the poor. One of those hollering the loudest to Washington is Mrs. Mary Richardson, 23. The self-declared representative of the poor members of the North Philadelphia gangs. On a vacant lot not far from here, I ask Mrs. Richardson what she sees wrong with Philadelphia's anti-poverty effort. - They don't have the involvement of the poor because they don't act like they want them. - How do you think the poor should be involved in the program?

- Well, it's not what I think. It's what Washington thinks. Washington has said that they think the poor should be involved in the administration of the poor, the administration of it out to the planning and so far it hasn't been done. Do you know anyone who's poor on that task force? - You would like to see the poor completely involved in the program from the very board of directors down to the operation on the street by street level. Is that correct? - Right. - Do you think the poor people of Philadelphia, of North Central Philadelphia, are qualified to sit on a board of directors with bankers, with lawyers, with judges, with professional social and welfare workers and direct a poverty program? - Well, first I think I should tell you, I'm not a speaker for poor people. There are some around you. Theodore? Would you like to answer his question? - What is your name? - Ted Richardson. The way I see this, I wouldn't say they're qualified professionally, but other words, these professional people do not know the situation of the people in the streets. - You're saying then that the poor people themselves are the experts on what they need to fight

poverty. Is that right, Mrs. Richardson? - Well, if you have a pain, who expresses it more? Someone who's going to tell about it or you? - Of course, it's the doctor who heals the pain. - Yes, but he has to know where it hurts at before he can do it. - Well, then you do see a place for the social welfare workers in the poverty program. - Yes. - How should the poor be involved in the policy setting, administration, and operation of the anti-poverty program? Professional social and welfare workers themselves are divided on this point. I asked Mrs. Mildred Guinnessy, executive director of the Delaware Valley Settlement Alliance, what should be the responsibility of the neighborhood poor people? - I think they have several responsibilities. One is that they themselves know better than anyone what their problems are in their neighborhoods. And we have to rely on them to let us know what those problems are. But I think it takes all of us working together to try to solve them. And I think that the neighborhood people can be involved in all levels of administration

and advisory committees to see that the problems are being worked on. - What do you think would happen to this new anti-poverty program if the poor were not involved? - I think it would be a flop. - More of a traditionalist is Arthur Gewirtz, assistant director of the crime prevention association of Philadelphia. - My feeling is that the poor can tell the professionals what is needed in his community and can serve as a watchdog. So when the program is on, he will know whether the program is good or bad. The people in the community cannot hire and fire staff. They're not equipped to do this. They're not equipped to come up with priorities for a comprehensive program. Nor can the poor in the community speak for all the other minority groups throughout the city.

Mr. Gewirtz is right, all agree that poverty in America must be fought and fought fast, but how do you conduct that fight? The organizations are influenced by their traditional outlooks and aims, civil rights, welfare, sanitation. The Negro community itself is divided over the best way to fight poverty in Philadelphia. As we have seen the professionals disagree, the only general agreement is that the old way of doing things for the poor and not with the poor has failed. Perhaps now that America has become mature enough to recognize the need to fight poverty, the poor people themselves might be mature enough to do the job. I'm Rick Wing of KRMA-TV in Denver, Colorado. Our look at the war on poverty in Colorado will take us on a trip to the south: Huerfano County, Las Animas County, Costilla County, and finally the city of Trinidad, 40%

of the families in this area have annual incomes of less than $3,000, the accepted standard of poverty. Twenty percent of the adult population has had less than five years of education. The last census reported that only half of the housing in the area is sound with all plumbing facilities. Forty years ago, Las Animas County had a population of some 40,000. Today it's less than 20,000. The unemployment rate is estimated as high as 15%. At one time 40 coal mines were operating near here, giving jobs to nearly 15,000 men. Today, one mine, four or five hundred jobs. Parts of the Economic Opportunity Act would almost seem written for this region. Job corps camps, youth training programs, adult education, small business health, rural poverty aid, and a great variety of community action programs.

But under the law, each community, to get poverty funds, must organize itself and start the ball rolling at home. Will the war on poverty really work in Trinidad? Will it really help this three-county area of Huerfano, Las Animas, and Castilla? - County case worker Bill Cancelia told us the number of people on welfare. - I would think that we could make a safe estimate of about one-third of the population, 55 to 5,800 people involved. - Federal funds are being sought. School superintendent Hugh Lynn asked for money to keep potential dropouts in school. - We were rather disappointed. We thought that this thing could get off the ground. While they were very optimistic that it might get off the ground early in the fall, possibly by October the first, it isn't off the ground yet.

