Public Broadcast Laboratory; 221; Mexican Americans: The Invisible Minority and None of My Business

The following program is brought to you in color. It is Sunday evening, April 20th, and this is PBL second season. A public broadcast laboratory, an experiment in public television. Tonight, a look at several layers of American society, the people who populate them and their attitudes. A lot of people are just sitting here in life, just warming a chair and going out and picking up my tax dollar in the form of a welfare check and I'm sick and tired of it. Tonight, none of my business, a film study of the people who are part of a search for a new solution to the problems of public welfare. Also, a look at the people who comprise what has been America's invisible minority, Mexican Americans. In addition, the personal point of view of Chief Correspondent Edward P. Morgan.

But first, a word to the sponsors. It started with a trip to the supermarket. The way that works, at least in my family, is my wife gets a cart and goes one way. I got another, the three youngsters, and an urgent appeal to get lost until the bags are ready. Usually, I just roll aimlessly around the store, but on this trip, I started listening to my kids in the cart. 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 is that my children watch television and the other, which I emphasize, is that they can't read a single word. Hey, yeah, that's cool gate 100. And what does it do? Oh, it's very strong.

Is it better than Crest? Yeah. Why? You know, it sparkles your teeth. How do you know? Because we see it on a person. Rebecca! Rebecca! Oh, there's Dad's root beer. Hey, there's Lassie. Lassie, that's dog food. When you see him on the label, that means it screens your food. It's a coin that melts in your mouth, not in your hand. It's like the worst kind of dirt. And you don't have to keep them in the refrigerator. All those reports on the dangers of too much television never struck home, but suddenly the jingles did. It seemed that a child's ability to handle TV violence and crime had more to do with the home than the program. But is that also true with commercials? Clearly, they are the message. The question is, what are they really saying? When the youngest doesn't pick it up, the others teach.

I can't remember the rest. Katie will help you. Sing it again. I'll help you. Hustle in your mouth. Hustle, put three in your knee. Sing it. Hustle, put three in your knee. Hustle. Say what? Now sing. Hustle, put rockets in your pocket. Hustle, put three in your pocket. No, rockets in your pocket. Hustle, put rockets in your pocket. Hustle, put three in your knee. Hustle, put rockets in your pocket. Hey, Hustle, wait for me. Even when they had never tried the product, they knew what was in the bright boxes, often with instructions. Take a present. Get some. What kind do you like, Molly? This kind. What has it got inside of them? Cups and spoons and powder. And then what do you do? You shake it up and then you put water in it.

And then you shake it up. And then you wait for five minutes. And it's all finished when you wait for five minutes. How much they seem to know about nothing. They knew it took five minutes for the pudding. But then they're only beginning to learn to tell time. But a commercial teaches that as well. I was putting them on during the day, but of course, they were putting me on too. Well, have you heard of proton energy pill? Proton energy pill? What's that? Oh, Roger Amget has that. He eats it and then he starts speaking up. And we know a secret word to that. What? One for all and all for when the eagle flies, the dog is done. Hi, how, hey, hey, hey. You're like liniment gum. Um, um, um, um, um, um. Oh, I took a fast bus when you flew. Hi, how, hey, hey, hey.

You're like liniment gum. It's good to think your mouth into wiggly liniment gum. It will give flavors, breath in your mouth, and a good chewing helps you go smoother and faster. So great is the spread between TV promise and actual performance that there's an obvious skepticism. But that doesn't seem to matter. Like Hollywood, the promise may be phony, but it still looks good to them. Hey, look at these splits. Yeah, and you get one of these. They're an airplane. You get an airplane if you do what? If you pay for it. What do you think about commercials? Sometimes we don't believe what we like on the commercials. Why? Because maybe it's not true. Sometimes they just say it, and sometimes it's for real. They're just saying it. How come? Because... So you could buy it. Yeah, so you could buy it.

But you don't believe it always? No, not every day. Why do they want you to buy it? So they could make money. So they could make plenty of money. You like to watch television commercials? Yep. But you don't believe everything they say? No, but we love to watch them. You love to watch them? Yeah. How come you like to watch them, honey? But we believe it. You believe what? I don't know. Dr. S.I. Hayakawa is president of San Francisco State College. He is also a well-known semanticist. And not surprisingly, he recognized the impact of TV commercials long before I went to the supermarket. It's been estimated that a child at the age of 16 or 17 by this time spent 22,000 hours in front of a television set. More time than he's ever spent in school. More time than he's ever, certainly more much more time than he's ever spent in a Sunday school or a church. It's the big, big form of influence of his life.

And in a way then this matter of introducing a set of values and set of ideas from outside the home into the home without parental supervision in much of the time is a new phenomenon that's going on in our time. And very often parents of teenage children suddenly discover that their children are totally strangers to them. And they are shocked and horrified and wonder what on earth went on. But what went on very often, it went on in their very living rooms where through the television set they got a whole complete set of values that the parents knew nothing about. Hey, look! It's related! Parents may not know what's going on in the living room, but obviously the producers do. In the so-called youth market, including everyone from infants to college students, the advertising industry estimates that there is a potential $50 billion a year market. Whatever it is when you're appealing to anyone,

you want to appeal to their desires, whatever those desires may be. And I think when you're appealing to kids, in order to try and figure out how to appeal to them, think of them in a more simplified manner. At J. Walter Thompson, a huge agency, a team of two copywriters, a producer and an artist, spent months creating a commercial for a sandwich cookie. Afterward, they talked about it. I think that you do try to appeal to certain things that you remember in your own childhood were important to you. I think one, of course, is always getting a lot of something sweet, since we're selling sweet things. I think that we were trying to go after kids, I hate to say it, a sense of greed, but it really is that. I think kids like a lot of something if they like it at all. The commercials, selling a cookie or selling a cereal or whatever, can be looked at as making mother's life easier, because taking the preschool child to the supermarket

