thumbnail of Public Broadcast Laboratory; 221; Mexican Americans: The Invisible Minority and None of My Business
Transcript
Hide -
If this transcript has significant errors that should be corrected, let us know, so we can add it to FIX IT+
it's been you know several years it's b none of my heart of a surge for a new solution to the problems of public will also look at the people who comprise about an invisible minority mexican americans
in addition the national board chief correspondent edward p morgan a first a word to the sponsors crowded with the superman the way that works at least in my family of my wife goes one way i get another the three young american appeal to get lost you're ready usually i just roll aimlessly around stored on this trip i started listening to my kids in the car the next sunday i came back with a camera crew when nobody was around and there's only two facts i can give on what follows one my children watch television and the other which i empathize with that they can't read a single word what'd you do
your life well you know all of reports on the dangers of too much television never struck home but suddenly the jingle this it seemed that a child's ability to handle tv violent crime had more to do with a home in the program what is that also true with commercial clearly they are the math question is what are they really saying when the youngest doesn't make it up the
others to eat katie you're going to get even women never knew what was in the right well you know what you do
how much they seemed to know about not but you know it took five minutes for the pudding but then they're only beginning to learn to tell time for the commercial key to that is well i was putting them on during the day but of course they were putting me on too you know what tyler cry so greater the spread between tv
promised an actual performance that there's an obvious skepticism that doesn't seem to matter like hollywood the promise may be phony know looks good to them the inability to lie but you don't believe it already what would you do it really was
bad doctor fly higher power is president of fiscal state coach is all full well known fermented foods and not surprisingly he recognized impact of tv commercials long before i went to the supermarket it's been estimated that a child at the age of sixteen or seventeen and by this time spent twenty two thousand dollars and more time they've ever spent in school more anniversary more much more common to them in his launch church is the big dig for him which of his life and in a way then this matter of introducing a set of values and seven years old syed the ball into the hole and without parental supervision is a new phenomenon that's going on in our time and very often parents of teenage children suddenly discover that their children at close range for them they were shocked
horrified when leno or what went on very often went on a very good living where will compete her fans may not know what's going on in the living room one obviously the producers who were in the so called youth market including everyone from infants to college in the advertising industry estimates that there is a potential fifty billion dollar a year market whatever it is we're doing and liars and i think we're doing is an ardent ryan yeah i'm in a more violent man by j walter thompson the huge
agency a team of two copywriters a producer and an artist spent months creating a commercial for a sandwich cookie afterward they talk about that i think that that you do try to repeal certain things that that you remember your own childhood report you a big one of course is always getting a lot of something sweet square killings week and i think that we're trying to you know go after kids it the citizens of grief because that really is that i think it's like a lot but something if they like people that are making love taking a pre school child to the supermarket and allowing their child to make a decision to participate in the weekly shopping routine money doesn't really care that much that she would be with her aria but she never found it but in a way we are helping her leave her job the stakes are too high to the gym purely on creative accounting
frauds in commercials are often first tested on children by psychologist probe for hidden objections and better ideas the sessions last about two all parents get paid their reactions are taped to one way mirrored for the client the parties our commercials have a
curious way of well cause being a proactive interesting and painting but they do have a way of saying that material possessions are everything that all problems whether of personal malice or emotional dissatisfaction or whatever it may be a real there's a consumer product all those except that now us surgeon general is planning a million dollar one year study on the effects of tv violent one youngster no real study has been made on the impact of commercials on children and no study now i will make insurance more so nothing wrong with thinking about selling products and making a lot of money but
let's think about the children who and an independent socially responsible for dr joseph cryan and old in child psychiatry has done some important research on the effects of television on disturbed children but he says one doesn't have to be a psychiatry to recognize the impact of commercials on any chart one point you make is going to be you try to do to get people to think about life the way to pave the way to a rally they cry it's
been cite a panhandler down the street and the common reflexes to bypass him with a mixed feeling of anger and guilt anger that the bomb hadn't had the gumption to get a job and guilt that just maybe our society hasn't given them the brakes he deserves as a fellow human being we americans of long nurse this ambivalence dodging the real facts we have embraced as gospel the biblical quotation that the poor are always with us the american civilization of grudgingly tolerate them as if they were an ineradicable you we used to toss them a bowl of charity and christmas basket we have added community chest drives building in a gift to ourselves by making the contributions tax deductible and since the great depression we have sustained that hated sometimes mismanaged sometimes abuse always misunderstood thing called welfare the air is filled with cries for printed every four years left because welfare is injustices and indignities piqued our conscience and
