America's Crises; 18; Cities and the Poor. Part 1

[music] The following program is from NET, the National Educational Television Network. [music] - "I really want a decent education, I really want a decent job now, I really want a decent opportunity, I really want a decent place to stay now. I want to live like everybody else around, I want to live like everybody else around..." "If I've been taught the American dream, next time I'd better..." In its America's Crisis series, National Educational Television presents The Cities and the Poor: Part 1.

"...burn baby burn, burn baby burn... you just need the concern, you got money to earn, you got midnight ought to, burn baby burn." Good evening, I am Paul Niven. That song was written about last year's Watts riots in California. But his protest was directed, not so much against race discrimination, as against the urban poverty in which millions of Americans, Black and white, dwell. More than two years have passed since Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, and more than two billion dollars have been spent. We still don't know as much as we need to know about who the poor are, but we do know more than we ever did before.

We know for example that one American in six is poor, about 32 million. Of them, fewer than a quarter are on public assistance, in fact more than half have an employed breadwinner in the home. We know that one Negro in two is poor, but we also know that for every poor Negro, there are four poor whites. In fact, in many respects, a person's chances of being poor are predetermined. Michael Harrington, whose writing his done a good deal to shape the poverty program, holds that people are not poor because they are lazy or incompetent. He says they are poor because they made the mistake of being born to the wrong parents, in the wrong section of the country, or the wrong industry, or to the wrong racial or ethnic group. Those most in need are often the most difficult to locate and help. For them, poverty is not just a question of insufficiency of money. It is degradation, absence of motivation. From the time they are born, they do not have the things or see the things or learn the things,

which, for more fortunate children, are the elementary experiences of childhood. [baby crying] These children are a jarring reminder that even in the richest society in the history of the world, some people are trapped at birth. Poverty worker Gail Pierce has been trying to help this family for six months. She talks with a 17-year-old Jolene, who will soon have her own child. ...these babies, trying to save money. [inaudible over baby talking] ...this week. Mommy and daddy went out Sunday morning, 7 o'clock, said they'd be back at 9 o'clock, 7 o'clock same morning, saying they'd be back at 9 o'clock... [inaudible]

...until 12 o'clock at night. - Drinking? Yeah, they'd both been drinking. They didn't leave a penny here. That makes me so mad I could choke. [inaudible] You know, y'all washing machine in the basement. I don't know the more you do for them, the more they want you to do, huh? I'm so sure, girl, you are. Come here darling baby. Let me see your arms. - It was swollen pretty bad this morning. Let him. - Where did you go to at now? Up there. Up there and down, did the dog bite you up there, too? Huh? Once yesterday. - Would you like to go to a doctor with me? Huh? You could ready next Tuesday, and I'll go with you to infant welfare with all these kids. I know we'll take her to the doctor today or tonight. - [narrator] There are nine children and two adults in this family. The newest baby is four months old. The mother is only 33.

The father earns $75 a week of which $35 goes for rent. What's left is hardly enough. But the family moves often. And since the last removal, the parents have not bothered to sign up for supplementary welfare payments. They don't bother very much about anything. Several of the children in this family could be a poverty program, but the parents are lethargic. It's all Mrs. Pierce can do to get the kids to a clinic occasionally. The little girls normally stay in the apartment all day. They have no shoes, and if they played in the yard, someone would have to watch them. There are plenty of ragged clothes around, but nobody likes to wash clothes. A six-year-old brother, to his family's surprise, insists on going to school every day, sometimes half-naked, once wearing his mother's blouse. Another boy, seven, simply runs away every morning and returns, if at all, late at night in the custody of the police. He wanders all over Cook County. -They found him in the first place.