and allowing that child to make a decision, to participate in the weekly shopping routine, mother doesn't really care that much whether she buys lickety-splits or Oreos, but she, now this sounds kind of funny, but in a way we're helping her please her child. Now remember what this is, this is a toothpaste. Would it make more fun to brush your teeth? Yeah! All right, let's all do what we did before. The stakes are too high to depend purely on creative talent. Products and commercials are often first tested on children by psychologists, who probe for hidden objections and better ideas. The sessions last about two hours. The parents get paid and reactions are taped through one-way mirrors for the client. It smells like gumdrops. Like gumdrops? Are these all good things? Should a toothpaste smell like Coca-Cola? Yeah! Tell me now, you have tried this toothpaste, and you have tasted it, and you have seen it, and you have smelled it,

and you have seen the commercial for it. Do you think the commercial is honest? No. What commercials do you like? I can't think of a name, but I think it's Sex Appeal. New ultra-bright toothpaste, can't you really see? New ultra-bright, give your mouth! Sex Appeal! New ultra-bright toothpaste, that kickiest taste, the brightest teeth, the freshest breath, that spells Sex Appeal. New ultra-bright, give your mouth! Sex Appeal! Commercials have a curious way of, well, always being attractive, interesting, entertaining, but they do have a way of saying that material possessions are everything, that all problems, whether of personal illness or emotional dissatisfaction, or whatever may be ailing you,

there's a consumer product to be bought that will fix up everything. Now, listen. I am an acne pimple, as lonely as can be. The U.S. Surgeon General is planning a million-dollar, one-year study on the effects of TV violence on youngsters. No real study has been made on the impact of commercials on children, and no study is planned. Want to turn them off? Get TheraBlend, the skin-tone acne medicine that covers up as it helps clear up acne pimples. TheraBlend by Noxzema, the blemish silencer. You know, all right, we're making children's commercials. Nothing wrong with thinking about selling products and making a lot of money, but let's think about children's who? And in a socially responsible sense. Dr. Joseph Kramer, a noted child psychiatrist, has done some important research on the effects of television on disturbed children. But he says one doesn't have to be a psychiatrist to recognize the impact of commercials on any child.

What are you going to get out of it if what your role is, no matter how much you make on it, is going to be to try to get people to think about life the way it isn't instead of the way it is? Somebody's going to get hung up sometimes. There's got to be a, what do you call it, a day of judgment, or somebody's going to have to pay the piper sometimes. Hi-ho, hey-hey, do it quickly, women, come. Um-um-um-um-um-um-um, all right, let's go faster, will you, too? Hi-ho, hey-hey, do it quickly, women, come. Sight a panhandler down the street, and the common reflex is to bypass him with a mixed feeling of anger and guilt. Anger that the bum hasn't had the gumption to get a job, and guilt that just maybe our society hasn't given him the breaks he deserves as a fellow human being.

We Americans have long nursed this ambivalence, dodging the real facts. We have embraced as gospel the biblical quotation that the poor are always with us. The American civilization has grudgingly tolerated them as if they were an ineradicable evil. We used to toss them a bone of charity in Christmas baskets. 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 abused, always misunderstood thing called welfare. The air is filled with cries for purgative reforms, less because welfare's injustices and indignities have piqued our conscience than because its soaring costs have pinched us 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 PBL discovered in producing this film. Are you helpless?

No, sir, I'm not. Are you on welfare? No, sir, we're not, not now. Well, when you were, you were helpless. No, not exactly. Well, why were you on welfare? If you weren't helpless, why were you on welfare? Why didn't you get on and work like my mother does? If the welfare would sterilize, a lot of these over-fertile women would be a lot better off. Goodbye. Here's Henson Cargill on Country KMAK 21 now before 8 o'clock. Little kids sleeping with rats in the bed, well it's none of my business. It's been a long time since they've been fed, but it's none of my business. And more than a billion on the national debt, well it's none of my business. People in the slums are a little upset, that's none of my business. It's nothing, you look, you gotta have lazy, no good people before you have welfare.

No one, no one has a right to sit and do nothing and get paid for it, sir. Good night. Kids dropping out of school looking for a thrill, learning the laws, kill or be killed. I better take another pill, cause it's none of my business. Do you think, listen, did I have your children or am I the father of your children? I hope they have you now. Well then why in the name of God am I supporting them? Now the preacher's saying something about getting involved, well it's none of my business. He said we got trouble, said we gotta have song, well it's none of my business. Can I ask you what your ideas are? I told you my ideas, I say there's no excuse for welfare, God helps those who help themselves for those of us that lead on the Bible. Right, but it also says, it also says you are your brother's keeper. Now I go to church and I meditate, I don't even mind when they pass the plate.

But this stuff about my fellow man's faith, well it's none of my business, none of my business. I don't want welfare to support me, I want welfare to find a job for me, a job where I can work and make a living on my own. I don't want a charity. Well if somebody would give me a job where I would make, I mean I don't say a lot of money, but a reasonable amount of money, I wouldn't want the welfare. If you go, when you go before the welfare department, you're pegged as a beggar. You're going out there to beg, and when you do that, it's because you really need it. Twenty-two million Americans are officially classified as poor. For eight and a half million of them, survival comes in the form of a public welfare check. Last year alone, welfare rolls swelled 14 percent, and since 1950, its costs soared 480 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 who 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, the 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 myth? Who are these people on welfare, and what changes are needed in our welfare system? The President's Commission on Income Maintenance Programs is seeking answers to these questions. The commission, appointed by President Johnson in January 1968, has been holding public hearings in 20 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 1970. 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 Rabb, a New York attorney and former secretary of the cabinet under President Eisenhower. The other commissioners are Edmund G. Brown, former governor of California, and Texas State Senator Barbara Jordan. Are you employed? No, I'm not. When were you last employed? It was in 1958. What brought you to work to finance? I became disabled. In 1954, I fell off a ladder working out on a ranch. Did you have expensive medical bills after your injury? Enormous amounts. Did you have any assistance in paying for them? No, I didn't. Well, what would you estimate the total of the bills? Since 1959. Well, since 1958, I'd say at least $9,000. What are your monthly expenses?