because its soaring costs had pitched this in the pocketbook but it turns out that our prejudices and misconceptions about welfare have often been more of a problem than the problem itself as the deal discovered in producing this fail it is a villain there's
well there are these days find a job for me a job where i can work on my own i
wanna drive they would give me a job where i would make i mean i don't know why my mind i would want well i think people when people of a lower bar here you go out of their way to the people who need it twenty two million americans are officially classified as poor forty eight and a half million of them survival comes in the form of a public welfare check last year alone the welfare rolls twelve fourteen percent and since nineteen fifty it's called sword four hundred eighty percent we spend seven billion dollars a year to maintain the public welfare system to many americans the welfare rolls are saturated with lazy people would rather sit back and take it easy while hard working taxpayers foot the bill to those who believe in the great american dream that every man can pull himself up by his own bootstraps
a solution to the welfare problem is primarily a matter of taking people off the welfare rolls and putting them on the payrolls what is fact what is who are these people on welfare and what changes are needed in our welfare system commission on incoming question the commission appointed by president johnson in january nineteen sixty eight has been holding public hearings in twenty communities across the country its mandate is to examine existing public welfare and income maintenance programs and to report their findings and to propose necessary reforms to president nixon by january nineteen seventy this is the public hearing held in march of this year in fresno california the richest agricultural county in the world the chairman is maxwell wrap a new york attorney and former secretary of the cabinet under president eisenhower the other commissioners are and lindsey brown former governor of california and texas state senator
barbara jordan are you all know when we lost our nineteen fifty one to nineteen fifty four working right or you have a medical bill after your and among them you haven't known and i want us to a new entity you know well robert wittman of development but it needs to get
our equipment and i knew would be able to lead these expenses with your you know your reply well and what happened why make him and learning more time working and he'd been and that he paid around until we moved here and had been here in the county and then presents a new marketable skill no no no how would you characterize your relationship with the relationship with the wealth their port
do you feel that they did anything for you and you think that the reason that you was because all of the regulations may have to administer what we call the current administration they didn't take a lot of jordanian great moment of view and the point you could not paying more in here thank you the blind and otherwise totally disabled family aged account for forty percent of the national
welfare cases more than fifty percent are children under the age of eighteen long live in the county and being in nineteen forty seven your video and you ever apply for assistance from ole opry they are all you know oh you did it in your years of junior new mate alaska ah
ah thick of campaign ad even if you do you work are you crying do you have plans or are doing hi liane yeah yeah
thank you more than ninety percent of the people on welfare are children under age eighteen the aged the blind totally disabled therefore even with the most liberal use of the term not more than ten percent of those on welfare can be classified as employees or a widespread belief that the welfare rolls are packed with healthy employable people who have chosen not to work and are beating the system is a myth unfortunately as one listens to announcement by public officials and examine some of the federal and state legislation it's clear that this mission is considered fact even by many people in government when the
total poor population of twenty two movies examined perhaps the most startling fact is that in one third of all poor family a father is steadily employed throughout the year therefore those who propose an employment approach to poverty and welfare are suggesting that somehow we find a way to make the aged young enough to work with disabled able enough to work and the young old enough to work in fresno county calif as is true in the urban centers of the country many able bodied men cannot find work and many of those who are working are not making enough money to pull themselves out of poverty we talk about the wage a better wage in which people are supposed to support five six seven ten kids america worth a hundred hours a week in order build support that family adequately have to expect a man to work on hours a week and you will do that so i think we're forgetting about a group of people that made the living are other rich as balin the
world in many ways of course one world i'm going to be all right this particular allocation on is the white ones are like a lot of concern that we continue science the richest agricultural second in the ninth day they're working on the individual farms potentially you're right they have to go out and this is a good example this time a year when the weather's tell that there's no way that these people can earn any money of a kind and i know they do