Little park they found him in one place. Oak Park or Oak Forest or Park Forest, or something like that. - What'd they say? - Just brought him home. Tell them to keep an eye on him. I told him, "How could I?" When they asked about the house being dirty, I told him, "You come help clean it up." Billy did? No, that... the policeman. Soon he'd just come back. Just keep the house clean when you're home. What do you want, honey? [child crying] [child crying] [child crying] [child crying] [child crying] [child crying] [child crying] [child crying] [child crying] Tell Fay to come up here. I want to see her. [child crying] [child crying] One generation of poor can pass its mores and its lack of motivation or ambition unto another. Jolene is like her mother, and Jolene's baby will probably be like Jolene. The eldest daughter in this family, 18-year-old Fay, is a mother already.

- Hello there, mommy. How have you been? - You know anybody who can take me here? - She can take me to the hospital? The only one I can think of with a car is Matt, and if I can get a hold of him, we want to go to the doctor today. I won't be able to see the baby, but I guess I'll talk to the doctor. [baby crying] You're not going to miss it. You're not going to miss it like that. I wish you could see it. Thank you. Well, if I can get Matt to take us, we're going to see them now. - You're the dirty boy. [child crying] Now, if I can... - You're going to be ready Tuesday? And I'll go up there, because that's the thing. And have the kids washed and ready? Between the three of us, Mike, I wish you'd be able to handle four kids. - These four? - Well, I'll just tie a rope around all of them.

- These are different kids. - Yeah, I know. [baby talking] - Scoot over now... let me sit so you don't cry. Let me sit down and get my picture taken so I can be on television. [inaudible] [inaudible] ...pull up a chair. Push it over up here. Sit down here. - No! Yeah. - The only thing to do is just come and admit in court that you just can't handle the child. And that's all there is to it. - [crosstalk] [crosstalk] And the rest of them... - Gerald goes to school. All you got to do is get that kid dressed, even if he puts dirty clothes on to go to school. Why are you trying to keep him home from school? Gerry has no clothes! We can't send him to school dirty and no clothes, he ain't got enough clothes. Let's put it this way. Nobody but him and you are going to know he hasn't got any under clothes on. - Well, that might be true. Leave it alone. - Last week he slipped off with the school. He had on little mama's blouse. - I've got to go. I'm ready tonight.

I'll take you to the... [inaudible] Okay? And be ready Tuesday. So, if I walk all the way down here from the center Tuesday and you people aren't ready, you're going to hear a hell raise and I ain't kidding. These are going to be about five roofs flying off of these buildings. - Two thousand years ago, Aristotle wrote of people coming together in cities to join in the good life. But for many, living in 20th century American cities, life is not good. Not good at all. It is dirty and squalid and degrading. Yet the poor, along with others, keep moving to our big urban centers as they have been since the end of the war. Most are Southern Negroes, but not all. Others include Appalachian whites, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Indians. They come to the centers of our large cities left vacant by middle-class whites who have fled to the suburbs, taking with them their jobs, their taxes, and their civic consciences. New construction and urban renewal have swept away vast areas,

forcing the growing population of migrant poor into ever more crowded ghettos, increasingly isolated from the mobile segment of society. They are often bewildered by the city, nostalgia for the simpler, more rural life they left behind. - It's not like home, I'm used to fishing and running across the field. [laughter] - You have a park down the street. - Yeah. But not like that. I'd be catching a fish in a frame so long. I don't really [inaudible, coughing] [inaudible] - Now, really what she likes, she likes a clean place. This place is all filthy and everything. And you know, and it's just hard to make it here. That's what, if she can, you know, had a decent job or her husband had a decent job, because he's not able to work. Well, things probably will be bad as they say, but that's the way she likes it. She really does rather stay here. - Oh sure, I ain't never want to come here, not to live.

No, I don't, I ain't never had no dream of living here. That's that man I got, what led me here. [laughter] - Till you come up here, you find out different. But I like it, you know, so far. But when I think about you here, a big old [inaudible] town, When I think about it. It's not for no old person like me. It is a place for fast life people. People don't care about nothing but a ball, and a drink. It's not for me. Yeah, you have [crosstalk] Yeah, I got my freedom there. You know why? I was raised there. And whatever I do there, I'm off the fight because it's all right. They're nice to me. I didn't like a whole lot of people. They were very nice to me. And I like them. And I believe that they like me. Because anything I would ask for they would give it to me.