Well, the payments run roughly $250 a month. Do you receive any Social Security? Yes, I do. I receive $107 a month. $107 a month. Are you able to meet these expenses with your income? No. Did you ever apply for welfare? Yes, I did. And what happened? Well, she said my wife made too much money. My wife's time was working, and she's been paying my doctor bills out of her salary. And she paid $170 a month for months and months out of her salary until we moved here. And after we moved here, her income was not large enough to meet the obligations we had. Then, at the present time, you're not able still to meet your bills? No, not myself, no, because I have to pay my own medical expenses.

How would you characterize your relationship with the Welfare Department? Therefore, do you feel that they did anything that would bother you? I feel they were unjustful to the disabled, because it's time I asked them for help. I was desperate and still am. Do you think that the reason that you found difficulty in getting help from them was because of the regulations they had to administer or because there was an arbitrary administration? They didn't take me as an individual because my wife had supported me and paid my medical bills until she came to the point she told me she could not pay no more of them. And all I asked for them was for medical care. And the second time I went to them, I asked them to bring my check up to the minimum standard of living

because my wife couldn't meet the conditions there and it was about to cause us to have a divorce. The blind and otherwise totally disabled and the aged account for 40% of the national welfare cases. More than 50% are children under the age of 18. How long have you lived in the county? I've been in the county area since 1947 here in Riverdale. Before coming here, where did you live? Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama. Have you ever applied for assistance from the Department of Welfare? Yes. And what happened? Oh, they helped. To what extent do they help you? Oh, well, they give us $63 every two weeks. How much do you get? $63 every two weeks. $63.50. $63.50, that's for yourself and the two children. Are you able to meet your expenses?

No, indeed. Well, how do you make it? Well, I tell you, I don't make it. I eat six months and fast the other six. I can't hardly make it. I can't pay my bills or nothing. I can't even keep my children in school, hardly, with children going. Do you work at all? No, ma'am, I can't. Because you've got these six little children. Yes, but I go to school. You go to school? I take a high school night, two nights, three weeks. Are you trying to get your high school diploma? Yes, ma'am. When do you think you'll get that? Next year. Next year? And nothing happened. Do you have plans for doing something, some kind of work after you receive your high school diploma? Yes, ma'am, if I have a place where I can leave my other two youngsters. You know, because I got two, I got three in the school, but then next summer I'm going to send another girl, so I'm going to have just only two in the house.

But if, you know, in Orange School there is no place to leave the children, even when you find a job. You don't have any daycare center here? No, they don't. I wish they had one, you know. So if you can find someone who can take care of the two youngest children, Are we able to work? You would be able to work? Yes, ma'am. Would you be willing to work even if it costs your check from the welfare to be reduced? Yes, ma'am, it's nothing to make me more proud to support my own family. Very good. More than 90% of the people on welfare are children under age 18, the aged, the blind, and the totally disabled. Therefore, even with the most liberal use of the term, not more than 10% of those on welfare can be classified as employable. A widespread belief that the welfare roles 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 announcements by public officials

and examines some of the federal and state legislation, it's clear that this myth is considered fact even by many people in government. When the total poor population of 22 million is examined, perhaps the most startling fact is that in one third of all poor families, the 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, the disabled able enough to work, and the young old enough to work. In Fresno County, California, 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 a wage. We talk about a wage in which people are supposed to support 5, 6, 7, 10 kids. The man would have to work 100 hours a week in order to be able to support that family adequately.

And to expect a man to work 100 hours a week, how many of you will do that? So I think that we're forgetting about a group of people that made their living off of the richest valley in the world, yet in many ways the poorest one in the world. I go to debt in the wintertime and work, my wife and I work in summertime to pay off those debts and then the cycle is just over and over. Hard times come again, we go in debt again, and so on, same thing. It's just a cycle. You never get any money to just save then, do you? No. We don't know what it is to save a dollar. Because in this particular valley, which is known as the white spot as far as agriculture is concerning, we continue to say it's the richest agricultural section in the United States. But I can assure you that we also have some of the poorest people in the United States that are working on the individual farms because simply there is not a work, there's not enough full-time work. They work part-time and part-time they have to go without.

And this is a good example. This time of the year when the weather is so bad, there is no way that these people can earn any money of any kind. And I know they do not want charity. They want a system whereby they can become a part of the society that all of us enjoy. I don't think nobody should criticize us just because we're poor. We can't help that. And this men are off a bad year. Off a bad year. But look now, it'll be the middle of the month, maybe in April before you even... April what? The middle of the month. You won't do no work until the last part of the month. Well in the meantime, how do people supposed to eat in the meantime? They don't care. But a lot of people don't realize you got to have farm workers. Right. If it ain't no farm workers, there ain't no food. There ain't no nothing to eat. If it's not people like us that do farm labor.