not want cherry they want a system whereby they can be counted on in a society that all hinge on that cruz failures by verdi oh really it is it's got a plot
in fresno county when the farm labor out is working his income may be adequate body can look forward to only six or seven months of full time employment on the other hand many of the urban poor enjoy steady yearly employment would receive lower wages in other words neither one earns enough money over the twelve month period to achieve a minimum standard of living however for the farm laborer there is an additional hardship unlike most poor urban workers farm laborers are excluded from the unemployment insurance when a farm labor is out of work when the sense here's nonproductive he receives no compensation ironically when a farmer has instructed not to plant a crop in order to stabilize market prices went in a sense he is non productive he is compensated this has been described as socialism for the
rich free enterprise for the poor why very very different and i live at and i think of the getting welfare that they would get in welfare would only turn around and they need more and then went there they can get any wannabe or buy them because they're fun about here every year we began and millions of dollars i love the garment begun vetting word leonarda be there than here with your photo years the minimum of what they're called on thing given that doesn't call welfare even that real their real work that won all of their rugged granite of them didn't make the war with the roar we talk about the welfare and given people some money but i think that their agriculture as an industry receive a lot more certainty the novel welfare recipient of the state a california pioneer just in fresno county last year farmers in this area were subsidizing
excessive sixty million so they wouldn't plan b our technological studies at the university of california santa barbara davis and so on and so forth to greet machineries put the people have a job and i frankly find it rather difficult to see the difference between a subsidy to its former for planning a cross and a subsidy to end well for a family which is not working or unable to work are extremely controversial a half it and i'm sure that you could get all sorts of opinion of that is tax money and it is so i granted to people for something which is not accomplished except in a negative manner that they do not grow certain amount of certain crops the american people voiced little objection to their tax
dollars being used for business subsidies or try out loudly against welfare grants would the reason be that welfare receives an imbalance of the attention and publicity or is there a basic resentment against the poor kennedy that many hard working americans resent the fact that welfare recipients into getting something for nothing very well i am a
human being and the next person it cheated as a human being i like to be talks with a human being and that i don't know that many people have tried to get on the welfare to that season the last resort you get the feeling that the interview is get more money out of his pocket mr levy thank you no no your daughter and then you valiant than me and that and we feel that we apply that roosevelt to me that mr
will be better we should have a commission would be a mommy like you people were that they should have a commission to explain to me for them i don't know you or do you you're welcome it is now called a lady and when they get to you you get so i don't know it from that they don't think that now are you you're welcome
i didn't know a firefighter will provide a lifetime worth about twice white like people are really that goes against ukraine didn't take anything like or look like or i don't know ruined become a number one so why is that you feel you're dating who are now their government whether they're what makes you feel like you're in your brain when you go in looking at food you know we are the people really if you are in need of help you needed during the time when we're not working on gender
they'll have money available to take care of this city would you object to receiving that world who you mentioned tom perrotta welcome people do have a standard lines we do get very busy we do have long federal state and county forms to fill out which asked every question from when you last flip your toenails on that this is a part of the us is working with i think it was a lot of a lot of their dignity a way out that would eliminate radio was almost everyone from welfare recipients to welfare
administrators complains about the system of federal government does not set welfare standards all public assistance programs are determined and administered by each individual state the result is a hodgepodge of programs different greatly in objectives coverage and benefits from state to state and sometimes even from county to county in mississippi for example the maximum monthly payment to be aged is fifty dollars in california it's one hundred eighty seven dollars and fifty cents in some states a single aged person can receive a larger ground than an unemployed mother with three children and that no state has assistance given to the working poor the inadequacies of the welfare system can best be understood through an understanding of its history most of the programs have their origin in the year following the great depression of the early thirty four essentially unworkable proposal build programs
to take care of the blind the table in the aged and to provide temporary assistance for those who have therefore been employed but who were no longer employed because of the vicissitudes of the business cycle the assumption of those programs won't let this period of temporary employment has tidy over of temporary bad luck would become unnecessary and disappear at the business cycle again picked up the slack but today we are aware that we have a structured poor but we have a poor who in any case you cannot work are not prepared for this