- In the city's slum, one misses that kindness. However paternalistic it may have been. The poor are afraid of one another, and with reason. The desperation of poverty breeds violence. The confusion of urban life breeds distrust of authority, whether it be the school principal of the welfare worker or the policeman. It's a most unusual Negro child who wants to be a cop when he grows up. The child of the ghetto grows up living with violence and without security. He just gets used to one set of peeling walls when his family moves him to another. Eviction is commonplace. Loss of his and his family's possessions is routine. But his biggest fear is loss of a father. For growing up in a slum often means growing up without a father in the home. The tragic consequence of high unemployment is that men who cannot find jobs or who cannot support their families even with jobs often lose hope and leave home. Our slums are filled with jobless men.

Some spend their days loitering. Others drift in and out of inferior short-term jobs. At dawn every morning, somewhere in every city, men line up in the hope of getting one day's work. Some are skilled but barred from full-time employment because of discrimination. Others are unskilled and can hope for nothing better than menial odd jobs if they can find those. Yet throughout the nation, better paying steady jobs go begging. In Chicago there are about 100,000 jobs available and above the same number of unemployed. Unemployment and under-employment are the very roots of poverty and thus the major targets of the poverty program. In Chicago, a neighborhood organization called Lawndale for Better Jobs has found work for hundreds. Started privately under Catholic auspices, now part of the city's official poverty program, it receives job applicants at its center but also sends recruiters out to bring them in from the streets, the bars, and the pool halls.

- Mr. Brown. Have a seat right there. Mr. Brown, right here. Thank you. Now Mr. Brown, tell me what type of work do you do? Well, I mean, I know you've been farming quite possibly. You know how to farm. You do more than, I don't know what you call it, you know, your... Well, run the truck. What did you do on your farm? - Well, I don't know. Little bit of everything. - You know, you present a slight problem. You are 62 and you know, there's not too many companies that want to go. They want to hire anyone that old. Now, I... Well, I have to check. - Sure.

Now, I have two companies, I think. I can place you. One company is a janitor. Well, both companies are a janitor. They'll pay approximately $2 an hour. - Sure. Oh, could you... or would you call me about three o'clock this afternoon? - Sure, I will. - More than likely, they'll want to see you in the morning. But you call me this afternoon. And when you call, I'll get your telephone number. But I'll check these companies and... we'll see what we can do in here. As soon as possible. - Okay. - Thank you. Thank you for coming and I'll look for your call this afternoon. - Thank you. - How are you? - I'm okay. - Okay. You completed two years of high school? - Yes. I was in it. - Have you had any special training? - Special training? - Yes. No, no. - You're not working now? You've been out of work eleven months? - Yes. You've been doing odd jobs for eleven months. No steady employment. Now, I have...

Do you know anyone that's out of a job that has a car? - Probably not. - The reason I'm doing this, I would like to get you out here to a company we have out at 119th and Racine, they start you off at $2.38. You can make up to $6 an hour. It's a forge shop. A forge plant. They have a training program. You learn most of the time by... If a man is off a sick, you fill in for him while he's off. Now, if you'd like that. And if you know someone without a car, and you can get him in here today, I could put you to work tomorrow. - But poverty has many facets. And it can't be eradicated merely by putting the jobless to work. Chicago's approach to the problem has been the opening of urban progress centers in the city's seven worst poverty areas. This one, called Montrose, is in a white neighborhood. The others are in the Negro ghettos. They offer a multiplicity of services. - [singing] Good morning to you, little boy. Little boy, little boy.

Good morning to you, little boy. What's your name? - My name is Elliot. - Good morning to you. - The preschool classes have been among the most successful in the urban centers' activities. The nationwide Operation Head Start is the least criticized poverty program. Momentarily, at least, it has opened new horizons for hundreds of thousands of children. For some that has meant their first chance to have playmates. For others, their first health check. Almost half the nation's poor are children. The purpose of Head Start is to raise the intelligence quotients and the horizons of poor youngsters to those of more privileged children. The hope is that the cycle of inherited deprivation can somehow be broken. - My name is Herbie. Herbie is looking out of the window. I want to tell you what I do in my house.