I think it's like this. If we can help the farmers in the summer to raise their crops, they can help us in the wintertime. That's what I find. Well, we're the ones making the farmers' living. We harvest his crops, plant his crops, irrigate his land. Well, we don't make it him rich. You don't accomplish nothing. You can't accomplish nothing behind no farm worker, no farm. In Fresno County, when the farm laborer is working, his income may be adequate, but he 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, but receive lower wages. In other words, neither one earns enough money over the 12-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 unemployment insurance. When a farm laborer is out of work, when in a sense he is non-productive,

he receives no compensation. Ironically, when a farmer is instructed not to plant a crop in order to stabilize food market prices, when 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 do they discriminate us by saying the Mexicans are getting welfare, the poor people is getting welfare? Why don't they turn around and say the grower is getting welfare? And he is getting it on a bigger basis, because this son of a gun year after year will be getting millions of dollars out of the government because they didn't work to land or these or that. Here, Mr. So-and-so, here's so many millions. But that's called something different, that doesn't call welfare, even if that's the real word for that. But no, they rather discriminate us than the Mr. Grower.

We talk about welfare and giving people some money, but I think that agriculture as an industry receives a lot more subsidies than the whole welfare recipients of the state of California, probably here just in Fresno County. I think last year farmers in this area were subsidized in excess of 60 million so they wouldn't plant something. They received also God knows how much for technological studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, at Davis, and so on and so forth, to create machineries to put these people out of a job. And I frankly find it rather difficult to see the difference between a subsidy to a farmer for not planting a crop and a subsidy to a welfare family, which is not working or unable to work.

This is an extremely controversial idea, and I'm sure that you could get all sorts of opinion on it. But it is tax money, and it is granted to people for something which is not accomplished, except in the negative manner that they do not grow certain amounts of certain crops. The American people voice little objection to their tax dollars being used for business subsidies, but cry out loudly against welfare grants. Could the reason be that welfare receives an imbalance of the attention and publicity? Or is there a basic resentment against the poor? Can it be that many hardworking Americans resent the fact that welfare recipients seem to be getting something for nothing? When a man can afford two, three dollars to pay the doctor, we prefer to do that and stay away from them handouts. To subject himself to welfare is to deprive himself of the dignity of being a man. The farm workers will be serving something else besides the welfare.

Whenever a man get on the welfare, he's all but dead if he get on that. I know what I'm talking about. I ain't talking about it here, it says. I know what I'm talking about. And they're going to ask him, when are you going to die? When do you think you're going to die? When did your mama die? When did your papa die? They do all that kind of talk. And if you ain't careful, you don't get on there. And then they see their own time getting you on and there ain't nothing to help you, it's just something to keep you alive. I am a human being as well as the next person. I like to be treated as a human being. I like to be talked to as a human being. And I don't know very many people who tries to get on the welfare too. That's usually the last resort. You get the feeling that your interviewer is getting the money out of his pocket to hand you. And you know about just how you'd feel about giving me $35, $40 a month out of your own pocket, your own earnings. You'd be hesitant about it and it seems that that's the way they seem to do it.

But under the law, you are just as much entitled under certain circumstances to this money as they are to their salary. There's no difference and people should understand that. Your Honor, I understand you, but I don't think you understand me. We understand that and we feel that way about it. But it seems as though to me, maybe I'm wrong, it would be better if we should have a commission with them. I mean like you people are with us, they should have a commission to explain it to them that the money don't come out of their pocket. Now we understand you, I do. I understand. So that is a problem. But thank you so much for trying. Thank you very much. I have went to the welfare once before to get the emergency food. And you go there in the welfare and you stand up, maybe go there early in the morning

and you stand up all day, late in the evening. When they get to you, you get some powdered milk, powdered egg, something that they don't want themselves. Now it looks like to me it should be some better type food that could be given by the welfare for the hungry people. Have you ever applied for welfare? I did. If I ever applied for welfare in my whole lifetime, it must have been about twice, twice or three times in my lifetime that I remember. And that was because I really had to. In other words, it goes against your grain to take welfare? No, I don't like that. I don't like to go before the welfare department and beg for food. No sir, I never did like that. I've had all the chance in the world to become a number one beggar, but we don't do that. Why is it that you feel you're begging for food when you go to welfare?

Now it's there, the government put it there. What makes you feel like you're begging when you go in there? Look ladies, I don't know if you're ever back for food yet or not, but I'm going to tell you, when you go to the welfare department, these people are ready for you. In fact, they're hostile. If you were in need of help, if you needed during the time when you were not working on the farms and there was money available to take care of this need, would you object to receiving that? Well, was it going to come from? Can you imagine some progress? Yeah, probably so. I'd be glad to, but not the welfare. There's different ways of obtaining something to eat without having to get down to my knees and beg for it. People do have to stand in lines. We do get very busy. We do have long federal, state, and county farms to fill out, which ask every question from when you last clipped your toenails on up.

This is unfortunate. Well, I think this is what they were talking about. I think we take a lot of their dignity away. Isn't it possible to devise a system that would eliminate a great deal of the bothersome questions? Almost everyone, from welfare recipients to welfare administrators, complains about the system. The 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 differing 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 the agent is $50. In California, it's $187.50. In some states, a single aged person can receive a larger grant than an unemployed mother with three children,

and in no state is assistance given to the working poor. The inadequacies in the welfare system can best be understood through an understanding of its history. Most of these programs had their origin in the years following the Great Depression of the early 30s. Essentially, it was the purpose of those programs to take care of the blind, the disabled, and the aged, and to provide temporary assistance for those who had there-to-far been employed, but who were no longer employed because of the vicissitudes of the business cycle. The assumption of those programs was that this period of temporary unemployment, this tidying over of temporary bad luck, would become unnecessary and disappear as the business cycle again picked up the slack.