- Las Animas County has applied for $340,000 for job training. - Through this work experience program, Title 5 of the Economic Opportunity Act, we hope to involve 200 men who are unemployed and have families to support, and that we can do projects that would be of a community good nature. In other words, we would involve ourselves in landscaping projects, male orderly or nurses, and care and maintenance of buildings. - But neither state nor federal clearance has yet been obtained. Another phase of the war on poverty is the youth corps. Other Colorado communities have objected violently to propose job corps conservation camps nearby. Trinidad wants a job camp. As for organizational problems and conflicts in getting the war on poverty started, here's Arch Gibson, editor of the Trinidad Chronicle News.

- Well I think the problem would be somewhat the same in any similar community, and that is the lack of qualified leadership. - Since the governor can veto any local poverty program, we asked whether the state was giving the Trinidad area enough help. - Well, I'm very disappointed in this particular direction. Now in our state, Mr. Lindesmith is the coordinator on the state level, and I feel that the program is lacking in enough direction. We have asked specific questions, they were here, they did explain the bill to us. But again, they had nothing to offer in the way of specific answers to specific questions on what to do to set the program in motion and carry it out. - A man in office, whether he be a governor or representative or a senator or congressman, he's going to do the most for the areas that he's going to get the most votes at one

time. These little areas don't elect anybody anymore, and since reapportionment, we have even lost representation. Why, they just ignore us. Lyle Lindesmith, the governor's coordinator for the War on Poverty in Colorado, had this to say about the state government's relationships with Trinidad and Las Animas County. - I'm all aware of the needs, the problems of the Trinidad area. I've been there, I'm going back again, unfortunately we've found one problem which we did not expect. The first meeting that I attended to explain the provisions of the Act, particularly that of the Community Action Program, I found myself almost it seemed in the midst of a civil war because we had certain community leadership who were disagreeing fairly violently on the approaches that they should take on the leadership that they should have.

But solid people are working on this problem, we have other staff members that are going to be there within a few days, I'll be back myself and I'm sure that we will solve the problem of getting started in a worthwhile community action program for the Trinidad area. - The most encouraging thing we found in Trinidad was hope. No one is ready to give up. The problems are being recognized and probably the community will get together. But the main question seems to be, when they do get together, will there be any money left in the poverty pot? - Among American Indians, poverty is no stranger. Most Indians have never known anything else. Many programs have been tried by the federal government but poverty remains and the new programs are greeted with hope but skepticism. In a part of our country, rich in scenic splendor, live a people lacking in material possessions.

This is the setting of poverty among the Navajos. The Indian is this country's original citizen. He is also one of our oldest poverty problems. I'm Neil Maxwell of KUED in Salt Lake City. These will be Navajo and some great basin Indians. There were two groups among America's half million Indians who live on some 250 federal reservations. These reservations are located in country that is both barren and beautiful. In general, the American Indian is one-half as well educated, lives two-thirds as long, and has one-fourth the income of other Americans. The annual family income on reservations is between $1,500 and $1,700 a year. Problems of crime, disease, sanitation, and isolation are real problems. Consigned to austere areas, the Indians find it hard to control nature so they have cooperated

with nature. The Economic Opportunity Act is not the first program born of the troubled American conscience, which is aimed at helping the Indian. Some Indians are understandably skeptical. - As you know, we have been in the process here of programming the last 10 years, 15. And nothing has come of this. We're getting a little skeptical now. We're wondering, is this good? Is this going to be beneficial to us? - But the Indians are anxious to try to improve their lot. And many tribes have already submitted proposals to the Economic Opportunity Office. Mr. Sidney Wallner of the EOA discusses the poverty program as it will affect the Indians. - The first tribe to contract with the Office of Economic Opportunity was the Papagos of Arizona. Here before this application came to us, there were 50 meetings held on the reservation to explain the purposes of the Economic Opportunity Act, to sort out what the tribal members wanted