I live in a white house, and there is a big handle on the front door. Usually, you know, the things that are outside come inside. And if it's right outside your door, it's going to come in or into anybody else's home. If you're not clean, then they're going to have fun. - In the same building as another class for mothers, of course, in home economics. The women are taught how to cook, how to buy things without getting bilked, how to take care of things once bought. In nearby rooms or employment offices, mental health clinics, welfare agencies, adult art classes. Thus, the urban centers offer a whole range of services for productive adults. For those who have completed their productive years, there's a recreation center. The poverty program can enrich the life of a senior citizen merely by luring him out of his home, which may be a dismal, lonely boarding house.

It's often difficult for the older person to move to a suburb or to another part of the city. A third of America's poor are old people, and their poverty is often the loneliest. The progress center seems to have made a contribution to its neighborhood merely by setting aside a couple of rooms where old people can find relaxation and companionship with dignity and without expense. At least half of all of the federal poverty programs are oriented toward youth. The job corps, the neighborhood youth corps, the domestic peace corps. This boys' club gets teenagers off the streets and into group activities. For youngsters with special problems, it affords individual counseling. - Certainly, we can get him back into school, possibly by Monday morning. - [translation into Spanish] But the urban progress center reaches outward too.

It sends out every day about 30 community representatives drawn from the poor, trained, and now paid to help their neighbors. - What should I do yesterday? I found a house that has been condemned. - Some community representatives are mere time-servers. Some are people of extraordinary dedication. They know the people they're serving, and they serve them without patronizing them and without being taken in by them. - All right, so split up each one of the... just go separately first. Take a door, yeah. The official poverty workers are a remarkable new breed of civil servants. They are not the only people out on the streets looking for the poor. Also caught up in the search are agents for many private groups. I work for Dr. Martin Luther King. You do? Is there anybody else at the home right now? There isn't. Okay, we'll be back.

- This is Charlie Love, an organizer for the Union to End Slums, the group which brought Dr. King to Chicago. As poverty has become the number one domestic issue, so it has also become the number one civil rights cause. In general, the Negro is now assured of the rudiments of freedom. He now seeks to move beyond legal equality and achieve that practical equality which will give him an escape route from the ghetto. The organization seek his allegiance. Some work with the official poverty program, some oppose and scorn it. - What is your name? - My name is Mrs. [inaudible] Yes, we're trying to get some meetings together with the people in this building, so we can deal with some of the problems around here. - Well, just a minute. All right, let me come on down. [singing] - The watchword of many of these private groups is "organize." They claim that poverty officials don't see the problems of the poor

as the poor themselves see them. So they gather slum dwellers in meetings, talk to them about common slum problems, and urge them to unite in pressuring the authorities for solutions. - I'm just going to talk. Some of the forces that create a slum in our community. And a lot of people get offended when you say slum, but we have to realize that it's not just something that you can see in a community, it's things that you can't see that make that slum. - And Jimmy was singing songs about housing and education. And for a good example, on education, we take Marshall High School that has, there's 5,000 students at Marshall right now when there's only supposed to be 2,000. When this community 10 years ago was white, you can believe that it was kept up. But when we moved in here,

we couldn't even get a loan from FHA, from anybody. And as far as the people are concerned downtown or anywhere else, this is a dead community. This is a slum, this there's nothing. And it's about time that we started to know that we're somebody and we've got something to offer and we want things. And we have our welfare mothers that can't even have a phone, where some of the kids have hard conditions and they need a phone in their house where there's a mother I talked to in the next block. She hasn't got any furniture in her house. And they told her that she has to work that out herself. And they told the lady downstairs and her daughter the one with the heart condition, that she couldn't have a phone that she was on her way out. She was too old. And especially not to be a human being. You can't have any friends because then you're being too much of a human being and you're too old for that. So you just better just sit in that house and do whatever you can. But we try to go to the store and we get the food from the suburbs but they don't want.