But today, we are aware that we have a structured poor, that we have a poor who in many cases cannot work, are not prepared for this society, or are working, and are yet poor. It's widely agreed that the welfare system established in 1935 is grossly inadequate to handle the problems of 1969. The system is costly, complicated, inefficient, and inequitable. And although a 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. I suggest that if the government really wants to help the poor,

it immediately dissolves such agencies, particularly the Welfare Department, the Department of Employment, and the Compensatory Education Branch, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, divide up the salaries now paid to the worthless bureaucrats these agencies employ, and give the money directly to the poor themselves. I suggest, if you really want to help the poor, that a national minimum wage of $2 an hour be passed immediately. I suggest that with one exception, the programs initiated in this area to help the poor have been nothing but masterful projects of deceit. I would like to suggest that this meeting is just another exercise in futility. I would like to suggest that as soon as a government agency is created to help the poor, their primary interest of that agency becomes to perpetuate itself

at the expense of the people it was created to serve. I suggest one more course of action if you really want to help the poor. I suggest that the only programs that are effective are those controlled by the poor people themselves, and that the larger the program becomes, the less control the poor people have, and the more the program becomes just another bureaucracy that puts black against brown, red against white, urban against rural, in order to perpetuate itself. The government must face up to one fact. The poor people aren't going to let us play games with them anymore. The stakes of hunger, disease, bad housing, and lousy education are too high. From here on out, the poor people are playing for keeps. 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, but have seen few results. Many commission studies and recommendations are gathering dust in America's attic. Will the president's commission on income maintenance programs also become just another exercise in futility? Well, the commissioners are not being unrealistic. We are not kidding ourselves that a form of income maintenance guarantee is widely accepted by the American public. We know that it will be a difficult job to convince the president, Congress, other persons who are involved in the economic structures affected, that this is an answer to some of the problems we face. But the attitude is changing. As far as our public officials are concerned,

and as far as many members of the business community are concerned, we are finding that the idea of some form of an income maintenance program is gaining in acceptance. And the technique of persuasion will be a, I suppose, public relations program on the part of commissioners and other people who believe that this is the way to go in America, to educate the public on what is involved in gaining acceptance of the idea and gaining commitment on the part of the Congress to enact such a program. Now, there are congressmen who have introduced various forms of income guarantee programs and they have not been enacted into law, but this is a beginning.

And we hope that our findings, the depth and scope of our findings, will bring to the attention of the people who are in charge of enacting the laws in this country the fact that this is an acceptable method, 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 and expanding job opportunities, there are some people who through no fault of their own simply cannot make it. Regardless of how often or how loudly we recite the great American dream, there are some people who cannot pull themselves out of poverty. But poor need help. It is their right to receive our help and to receive it with dignity. Well, it just won't help us for some cause.

We're just living, what you might say, like dogs. How are we living? Well, it's not fitting. And we're just getting by the best way that we can get by. We don't have anything. We work out on a farm. I have to pay income tax. I have to miss meals to pay that. I owe them not. They just won't do nothing for us for some cause. I don't know. Now here is Chief Correspondent Edward P. Morgan with his personal point of view. In the 1964 presidential campaign, Senator Goldwater had a particularly rousing rally in Odessa, Texas, an arid area noted for its rich petroleum deposits and conservative politics.

Asked how he felt the evening had gone, Goldwater said, great, these are my kind of people. They came out here, they worked hard, and they struck oil. The senator was not joking. He reflected the time-honored American tradition, which has enshrined hard work as a noble exercise producing indubitably the rewards of success. The trouble is that not every conscientious toiler is fortunate enough to strike oil. Millions have labored a lifetime with little more to show for it than a mortgage and a heart attack. Gradually, American society is beginning to concede that some jobs can be demeaning and that luck and ruthlessness can have a lot to do with success. Gradually, we are beginning to realize that people are not always to blame for their own misfortunes, that a man is not necessarily a sinner just because he is unemployed. Plainly, society has an obligation to the poor that goes beyond charity.

Clearly, welfare as now operated is not the answer. But unsurprisingly, President Nixon is finding performance harder than his campaign promise to get people off welfare rolls and onto payrolls. The harsh fact is that countless 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 he'll only try. Last week, the Nixon administration gave a heartening hint it was not committed to past mistakes, that one way to avoid still bigger welfare loads in the future was to stop manufacturing potential but inevitable dropouts from society. The approach to concentrate on better rearing and training of the young before they are automatically locked into a situation of hopelessness. In his legislative message to Congress, President Nixon stressed the need for greatly increased aid to the child under five, which he described as the most dependent constituency of all.

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 youth is being cheated in federal priorities. Some $35 billion is earmarked in the 1970 budget for 20 million Americans over 65, while only 15 billion is provided for nearly 82 million Americans under 21. That breaks down to about $1,750 worth of federal aid to an old person compared to $190 for a child. The best explanation for this staggering discrepancy, says former HEW Secretary John Gardner, is simply that senior citizens can vote and children can't. The idea is not to rob the old to reimburse the young. Millions of senior citizens are having it rough enough as it is. But a more equitable balance needs to be struck.

HEW Secretary Finch has proposed a thorough overhaul of federal child development programs. Budgeteer March would invest especially in nutritional aids for children. He notes the link between malnutrition and mental retardation. It's time this civilized nation, so-called, checked its own mental retardation in its savage handling of the plight of the poor. PBL returns in one minute with Mexican Americans, the invisible minority. PBL returns in one minute with Mexican Americans, the invisible minority.

PBL returns in one minute with Mexican Americans, the invisible minority. PBL returns in one minute with Mexican Americans, the invisible minority. PBL returns in one minute with Mexican Americans, the invisible minority. PBL continues with producer Joe Lowe's film report on Mexican Americans, the invisible minority. PBL continues with producer Joe Lowe's film report on Mexican Americans, the invisible minority. PBL continues with producer Joe Lowe's film report on Mexican Americans, the invisible minority.