or are working and airy yet poor it's widely agreed that the welfare system established in nineteen thirty five is grossly inadequate to handle the problems of nineteen sixty nine the system as costly complicated inefficient and in a quote and although all multitude of programs to help the poor has been initiated in recent years the war on poverty remains one of the longest and most poorly fought wars in america's history it get the money directly i suggest that you really want to help the poor the
national minimum wage of two dollars an hour the past immediately as i think yes there was one exception to the program to help the poor get nothing but madrigal project have to say i would like to suggest that this meeting is just another exercise in futility i would like to suggest serious illness a government agency has created to help the poor their primary interest one more quarterback if you really want to know more i suggest that the only program but our objective was all controlled by the poor people and so that the larger the program becomes the less the control or people have and the water program begun yet another bureaucracy the boats
black against round red against white turban against were all in order to perpetuate itself the government the space not the one that poor people are going to let it play games with them anymore it's day seven hundred and the bat how the memoir the education or july from here on how a poor people are playing pretty it seems that we are living in an era of commissions and perhaps the poor know this better than anyone else they have appeared before many commissions which were appointed to help them would have seen a few results in any condition studies and recommendations are gathering dust in america's attic with the president's commission on income maintenance programs also become just another exercise in futility well here's your not being unrealistic we're not kidding ourselves that form of income and
guarantee year is widely accepted by the by the american public we know that it will be a difficult job to convention president kong which other persons whom are involved in the economic structures affected that this is an answer to some of the problems with rage when liam the attitude that is changing support our public officials are concerned it has forty nine members of the business community concern we have a finding that the idea although some form of income and program is gaining accepted and though the the technique of persuasion will be a at oshkosh public relations program part of commissioners and other people believe that
this is the way to go on america to educate the public on what is involved gaining acceptance of the ibm and gaining commitment on the part of the college to be enacted program now that our congressman who had introduced various forms of income guarantee program june they have not been enacted into law this is a beginning and we know that i'm finding the day go by and they will bring to the occasion the people who are in charge of an acting the laws of this country the fact that this is an acceptable level of an acceptable alternative to the welfare structures that we now have one of the commission's first and possibly most difficult tasks is to persuade government officials and the public that regardless of our great
prosperity in expanding job opportunities there are some people who through no fault of their own simply cannot make regardless of how often are how loudly we recite the great american trained there are some people who cannot hold themselves out of poverty a poor need help it is their right to receive our help and to receive it with dignity yes we're giving bao way that we are we're all are they may have a
right to the wall our heroes you've correspondent edward p morgan with his personal point of view in the nineteen sixty four presidential campaign senator goldwater had a particularly rousing rally in odessa texas and arab area noted for its rich petroleum deposits in conservative politics and how he felt the evening had gone or water said great these are my kind of people they came out here they work hard and they struck oil a senator was not joking he reflected the time honored american tradition which as enshrined hard work as a novel exercise producing end do with oblique the rewards of success the trouble is that not every country i just foreigners fortunate enough to strike oil millions have labored a lifetime a little
more to show for it but a mortgage and a heart attack gradually american society is beginning to concede that some jobs can be demeaning and that luck and ruthlessness and have a lot to do with success gradually we're beginning to realize that people are not always to blame for their own misfortunes that a man is not necessarily a center just because he is unemployed plainly society have an obligation to the poor that goes beyond charity clearly welfare is now operated is not the answer but unsurprisingly president nixon as finding performance harder than his campaign promise to get people off welfare rolls and on the payrolls the harsh fact is the helpless welfare cases are simply not salvageable much of this is due to past neglect seated in the ridiculous american dream fantasy that everybody can make it to the top if you only drive last week the nixon administration
gave a hardening into it was not committed to past mistakes that one way to avoid still bigger welfare laws in the future with a stop manufacturing potential but inevitable dropouts from society the approach to concentrate on bettering and training of the young before they are automatically locked into a situation of hopelessness in his legislative method to congress president nixon's stressed the need for a greatly increased aid to that child under five which you've described as the most dependent conspicuously a whole at the same time a career veteran of the bureau of the budget michael march was expounding his personal argument to a world affairs conference at the university of colorado that view is being cheated in federal priority some thirty five billion dollars earmarked in the nineteen seventy budget for twenty million americans over sixty five while only fifteen billion is provided for nearly eighty two