And we have to pay 20% more for our food. See what he'll tell you is that, "Look at, you go somewhere else. You don't have to come here because you don't have to come here." No respect at all. And we've been sitting back. We've been complaining to our friends. I want to do something about this. But we don't do anything. We just talk. We could toast some good talk. So we've got to do something about these problems. And the only way we can do something about it is to be together. See? And we're going to be together. We're going to get something done here. Not only in East Garfield Park. Not only in Lawndale, not only in Chicago. But we're going to get things done in New York, California, every state we got. We're going to have something done. See? Here's a song I wrote about what happened in the Watts area in Los Angeles. A song called Burn Baby Burn, which was the same song

of a people who tried to burn down the town. Now, we don't advocate burning down of a town will solve problems. But the song tries to tell some of the reasons why we think that people went to such extremes to try to deal with problems of inadequate education, unemployment, and decent housing and so forth. [singing, guitar] [singing] Bitten by flies and... Living in a crowded apartment, about 110 degrees, I went outside The middle of the night, all I had was in my head, but I wanted to fight so I said, burn baby burn, burn baby burn

go out and [singing] go out and make it burn baby burn Call President Johnson on the phone, The secretary said he wasn't there I tried to get in touch with Mr. Humphrey, but they couldn't find him anywhere. I went into the courtroom with my... I didn't have no money, didn't have no lawyer They wouldn't hear my case so I said, burn baby burn burn baby burn [chorus]

go out and make it burn baby burn I really want a decent education. I really want a decent job now. I really want a decent opportunity. I really want a decent place to stay now. I want to live like everybody else... [fades] I drove through Watts with Jim McClellan, a young Negro who grew up in an urban ghetto himself, and who now works as a counselor among the troubled boys and girls of Watts, trying to get them off the street corners and into training and jobs. - Jim, I think people in other parts of the country to whom Watts is just a name, think of it as a big slum. They sure doesn't look like a slum. These houses look pretty good, aren't they? - Well, they look pretty good, but you can't always go by how the houses look on the outside.

I think one of the things that has happened in the whole country is that people want to always equate poverty with squalor. In other words, if they see a trashy house, a person poorly dressed, this to them means poverty, and it's just not so. People take pride in their homes, but this doesn't mean that they have money. They take pride in a car because it's available. They can go out and buy a car, $25 down. Some of these car lot will sell cars, especially to minority group members, because they can get their money out of it. They can come out and repossess the car if they can't pay on it, and a lot of this is done. The low incomes have come into most of the families, the instability of jobs, all heir to the pressures, and the many burdens that people have to live under in a city that they really don't have,

shouldn't have to live under. - What is a child growing up at Watts, not have that white children have in adjacent sections of town? - Well, I would say they don't have the hope or they don't have the guidance or the assurance, really, that they will get certain things in life that most people in this country begin to expect that everyone should have, but really don't have. And the biggest thing I would say is opportunity. - And the atmosphere, I suppose, always influences the next generation. It's a vicious circle in a sense, it's self-generating. - Sure, the kids see their father is not working, and their brother is getting out of high school or a friend getting out of high school. He can't find a job, either. he ends up getting into trouble or going into the army.

This doesn't lead to a much motivation because they know once they get through high school, they're going to have to face the same thing as the kids that went through already. Take, for instance, the house I'm going to now, there are nine people living in the house, there's no man. The mother tries to manage as best she can, but right now, one of her sons is out of school. He's only 15 years old, and it's really tough to manage in these types of situations. McClellan has been counseling a 16-year-old daughter in this family. She has been training in a neighborhood youth corps program. Now, he hopes to move her out of the program into a productive job.