and to develop the program. I think this is a practice that any community large or small could be proud of. And this is the sort of thing that's happened on all of the reservations that are participating in the program. So in terms of personal involvement, the involvement of the Indians at this point is very high. - The Navajos live in 96 communities on a reservation that is as big as West Virginia, the state that was the catalyst for the whole poverty program. 75% of the Navajo families earn less than $1,000 a year, and an average of six people live in each room on the reservation. So the expectation of the Navajo leaders for the EOA program is high. - The thing that we'd like to have on this poverty program is on the job training for both men and the women, because we felt that most of us would want to stay here on the reservation. - Well, the five projects that we're going to have in our community are the individual

enterprise and the arts and crafts and your dairy farm and your training. - Sensing perhaps the heavy hand of the past on themselves, the older Indians are looking primarily to the future of their young. - Particularly, it will benefit a younger generation, because we are trying to educate a younger generation in equal to other nationalities. Most of our younger kids are going into school without having the basic knowledge of the English language. The Vista program, Volunteers in Service to America, a domestic peace corps, seems to stir much hope among officials and Indians alike. - However, I like the aspect of the Vista Volunteers program extremely well because it provides

us with the people-to-people contact and working directly with the individuals of each reservation. - As far as the Vista volunteers are concerned, it's a good thing. This is going to be our means of communication between the Indians and the administrative groups, such as your BIA or tribe here itself, and whoever is concerned. These are your, more or less, your pony expressmen. - Among the northern youths, where there has been much successful programming in recent years, there has been less progress in the EOA Community Action Program. Some of this seems to be due to bewilderment of bureaucracy or just poor communication. - And later on, I heard that they had been neglected, that they have never been notified

as to what meetings they were having. Has come to a standing still where there's no information how we should take another step? - Some groups will simply watch as other tribes experiment. - Some of our people has been sort of settin' back to see what comes out of the other people that's actually getting down and trying to do something. - A central issue that flows through the reaction of Indians to the poverty program is the possibility that could lead to an end of federal supervision and trusteeship over Indian affairs. For some Indians, such termination is a real goal. For most, it is a genuine fear. - We will one day be terminated and we don't know how to go about living our own lives other than depending on people.

But in order to get away from that situation, we shall always, we shall start right now by working for ourselves instead of waiting for someone else to come in and do it for us. We'll never have the opportunity to do these things for ourselves; besides, the government may one day leave us. When it comes to conveying this message over to our community, we're blocked by, from the people, from themselves, when they said this program led to termination and that was our biggest stumble block in our community. - These are pictures of the Shivwits Indians, a terminated tribe. With withdrawal of federal support, the need for resources among the Shivwits goes far beyond the capabilities of the vigorous local efforts now being made. The Indian knows he is not prepared for modern life in the same way as other Americans, but he has caught in the trap.

He wishes to preserve Indian values, but he wishes also to be accepted into our American society. The quality of reservation life and its social adequacy depend greatly on the degree to which a tribe has developed the skills necessary for group action. We assume all communities communicate adequately, yet this is a serious problem for the Indians, but they are trying, and trying to join the larger American community. - I believe the overall economic opportunity act will do a tremendous amount of good, not only for the younger generation of the Navajo tribe, but the older members as well. These are some of the goals, a few of the goals that we have in mind, and getting started, moving ahead, where the Navajo people will be brought into the mainstream of the American life, the so-called Great Society which the President of the United States has brought out in his campaign and the past election.

- But joining the American mainstream will not be easy. Indians continue to come to town, but are somehow not a part of town. If the economic opportunity program can become their program, if the Indians can match the federal financial investment, by making a psychological investment of their own, we will have done a great deal for them, far more than millions awarded them in lawsuits, hundreds of oil wells, and dozens of previous programs. One can sense the Indians' historical skepticism, but also his stirrings of hope. - Now again, Mr. Kiker asks Sargent Shriver about some of these problems. VISTA, the Volunteers in Service to America is more widely known as the domestic Peace corps, as you said. You say you hope to have about thirty five hundred of these volunteers at work and in training together by the end of the summer.