million americans under twenty one that breaks down to about seventeen hundred and fifty dollars worth of federal aid to an old person compared to a hundred and it for a child the best explanation for this staggering discrepancy says former at w secretary john gardner is simply that senior citizens can vote and children playing the idea is not to rob the older to reimburse dr millions of senior citizens are having a rough enough as it is but a more equitable balance needs to be struck at the va secretary french and proposed a thorough overhaul of federal child development program's budget year march would invest especially in nutritional aid for children he notes the link between malnutrition and mental retardation it's timeless civilized nation so called check its own mental retardation in its savage handling of the plight of the poor he
is thank you we'll continue
to a producer joel rose bowl report on mexican americans the invisible minority i think that the civil rights movement as just really smart and really going out a day well ahead at a o mexican americans are the second largest ethnic minority in the united states the five million of them
ninety percent of whom live in the five southwestern state of california colorado arizona new mexico and texas some like these final land areas of new mexico i've been living there for hundreds of years scores of years before the landing of the mayflower others joined a steady stream of migrants across the rio grande from mexico every day a group of the youngest and fastest growing ethnic population in the nation traditionally mexican americans have been under caution workers of the most gentle of multiple people there was little need to change their language and culture club recently the impact of technology and the changing economy the subject of the community to massive political and social dislocation within a relatively short period thousands of drive to the cities green with all the disadvantages of the tradition move
people lack of education a foreign language the black revolution with its high drama both inspired and somewhat obscured the more localized protests of mexican american troops there now demanding the rights of citizenship and participation in economic political and social discontent regardless of the disparity of the shins we're faced with or that style of protest on emerging leaders speaker from our us out of the race and almost mystical nationalistic on so it unites he knows or he's gone orzel mexicanos new leaders a difference though for corky gonzales fond of the crusade for justice and an organized a cultural center which is now a peaceful community i asked who are you know a fiery thanksgiving
is head of the federal alliance of free city states whose members electrified new mexico by a daring raid on a concorde host and see as a child is a huge farm labor movement is strongest in terms of numbers the national income was started his battle against california grows three years ago in march
don't have to go outside is a mexican american scholar author and lecturer election he will come to this country have been the very poorest of the poor of like the enemy fifty years they have had no choice but to work in the lowest income brackets of the economy they've been only on the most part of the political economically and socially during the fifty years these have been for people from the very beginning and then there are very very little capital formation like a normal industry has practically no stake in the economy they don't live on capitol hill as they always have traditionally lived as one of their brow and nine part of their daily lives as a kind of a population in a report by the us commission on civil rights states that more than
one third of all mexican american families living in the south west lived in the official poverty that is when incomes of less than three thousand dollars a year a mexican american is seven times more likely than an annual white to live in a substantive house the chance that these baby will be born dead twice as good the unemployment rate is two terms that the ngo's and of those employed the vast majority almost eighty percent would get an skill low paying jobs the cycle of poverty usually begins in new areas such as this one in south texas most of the counties here have a forty to sixty percent spanish speaking population forty percent or more a concerted functionally illiterate and many live in empathy and as they are called that's actually
quite a big way is the villain an enough it is but you're going to pay you
here the particular the point of view the podium it's a beautiful situation for years the more money workers
but today as we all became serving in sixty five sixty six and there's a mighty nice and twenty five thousand people in our seventy nine percent of all the power of the market it's bad i mean i think it drives the basic
necessities of life they're deprived of luxury living many of our children and they were leaving behind very good and secondly it's an awareness white as it really is sometimes he just this little bit because some of our boys and girls have never been outside of the town the people have never been this large corpus christi which is only sixty miles away and they don't know what a park is what only is they don't know what to go boating fishing and this of course in anybody's interests
it's b in the bay area spanish gentleman who
hear way of thinking about it in and researching time to discover new and better ways we know the odds of movie the birds of course doctor got some points out that there's been a revolutionary change in the mexican american population functional illiterates he inherited from generations of miss education in new areas has become the major focus of mexican american protest in open areas yet the stereotype of the mexican ever when mexican laborer says as