- What I dropped in to see about was, you know, you've been in the NYC program over six months, and the program itself is set up so that you can begin to move out of the program after six months. - Why did you leave school in the first place? - Well, I got suspended for not liking to dress for gym, and all my suspension, I mean. I got pregnant, and then I had my baby, and I didn't go back to school. I just don't know why they failed. I really don't, because I tried to keep Brenda in school and I tried to talk to her, but her teachers didn't get along because she didn't want to dress for gym, and then my son here, and they said, they've been up [inaudible] So he got out, so he started back up into Willowburg,

a junior high, so they kept expelling him, so he was fighting he was doing this, he was smoking, doing that, running with a gang, so they had to suspend him for the whole semester. - Do you think, one of the problems in a lot of homes is that there's no man in the house, there's no father around, to help discipline them and influence them? - Well, I believe that's really over a lot of fault, because I know when, my little girl's father was living, [inaudible] Well, now she went to school, she wouldn't ditch, and all my kids, they went to school real nice, I didn't have a bit of trouble out of them, none whatsoever, whatever he said, it went, but since he passed, I don't know, it seemed like I've been having trouble. - He died, did he? - Yes, he did. In '62. So I've been trying to raise these alone, by my self, it's kind of hard. - How did you feel about school when you were there? - Well, a school would have been all right, but I didn't have the things I needed, and we couldn't afford it, and I understood this,

and so I just didn't want to go to school, because if you go to school, and you're not looking right, well, then you're going to get made fun at. See, although you are trying to learn, and you'll get tired of people making fun of you, because you don't have what they have, and, you know, so I just wasn't all there. - Why do you think most of the guys drop out of school? - Most of all, they don't want to go. They don't want to, you know, get no education, or nothing like that. - Well, do they ever think what's... I mean, presumably they want things, they want good clothes, they want cars and so forth. Don't they ever think that if they stayed in school longer, they'd have a better chance to get them those things? - No, because someone would think if they could drop out of school, they can run right to a car wash job, because that's the easy getting out. You gotta do it. Go out there and put on the suit. - Most of them, when they drop out of school, the boys, they don't care anyway. They don't care if they work or not. Then, if it's the girls,

then they'll just keep making mistakes, and they'll grow up and they'll just expect to be taken care for the rest of their life by the public assistance, and then after then, it gets to the point where they don't care about their future, and they don't want anything in life with there. - I gather, you think this is a pretty bad situation? - Yes, I do. - You're on public assistance? - Yes, I am. - Do you have enough for everybody? - Well, I get, uh, $165, every two weeks. - Is that enough to feed nine people? - Well, my baby, now one of the kids', father, he passed, three or four years ago, she gets $30 from the Veterans Administration, and she get another check from the Social Security. It's $52.10. - So, you think you make out all right? - Well, I do my best with it. - Do you see any changes in your life for any of them?

- Well, I hope so anyway. - Everything you know comes from everybody, somebody else. You learn it from your parents. You learn it from schools. But, yes. You know why they are rebellious? Because they have seen something else that they feel contradicts the statements of what they have heard somewhere else. So, therefore, they have to be, they say, well, I have been taught this. I see this as I have been told this. What am I supposed to do? - These Los Angeles young people are taking part in a remarkable form of group therapy. For two afternoons with a counselor. They take part in so-called work orientation sessions before being placed in jobs in agencies of the county government. They are encouraged to talk, frankly, about their attitudes toward work, life, and the frustrations of being poor. They may not look it --- American poverty

as often well-dressed poverty --- but these young people are indeed poor. Most of them are school dropouts. Many of the boys have been in serious trouble with the law. Many of the girls have had babies. The majority come from broken homes. One boy lives in a Salvation Army hostel on $22 a week. Another has been on his own since he was 14. According to the counselors, these young people tend to go into therapy skeptical, and withdraw. But one or two take the lead, others follow, and by the end of the second session, they are speaking their minds and their fears and frustrations, even when cameras are present. - We got us to how much you care about your mother and father. You're going to listen. You're going to try to be patient to please them. But sooner or later, it's going to come to a point of time that you're going to have to do something for yourself. John, what are you thinking about? - I can't help thinking. Well, I think she's right,