Mexican Americans are the second largest ethnic minority in the United States. There are five million of them, 90% of whom live in the five southwestern states of California, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Some, like the Hispano land heirs of New Mexico, had been living there for hundreds of years, scores of years before the landing of the Mayflower. Others joined the steady stream of migrants across the Rio Grande from Mexico every day. The group is the youngest and fastest growing ethnic population in the nation. Traditionally, Mexican Americans have been agricultural workers, campesinos for the most part, a gentle, lovable people. There was little need to change their language and culture, but recently the impact of technology and a changing economy has subjected the community to massive political and social dislocation Within a relatively short period, thousands have tracked to the cities,

bringing with them all the disadvantages of a traditionally rural 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 groups. They are now demanding the rights of citizenship and full participation in the economic, political, and social life of this country. Regardless of the disparity of issues they are faced with or their style of protest, all emerging leaders speak of la raza or the race, an almost mystical nationalistic concept that unites all Spanish speaking people, whether they be called Latinos or Hispanos or Mexicanos. New leaders are emerging from the barrios or ghettos. Rudolfo Coqui Gonzalez, founder of the Crusade for Justice in Denver, organized a cultural center which is now a base for community control. Reyes Lopez Teharina, a fiery ex-evangelist, is head of the Federal Alliance of Free City States,

whose members electrified New Mexico by a daring raid on a county courthouse. And Cesar Chavez, with his farm labor movement, his strongest in terms of numbers and national influence, started his battle against California growers three years ago. In the largest cities under the banner of La Raza Unida, they picket and boycott and march to make their voices heard. Dr. Ernesto Galaza is a Mexican-American scholar, author, and lecturer.

The Mexican people who have come to this country have been the very poorest of the poor of Mexico. And in these 50 years, they have had no choice but to work in the lowest income brackets of the economy. They've been on the low spot of the totem pole economically and socially during these 50 years. These have been poor people from the very beginning, and they still are. There is very little capital formation in the Mexican community. They don't own industries. They have practically no stake in the economy. They don't live off capital. They live by, still, as they always have, traditionally, by the sweat of their brow and by their brain power and by their daily toil. This is the kind of a population it is. A report by the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights states that more than one-third of all Mexican-American families living in the Southwest live in official poverty, that is, on incomes of less than $3,000 a year.

A Mexican-American is seven times more likely than an Anglo or white to live in a substandard house. The chance that his baby will be born dead are twice as great. The unemployment rate is two times that of Anglos, and of those employed, the vast majority, almost 80%, work at unskilled, low-paying jobs. The cycle of poverty usually begins in the rural areas, such as this one in South Texas. Most of the counties here have a 40 to 60% Spanish-speaking population. 40% or more are considered functionally illiterate, and many live in the apathy and despair bred by poverty. Sometimes we eat twice a day, sometimes we eat once a day.

Dirty you is beans, potatoes. I never drink milk. Never? Do you have water? Yeah. Running water? Do children have enough clothes? Is your daughter's husband, is he working? Does he not have no work? No.

What do you all want my mother to do? That's what she said. Have you ever been to the community council office? Yes, but they never give us something. I haven't. That's what my mother said. They never help any? How old are you? 19. How long have you been married? Who? You. Me? I don't like it. A month? You like being married? I don't like nobody asking me these questions. Sorry about that. I only want to know. I know you want to know, but I don't like nobody asking me. I don't know. My tradition, the Mexican-Americans have always had large families. This used to be a beautiful situation, say, 20, 30 years ago, where agriculture was really the prime factor of employment at the time.

The larger the family you had, the more money you made. The entire family would go work, say, for three, four months of the year, make enough money to where they could coax your remaining nine months of the year. But today, in today's complicated world, with automation and so forth and life, it's impossible for families to have this size of a family. We have 44.5 of all our people in the county who live in poverty in B County. This was a survey taken in the 65 and 66. And this amounted to approximately 10,287 people of our county, which is composed of 25,000 people who are in poverty. 79% of all the poverty in B County lies on the Mexican-Americans. What does this mean in terms of, you know, lifestyles and things like that? Well, it means, first of all, many of them,

I think, are deprived of the basic necessities of life, and certainly they are deprived of most of the luxuries of the modern living. Many of our children are starting school, and they do not know any English, so they are held behind in this regard. And once you fall behind in your education, it's very hard to catch up in it. And secondly, it's an unawareness of life as it really is. They are limited sometimes to just this little district. Some of our boys and girls have never been outside of the town of Bevel. They have never been as far as Corpus Christi, which is only 60 miles away. They don't know what a park is or what a lake is. They don't know what it means to go boating or fishing, things like this.

And of course, in anybody's life, this is a handicap. All right, now let's go over the words. All right, I want pronunciation. The people we're talking about now had a devil of a time getting any type of education. And I'll give you a figure on that. The average education for a male or for an adult, Mexican-American, 25 years or better, average education is 2.1 years of school in this area. In the past, it was just generally assumed by the Anglo community that Mexicans don't need to go to school because why in the hell do you have to go to school to pick onions? Any education was actually actively discouraged in rural school systems. We have no formal Spanish in our elementary schools here.

We have been doing some thinking about it and researching and trying to discover new and better ways. We know that possibly the way that we are doing is not the best. We have what we call a beginner program for them and it's more of an oral English program to teach them to speak the English language. And of course, this is a handicap for the children concerned because they must know the English language in order to do their regular first grade work. So normally this detains them a year in school. Dr. Galasa points out that there has been a revolutionary change in the Mexican-American population. Functional illiteracy inherited from generations of miseducation in the rural areas has become the major focus of Mexican-American protest in the urban areas. Yet the stereotype of the Mexican as a wetback, stoop laborer persists.