we go along we talk about a mexican cumbia scene or has the typical a typical mexican think he's he's a specially i would guess that in the nineteen seventies and says will show if not better at least than ninety percent concentration aisle portions of fatty surname and of mexican ancestry living in the city and the displacement of the rural mexican and the migration to the cities me that in the last fifteen years we're largely himself was like san antonio phoenix los angeles times article was no and others out a very very large population of americans being a refugee
they're not refugees from mexico variety of displacement and from economic exploitation in rural areas and have come to the cities to look for what's happening to the mexican psychologically is that having been relegated having been caught out from they didn't have education and from participation in the economy consideration as human being as they are now looking for an ideology that will first of all to make them feel important make them feel dignified make them feel worthy the search for an etiology coincides with the surge by youthful mexican american individuals one identity in the spectrum of american protest and action in denver colorado and has that need by digging deep into the fares last year he founded el centro de
la cruz either self help community based dedicated to a cultural renaissance with a mexican american ms larson the mother spanish father began with a sketch based on one side as a great predicament rock twenty thousand years the other side three hundred it would total about violence coming from the eastern seaboard and again you say well that's hats as the villains today who has a lot of violence today has a lot to do with us with the culture that our people that is going to the graves with a whole people so that we had very little going what we are not a nation it's it's more points out the generation japanese and your political can power so to speak in a small number of its economic and july and it goes in the majority is a sign that the money comes back in the region
for themselves about the people you know this is because they control richard the controllers when necessary to get it and you come back i know the helmet what they think is where the art is read all the problems for the massive market it is both who is going to be the status quo right here we have to be very very important to our people it's right here and this is why
chris and thirty thousand women and nations that took place in the city and the county edition teaching that basic family units you might say no because bell the pope so the people from the ages from ten eleven up to sixty four and
we sit through something that some people are calling students housewives the us can relate to what we're talking about an answer to the party's most needy across the art of undoing a minute discuss something that they won't do or wouldn't do it would undo the society because it's not mm hmm they're learning about themselves really learned about the heroes that they can identify with learning about it given the fact that there are people like within months he witnessed the fields and the fact that there is a god right interesting short stories louisa may alcott great interest to know that there are
women with their names that have that are now contemporary success of america we're right next door to our culture you know it isn't like having to go back to our overseas for failing the pacific or the atlantic this to people that you come from a big stamp on the people that we scamper whether their blood relatives are even vaguely related to us i'm terribly have i mean we have our culture and it's a continual flood that if they do legal means it's definitely illegal means i don't have the number or anything but i know a very good mother they're confident mexicans the broader cross illegally to work in the fields and other things for the nectar they feared there are then they join at it and here the kid who walks in the
doors and you know that has some senators say a yes sir no sir and if you are i mean you know the holy grail for what it is government money you yawn in many ways i tried we wouldn't be
doing it and breighton went there they were very connected and i come home and tell my parents that lady macbeth had we found out we don't have to expect that the market they're not going to win and we're going to work with him and keep him our new way of life there's a vast ignorance about the mexican and consequently there's others and that the mexican is pliable he's not resistant and that anybody can do anything to him that anybody wished for this issue drew but i didn't become an urban lexicon another there's a more numerous generation of the mexican to have gone to school
then you'll have even gone to college while observing what's happening to the urban community the tensions within the mexican community are increasing and they show themselves in the current protests these are reflected in the student protests there reflected in the educational conditions school system and they're going to be like last year the hands of east los angeles where some seven hundred thousand mexican americans live on the local school board for four consecutive days they couldn't slept in knight's protesting big emotional for young mexican american high school teacher who had been accused of organizing this issue is an awful combination point because parents have long been complaining about the school systems less interesting mexican country in history this and they believe
the basis of the drug problem predominantly mexican american high schools at east los angeles register as high as fifty three percent of that a few of the students going on to college you know dr martin i mean it yeah
yeah we hear you again mm hmm euro eighty eight oh man he's been the pen thank you