because people have to do things for themselves, you know? You all are listening to what they say and all this, but you have to have a mind of your own, you know? Many of these youngsters not only witnessed last year's rioting and looting, but actually took part in it. Near the end of their therapy session, they began recalling the disturbances with a mixture of contrition, pride, and amusement. And they recalled that some of those who looted were merely helping themselves to things that they had long envied in store windows. Their motives were confused, and their memories are confused now. - You know, a lot of people got into it, didn't know what they're fighting for. It's just something they're fighting. It's just something they're fighting for. To me, on my part, I'll say this. And I'm a Negro. A lot of Negroes in the last riot were thinking, "Well, it's Caucasian. I'm standing on Broadway. I hadn't even went in the store." - But you looted though, didn't you.

Ohhhhhh. [laughter] [laughter] [laughter, crosstalk] [laughter] - You look good. [crosstalk] I'll tell you where it was. It was a chick. It's because I feel like this. I got enough sense to stand back instead of getting myself caught in the store. Then somebody else open it. Door is open. I walk on in. - So you guys go, we go. - No, I'm standing there waiting. It was open, the door, for us. I'm standing there waiting. Who comes down the street? The police. They didn't say one word. They just shoot me. They got those. I felt my first bullets. I felt the wind. I said, well, I got everything I think I want... [crosstalk] [crosstalk] [crosstalk] [crosstalk] - Because they have the money. - Oh, yeah. They got the money. - They said the Negroes were trying to be against the Caucasians. But this was not so.

Because I was pregnant during the time. I was right there... my mother lives right on Central Avenue. On 57th, and I was right there in the center of like all... where they burned down there. And I was... happened to be crossing the street, the man almost ran over me And I know I am a blood. I was pregnant. I was pregnant. I was pregnant. I was pregnant. I was pregnant. I was pregnant. I was pregnant. I was pregnant. I was pregnant. I was pregnant. I was pregnant. I was pregnant. I'm pregnant. I was pregnant. I was pregnant. I just had準備. You know why we had a riot? Because we needed it, you know, we needed it so we could... [crosstalk] We ain't got nothing. And they got everything. [crosstalk] - When you have no reason to fight, you're not doing anything but making yourself look ignorant. By hollering out there, fighting and getting your little club and your little gangs is going down the street. What is that? [crosstalk] I bet you got stuff out of it... - Nuh-uh honey! They burned a lot of cars. All this is really unnecessary because we're no farther than what we were then. The cold, the furniture and all this stuff.

I'll say the reason the people did this and took this stuff off the stores, they see the chance to have these nice things. They walk the streets a lot of days looking at these things. And didn't have the money. They didn't have the money to buy it. That night said, well gee, I should wish I had that. If I had the money. And everybody's saying, well listen, they're all going to take place. I have a chance. to have it, they got it. [crosstalk] I'm not going to steal. I'm not going to do anything like that because where there's a will, there's a way. - There's a lot of people that have jumped off the freeway. For thinking, you know, trying to, we're going to figure this out. If you think, you think, you think negative, you can't not produce nothing. - But the thing is, you have to look on both sides. Sure, there are some brave people that will keep on pushing. But there are others that after a little while, they're going to give up. And there are too many people that just quit. I mean, some people, you just can't make it. Okay, come on. Let's break here.

What about that? It's really good. You're going to see a movie. So you can bring it here. [chatter] You can buy it all. All right. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. No, this is too much. Don't you feel the shock. It's better. It's better. Bitterness and frustration, which caused the Watts riots, have not been entirely erased from those young minds. But at least those particular young people have been reached by the poverty program. They are headed toward the only real exits from poverty, which are training and employment. Some obviously will make it. Others will not. The boys will go on going in another jail. The girls bearing welfare babies. But the point is that if the poverty program helps only a small percentage of those it reaches, it may be economically sound. For the youth who becomes a tax-paying wage-earner, and responsible parent, instead of a jail inmate, is a double gain to society. But the various anti-poverty programs are not reaching all of the poor by any means.