We can no longer talk about the Mexican campesino as the typical Mexican in the state. He's vanishing. I would guess that the 1970 census will show, if not better, at least a 90% concentration of persons of Spanish surname and of Mexican ancestry living in the cities. The displacement of the rural Mexican and the migration to the cities means that in the last 15 years the large cities in the southwest like San Antonio, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fresno, and others have developed a very, very large population of Mexican-Americans. These are refugees.

They're not refugees from Mexico, they're refugees from displacement and from economic exploitation in the rural areas. And they've come to the cities to look for work. What's happening to the Mexicans psychologically is that having been relegated, having been cut out from a decent education and from participation in the economy and from consideration as human beings, they are now groping for an ideology that will, first of all, make them feel important, make them feel dignified, make them feel worthy. The search for an ideology coincides with the search by youthful Mexican-American individuals for an identity in the spectrum of American protest. Rudolfo Coqui Gonzalez, an ex-boxer turned civil rights activist in Denver, Colorado, answers that need by digging deep into the past.

Last year he founded El Santo de la Cruzada, a self-help community base dedicated to a cultural renaissance for the Mexican-American. This is our symbol. It's an Indian mother, a Spanish father, and a cat with a mustache facing it. On one side of us we predate Plymouth Rock 20,000 years. On the other side, 300. Yet we're told to identify with what's coming from the eastern seaboard. But again, you say, well, that's past. It has nothing to do with us today, but it has a lot to do with us today. It has a lot to do with us with the culture that our people have had is going to the graves with our old people, so that we have to start relating to who and what we are. It's not alienation, it's movement, it's self-determination. The Japanese, they have no political powers, so to speak, because they have small numbers, if they have economic control of their life

and what they develop, it goes into the majority society, but the money comes back into rich new blood for themselves to develop their own people. This is because they control their church, they control their social life, and their whole living together. I don't hear anybody saying the Japanese are alienated, but the minute a few black people get together, they say, man, those guys are bad. When Mexicans start to get in, they say, well, gee, they might think I'm a bad guy. You know, to hell with what they think, because what they thought has created all the problems for the mass of our people. There wouldn't be any racism if his folks and his forefathers hadn't provoked it. There wouldn't be any discrimination if his forefathers hadn't provoked it and built upon it and created a status quo barrier to all other people. As we watch the black move, as we watch the radical Anglo move, we say, you know, where are we going? We've got it all right here. We don't have to go. We just have to preserve it and build it up. We have to defend it.

We have to take care of these things that are important to our people. It's right here. It's right here in my hand. My feet are on the ground, and this is who I am, and I'm proud of it. We started the Crusade for Justice about three years ago. We started off as a movement on different issues that took place in this city, police brutality, other issues. And we started teaching the basic philosophy of where we're going to go. We created a tight unit of people, a family unit, you might say. Not all family, but this is what we've become. And from this, then we set a base, and we're strong. It's very much like revolution in an underdeveloped country. Fifty people can start a revolution.

So that we have developed people from any ages from 10, 11 up to 64. And they'll sit through some hazard dropouts. Some people are college students, housewives, that can relate to what we're talking about and sit through three, four hours of this meeting. Of course, they also then interrelate and they discuss something that they won't do or wouldn't do at school or wouldn't do in the society because there's nothing there for them to identify with. Here they're learning about themselves. They're learning about the heroes that they can identify with. They're learning the fact that there are people like Jose Marti with his Versos Tencios

and the fact that there is a Gabriela Mistral who writes interesting short stories and not only Luisa May Alcaz, but also a lot of other people. The girls, this is a great interest to know that there are women with their names that are now contemporary successes, let's say, in South America. We're right next door to our culture. You know, it isn't like having to go back overseas or sailing the Pacific or the Atlantic to visit the people that you come from or that you stem from. The people that we stem from, whether they're blood relatives or even vaguely related to us, are there. They have our name. They have our culture. And there's a continual flow. If it isn't through legal means, it's definitely through illegal means. I don't have a number or anything, but I know darn good and well that there are constant Mexicans being brought across illegally

to work in the fields and other things. So then after they've served their purpose, then they join the society that we're living in right now. And here, the kid that walks through these doors, this building is his. He knows it. He doesn't come to a director at some center to say yes, sir, no, sir, and to feel obligated or beholding for what's going to be given to him or a service. It's part of him. It's his, and he knows it. Like Corky says, we didn't get any government funds. We didn't get any foundation money. We didn't get any angel money. This was money from our own people, people like Julia and myself, Steve, John, and many crusaders who are dedicated for a better way for our people. I think this is the most important thing in our lives, to be able to have pride in what we are. We have this, but we have to instill this within our own people. Now the kids are learning different. They don't have to take abuse from anybody.

They're as equal as anybody else in this God's country. Our kids are just as smart as anybody else's kids, given the opportunities. And we wouldn't be fighting so hard if our parents before us would have done what we're doing for our children. But they always told us this is the way they are, this is the way we have to accept it. When I would come home and tell my dad, I was brought up in Brighton, went to school there. They were very prejudiced against Spanish and Mexican. And I'd come home and tell my parents, and they'd say, well, this is the way it is. You have to accept it. We've found out we don't have to accept it. And our kids are not going to. We're not going to settle for this for our kids. We're going to work with them and teach them our new way of life, which is our right. We have just as much right here as anybody else in this country, or more, because we fund it. There's a vast ignorance about the Mexican. And consequently, there's a myth that the Mexican is pliable, he is non-resistant, and that anybody can do anything to him that anybody wishes.

Well, this isn't true. But now that he's become an urban Mexican, and now that there's a more numerous generation of Mexicans who have gone to school, many who have even gone to college, who are observing what's happening to the urban community, the tensions within the Mexican community are increasing, and they show themselves in the current protest movement. These are reflected in the student protests. They are reflected in the discontent with educational conditions, the school systems. And they're going to make themselves manifest in more ways than even these. Last year, the parents of East Los Angeles, where some 700,000 Mexican Americans live, stormed the local school board for four consecutive days, picketed, slept in nights, protesting the demotion of a young Mexican American high school teacher who had been accused of organizing a strike.