the top of the suspicious eighteen a whole colony of the largest concentration of mixing in an estimated one point seven million consisting of about four hundred and twenty thousand ipads and their native born americans of these three hundred and fifty thousand families living on an average income of less
than two thousand dollars a year average education is about eight years of schooling for years no one in those two years less than blacks vicious cycle whoa whoa whoa whoa years ago to win for california in and we're going to do some rights that working men elsewhere have been enjoying thirty years or more now element a democracy collective bargaining in union recognition a fair wage and ease and working conditions california farm labor makes four billion dollars to help of an estimated three hundred and three hundred and fifty thousand mexican american agricultural workers with the help of a powerful lobby in congress e breaux unions can leave mexico and accuse exemption for international relations at those clothes have held out against concessions
today the cyclists have changed tactics last october they launched a nationwide boycott of table grapes in cities across the nation bringing the upkeep of the marketplaces of this country let's get labor economic intimidation and called the guerrillas who lobbies and to live by their conscience in the majority would be unfortunate because soviet fact that when you strike down the entire structure in this area we have a county police almost every political subdivision is against us voice mails but seasoned chalmers isn't the time in
fact it really still fighting and they haven't been able to so far the fact that the name of the context of the fact that we've moved the roads an awful lot we move them from the beginning when they condemned as an inkling that was most striking to a point where they have to admit that a strike was in progress to the point where they now the unique that's what we
need your life that i want to get rid of because i know are like given that the very very long road to get the money they got the lobbyists and everything and we don't get that you are going to give it to me the media into our writing and within that or they're i think there's one very small paycheck thank you inevitably jail free press but look at the bomb
today they're shaping up in this country a coalition of backlash years are backlash against the negro backlash against the low income man backlash against the legitimate protest against the exploitation are the mexican and the group of filipino indian song if the backlash as coal ash or less in one large national reaction there are some arbitrary days
ahead for the mexican american community and its organizations but then survive and as i look into the next four years i have moral misgivings after the ability the capacity the durability of the mexican he's adorable man what he thinks of himself as a lot of us are these he's not speaking of rights he speaking now enduring spirit next week we get independence and sing songs that nourishes a traditional or i'd make them resistant assimilation is my land is last july two young poet mike culture has been great
i limp from the lines of the welfare bill behind the shroud of mediocrity the music of my peoples does avoid saying whatever i call myself a gun or latino you can sell the pain
in nice
if he'd you want the power to pass by the players because the players but
it's been series of interconnected world it is seriously ill second season nationwide distribution of the proceeding program as a service of the corporation for public broadcasting late in life four hundred stanford university students moved into the university's applied electronics laboratory were classified research is being carried on for the military
the occupation followed a decision by the stanford trustees not to accede to student demands that the university sees research into chemical biological warfare and counterinsurgency studies for southeast asia spearheaded by the stanford chapter of students for a democratic society the city and culminated a semester long organizing effort by student radicals he yells second season in a special two hour program examines the sources of this turmoil in one of america's leading universities bpl will present through two perspectives an intimate view of the student radical challenge under the administration's response is and moves toward institutional changes seen here sunday night april twenty seven on pbs
Series
Public Broadcast Laboratory
Episode Number
221
Episode
Mexican Americans: The Invisible Minority and None of My Business
Producing Organization
National Educational Television and Radio Center
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/516-sb3ws8jm5c
NOLA Code
PPBL
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/516-sb3ws8jm5c).
Description
Episode Description
"None of My Business": Welfare seems to be turning into a major preoccupation of the new Administration. "None of My Business," first part of the Public Broadcast Laboratory episode seen in color on Sunday, April 20, sets out to debunk some widespread notions about life on welfare. There are more than eight million people on welfare rolls in the United States, and the number is growing every day. To some people, this statistic indicates a softening of the moral fiber in large sectors of the population, and an epidemic of sheer laziness. The facts, as PBL producer David Brenner notes, are that of those eight million, half are children too young to work, a third are aged people, too old to work, and some 700,000 are either blind or otherwise disabled, not able to work. Of the remaining 800,000 according to findings reported in the broadcast from a nationwide survey made by the Commission on Income Maintenance set up early last year by President Johnson, less than a quarter million welfare recipients could indeed work - if work was available to them. Last month (March) Brenner went to Fresno, to film hearings of the presidential Commission