Will you meet this goal? - Well, that's a question, I don't know the answer to that perfectly, because we don't know how many people are going to volunteer, but we do know that more people have volunteered to VISTA in the first five months than volunteered to the Peace Corps. - What kind of people are you getting? - Well, interesting to me at any rate is a number of them, the age level is quite a bit older than the people who volunteered to the Peace Corps. I think you can understand that: it's not necessary to go abroad, it's not necessary to learn a foreign language. You only have to volunteer for one year service instead of two. You can work near your own home. - The job corps is designed to help the one million youngsters, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one who are out of work and out of school, and your schedule calls for you have nearly a hundred camps opened, and about twenty thousand people enrolled by the first of July. First of all, would you make this goal? - Yes, we will. - Some critics say the job corps is taking the best of the worst.

Is this true? Well, if it were that easy, why weren't they already handled successfully by other agencies? -A good answer. A good answer. I think it's true that we're going to bring into the job corps at the beginning of some people who are in extremely bad situations, but others who are not so bad. For example, I saw a boy from Eastern Kentucky at Camp Washita, Arkansas, just a few days ago. That's one of our job corps members. This boy was seventeen years old. He was illiterate, totally illiterate. He looked fine, he had a Texas cowboy hat on, cowboy boots, he must have weighed 180 pounds, he looked healthier than you and I looked, but... - But he couldn't read or write. He couldn't read or write, and it was a very moving thing to see the first sentence that boy had ever read. It was in a primer, and it was a little picture of an ant, and the first sentence was, I am not an ant, and then a little picture of a man, and it said, I am a man. Those are two first sentence that boy ever read, and it stirred him so that he was coming back to class continually, because he wanted to get to the point where not only could

he read, but he could write a letter home. Now, that's an American, and he was a white boy, not a Negro boy. A lot of people think there's a program only for Negroes; they forget that 80 percent of the poor people in America are white people. Operation Head Start is a summer program designed to prepare deprived children to begin school this fall. How many volunteers do you estimate that it'll take to make Operation Head Start a success this summer? I hope, as I've said a couple of times, that every college graduate, single girl, every talkative, affectionate grandmother in America, all the women who really are looking around for something constructive to do this summer will volunteer to join Project Head Start. It's a great opportunity for volunteers... You're also going to need professionals, though, aren't you... professional social workers, doctors, dentists. - Teachers. That's right. - How has your response been so far? - It's been excellent. - About 3,500 communities, all the way from a little tiny town like Bee Branch, Arkansas, or Acura [sp?], Iowa, up to New York City, have sent in cards saying that they want to participate

in this program. And they say, we can get the volunteers right here in Bee Branch, we'll get the volunteers, and we'll get the professionals right here in Bee Branch. It's really inspiring to see the way the people of America, when they're given a chance, will respond to meet a genuine need. Mr. Shriver, finally I'm going to ask you to look ahead a bit now and try to peer into the future. By the end of June 1966, the federal government will have spent $2.25 billion approximately in its anti-poverty program. Can you tell us, with some good luck and some hard work, where do you expect this program to be then and where do you expect it to be headed? - Let me say this, one of the finest economists on this subject in America, Professor Robert Lampman, at the University of Wisconsin, predicted to me four or five months ago that if the federal government would maintain this program at a level of about a billion dollars a year for ten years, it could cut the poverty in the United States by ten percent, it could

cut it from twenty-one percent to eleven percent. Now you can say that is not eliminating poverty, it's true, but that would be a tremendous accomplishment. Now, I'm not prepared, because I'm not as much of an expert as he is, to say whether he's right or wrong, but I do believe that we have a chance. I know we have a chance of eliminating poverty in this country, provided we're willing to commit to this war, resources, comparable to what we have done in other major and attacking other major problems in our country. Just take the case of health, the health of the country, think of the millions and billions which we spend to keep the American people healthy. Every nickel of it is a good investment. If we spend anything like that in eliminating poverty in this nation, I'm sure we'll be successful. Mr. Shriver is determined and he is enthusiastic. His account of early progress seems more cheerful than the reports of our regional editors. In Appalachia, in Negro slums, on Indian reservations, in every pocket of poverty, it is evident that there are barriers to be overcome: apathy, ignorance, confusion, and a spirit

of politics as usual. It is obvious that the aggressive mood of Washington is not matched on the local scene, and it's in the community that this battle will be won or lost. [music] [music] This is NET, the National Educational Television Network.

This is NET, the National Educational Television Network.