The issue was more of a culmination point, because the parents had long been complaining about the school system's lack of interest in Mexican culture and history. This, they believed, was the basis of the dropout problem. Two predominantly Mexican American high schools in East Los Angeles registered dropout rates of as high as 53 percent, with very few of the students going on to college. It's not so much Mr. Castro. It's the issue, what the man means to every teacher. Academic freedom, shall we call it, to a Negro, to a Mexican, to an Anglo. Shall we say, you are here deciding for all these teachers. Last March, in a meeting attended by about a thousand people at Lincoln High School, the talk was expressed that the time had come for a new dialogue to exist between the educational system and the Mexican community.

I believe that the evidence before you points to the fact that this dialogue has begun. We have produced a new crop of orators. But more than that, we are here to express to you that in accepting a Mexican teacher who says that it's good to be Mexican, you're also accepting a principle that may govern our city without barbed wire in the middle of the street, for out of one place has God made all men. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza.

The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza. The board voted to reinstate Sal Castro, a small but important victory for La Raza.

California has the largest concentration of Mexican Americans. California has the largest concentration of Mexican Americans. California has the largest concentration of Mexican Americans. California has the largest concentration of Mexican Americans. California has the largest concentration of Mexican Americans. California has the largest concentration of Mexican Americans. California has the largest concentration of Mexican Americans. California has the largest concentration of Mexican Americans. California has the largest concentration of Mexican Americans. California has the largest concentration of Mexican Americans. California has the largest concentration of Mexican Americans.

and union recognition, a fair wage and decent working conditions. California farm labor makes four billion dollars with the help of an estimated 300 to 350,000 Mexican-American agricultural workers. With the help of a powerful lobby in Congress, illegal alien scab labor from Mexico and a curious exemption from the National Labor Relations Act, most growers have held out against concessions. Today, the strikers have changed tactics. Last October, they launched a nationwide boycott of table grapes in cities across the nation, bringing their plea directly to the marketplaces of this country, where scab labor, economic intimidation, and the power of the lobbies are neutralized by the conscience of the majority. We've been forced into the boycott because of the fact that when you strike California agriculture, you're taking on the entire

structure. In this area, we have to take on the courts and the police. Almost every political subdivision is against us, so we've got to take them on with the employers, because the employers really, by and large, still at this point out. But Cesar Chavez has remained determined. The mere fact that we're still fighting them and they haven't been able to destroy us is a victory in itself, plus the fact that we've been able to get contracts, plus the fact that we've moved the growers an awful lot. We moved them from the beginning when they condemned us and they claimed that there was no strike, to a point where they had to admit that a strike was in progress, to a point where they now are toying around with the idea of legislation, things that were unheard of three years ago. So that's quite a lot of progress.

The growers forcing us to do, we are blessed if they give us a chance to have an election and let us decide if we really want the union or not. The guy keeps saying a lot of times, you know, we only, we answer for one chance, we don't answer for a dollar forty, or two, three dollars an hour. We don't want anything like that. We don't want any favor at all. But we need to do a piece of paper and let us say we want union, we don't want union. And that's why we try to show our kids, you see on this bus, a lot of small people, children, they come here with a purpose, they learn, because I know our fight is going to be very long, because the girls, they have the money, they have the lobbyists and everything else. So even if we don't get nothing, our kids are going to keep fighting. So that is the main, the main deal to show our families to fight it and to stand up for the rights they think they want very small. Even if we were to be jailed or be brutally suppressed, the book had been gone.

They're shaping up in this country a coalition of backlashers. Backlash against the Negro, backlash against the low-income man, backlash against these legitimate protests, against the exploitation, the Mexican, the Negro, the Filipino, the Indian, and so on. If these backlashes coalesce in one large national reaction, there are some dreary days ahead for the Mexican-American community and its organizations, but they'll survive.

And as I look into the next four years, I have no misgivings as to the ability, the capacity, the durability of the Mexican. He's a durable man. When he speaks of himself as la raza, he's not speaking of race, he's speaking of enduring spirit, and that's what he's got. Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay. They gather in their taverns and sing songs that nourish their culture. A traditional pride makes them resist the assimilationist impulse, makes them refuse to tear the language from their tongues. My land is lost, writes a young poet. My culture has been raped. I limp from the lines at the welfare door. I shed a tear as I watch my children disappear behind a shroud of mediocrity,

never to look back to remember me. The music of my people stirs a revolution, the poet sings. Whatever I call myself, Mexicano, Latino, Chicano, whatever I call myself, I look the same. I feel the same. I cry and sing the same. Next week, PVL returns with a look at the university crisis, the university in society.

Do the ties bind. Do the ties bind. Do the ties bind. Do the ties bind.

This has been another in a series of interconnected broadcasts produced by the Public Broadcast Laboratory of NET. It is Sunday evening, April 20th, and this is PVL Second Season. Nationwide distribution of the preceding program is the service of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Late on the 9th, 400 Stanford University students moved into the university's Applied Electronics Laboratory, where classified research is being carried on for the military. The occupation followed a decision by the Stanford trustees not to exceed to student demands that the university cease research into chemical biological warfare and counter studies for Southeast Asia. Spearheaded by the Stanford chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, the sit-in culminated a semester-long organizing effort by student radicals.

PVL Second Season, in a special two-hour program, examines the sources of this turmoil in one of America's leading universities. PVL will present, through two perspectives, an intimate view of the student radical challenge, and the administration's responses and moves toward institutional changes. See it here Sunday night, April 27th, on PVL.