and to take a look at what life on welfare is like for income less people in the surrounding San Joaquin Valley. One of the world's most prosperous agricultural areas, the Dan Joaquin Valley has registered an increment in area wealth of one million dollars everyday of every year since 1950. Yet 13.5 percent of the valley's total populations are on welfare. That's 56,000 people. Fresno was one of 20 cities around the country selected by the Commission for full investigation in order to get a coherent picture of the welter of welfare episodes in the nation and how well they work. Last year, while Gross National Product increased by five percent, welfare rolls increased by 14 percent. The cost of welfare, nationally, has risen by 480 percent since 1950, to an estimated $7 billion for 1968-1969. The Commission has been trying to find out what has gone wrong. Late this year it is expected the Commission will recommend sweeping overhauls in the complex welfare structure, which varies steeply from city to city, from county to county, and from state to state. PBL producer Brenner remarks that the whole question of welfare must be brought down from America's attic, off the shelves where earlier reports on the seriousness of the welfare situation have long laid gathering dust. "We've got to realize that welfare and poverty are the concern of every one of us." "The Invisible Minority": Just as Stepin Fetchit was for decades one of the few Negroes visible in movies, the only Mexican American visible hitherto in network television was an Anglo, Bill Dana, with his Joes Jimenez character. No longer. "The Invisible Minority," a wide ranging documentary on America's second largest ethnic minority, the Mexican Americans, is televised on Public Broadcast Laboratory in color on Sunday evening, April 20. The report on the struggles of America's five million Mexican Americans for a better life follows "None of My Business," a documentary on what life on welfare is like, and by "A Word to the Sponsor," a short look at some of the effects of television on small children. "The Invisible Minority" ranges over the Southwest, where most of the nation's five million Americans of Mexican descent and birth live, from the ghettos of Southern California to Denver, from the San Joaquin Valley to Beeville in Texas. The documentary chronicles efforts to win not only a better material life, but to maintain and develop an ethnic identity and a sense of dignity. From Cesar Chavez and his United Farm Workers Organizing Committee in the California vineyards to Reies Lopez Tijerina and his Federal Alliance of Free City States in Arizona and New Mexico to Rudolfo "Corky" Gonzalez and his Crusade for Justice in Denver, the broadest traces the development of the sense of "La Raiza," the almost mystical notion of the history and destiny of a race that had attained high civilization on this continent thousands of years before Columbus. To Joseph Louw, the PBL producer of the broadcast (and a black exile from South Africa), the descendent of Montezuma are now princes and kings of poverty. Fleeing the economic exploitation to which Mexican Americans have been so long subjected in many rural areas of the southwest yesterday's campesinos are moving to the cities. Many, however, remain behind, living below subsistence level. Louw notes that a civil rights movement is just beginning among Mexican Americans, a "Brown Power" movement largely inspired by - and to some extent obscured by - the black revolution. In the broadcast, Dr. Ernesto Galarza historian of the faculty of San Jose State College and a consultant to the Ford Foundation on Mexican American affairs warns that a critical stage in the evolution of Mexican Americans is fast approaching, due to widespread lack of sympathy or understanding for the minority's aspirations. "Dreary days ahead," the historian predicts. "Viva la Raiza" is the motto of Rudolfo Gonzales' Centro de la Crusada in Denver. A pugilist turned poet and activist, Gonzalez is struggling to restore to Anglicized - or Americanized - Mexican Americans a sense of their own worth, largely through celebration of the Mexican American heritage. According to Gonzales, the talk is not overwhelmingly difficult: "We're right next door to our own culture." "Viva la Raiza" is one of the slogans of the Delano grape strike. Louw notes that its leader, Cesar Chavez, is struggling to impart to the migrant workers now long engaged in "La Heuelga" a sense of their own dignity and potential, as well as trying to get for them a living wage. In East Los Angeles, home of some 700,000 Mexican Americans, the broadcast documents an instance in which concerned community action raised by "La Raiza" secured the reinstatement of a Mexican American teacher who had been suspended by the school system. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)
Other Description
PBL consists of 47-54 ninety-minute episodes.
Broadcast Date
1969-04-20
Asset type
Episode
Topics
Economics
Social Issues
Race and Ethnicity
Employment
Politics and Government
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
01:30:17
Embed Code
Copy and paste this HTML to include AAPB content on your blog or webpage.
Credits
Producer: Brenner, David
Producer: Louw, Joseph
Producing Organization: National Educational Television and Radio Center
AAPB Contributor Holdings
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
Citations
Chicago: “Public Broadcast Laboratory; 221; Mexican Americans: The Invisible Minority and None of My Business,” 1969-04-20, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-516-sb3ws8jm5c.
MLA: “Public Broadcast Laboratory; 221; Mexican Americans: The Invisible Minority and None of My Business.” 1969-04-20. American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-516-sb3ws8jm5c>.
APA: Public Broadcast Laboratory; 221; Mexican Americans: The Invisible Minority and None of My Business. Boston, MA: American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-516-sb3ws8jm5c