They are perhaps reaching 10 to 20%. Everybody in the programs agrees that they could do more if more money were available. Almost everybody in Washington agrees that more money will not be available because the president and the Congress are worried about Vietnam and inflation. The result is frustration among poor people who read big headlines, get their hopes up, and then do not receive help. Los Angeles property director Joseph Maldonado: - This goes back to the question of frustration. You know, in Los Angeles County, as I've said before, we have some 800,000 people and families with incomes of $4,000 or less a year. We estimate that we're serving some 200,000 through the various programs that are now in operation. So you can see very easily you can find 600,000 people who say that they're not being helped a bit, and that's true. But let me give you another short figure to remind you of the problem, as I stated earlier, and that is the expectations of the poverty program. Our guideline in Title II for this county,

is $21 million. You could take that $21 million and put it in the curfew area alone and still come up with a lot of people that weren't being served. If you take the 800,000 people in this county and come up with programs at $100 a piece which really is no program at all, you're then talking about $80 million a year. If you go to the next figure which is more reasonable in terms of assistance in solving this problem and come up with a $1,000 figure per person, you're talking about $800 million. So you see, this is where a good deal of the problem lies and a good deal of the frustrations and a good deal of the sincerity and a good deal of the truth when people say that they're not being served. - Anyway, anybody who isn't getting a benefit is tempted to follow the leadership which is criticizing the power structure. - Especially if they're not being served. And as I say, there are plenty of people in this county who are not being served by the poverty program. This is not to say that they're not receiving services from other agencies because they probably are. - Across the nation in offices in bleak storefronts and in the church which houses the Chicago headquarters

of Dr. King, there are people ready to take up the cudgels for those whom officialdom has neglected, or those who can be persuaded that officialdom has neglected them. Some of the new militants are sincere and well-intentioned, others are not. Their function is to prick the official establishment. - Mrs. Mooney, please. This is Mr. Janice, the West Side Organization, the welfare union. I'm calling about Mr. Frank Sutton, ADCU case? - The private groups try to harass official agencies. They say that welfare departments are mean, bureaucratic, and slow. They say that police departments are brutal and discriminatory. They say that city housing authorities are in collusion with slum landlords. Sometimes the charges are valid, sometimes they aren't. But the gadfly groups do succeed in getting under official skin. Chicago welfare director Raymond Hilliard: And this is in other cities.

Many poor people seem to regard the welfare department, the schools, and the police as enemies. I realize that you are not an enemy of recipients of welfare, but I wonder if you would accept that many of them do feel hostile to your department and to other city departments. And if so, why? - Well, this is a notion that is carefully fostered and hoisted on people. Now, I can't speak for schools and police as intimately or as a result of so much experience as I can for welfare. But I know that our case workers over the past 30 years have been the only people who have lived with the poor daily, who have been in their homes, and the poor have been in our offices. And we have been in constant communion with them. I recall also that for many, many years,

in fact, all of these years up until maybe two years ago, the people of welfare were the only people who were on the side of the poor, who were, I would say, courageous enough. And sometimes it took courage to speak out in behalf of the poor. It wasn't popular three years ago for me to say the poor are not lazy. And those of you who say that they are lazy are liars. Today, we are taking the side of the poor against the exploiters of the poor, the self-anointed representatives of the poor, who proclaim that they speak for the poor, but they're speaking only for themselves and they're using the poor. - Many of the private leaders of the poor, self-styled leaders of the poor, claim that the city departments are never going to be responsive, because they are part of a power structure, that the fundamental changes which are needed,

threaten vested interests, which in turn are responsive to the political machines. What these people are saying, Mr. Niven, are that the American system, the American democracy, the Republic must be destroyed. We have a constitutional system of electing officials and removing them when they fail us. We have a constitutional and statutory organization of the services of government. These are responsive to the people at election time. I do not believe for one second that anybody should set up a parallel system, or should supplant this system. What I do believe is, that wherever this system is less than perfect, and God knows it has a great many imperfections, it should be made to work. And one of the first places to start is in the General Assembly, the state legislature of every state.

- But many of the new young militants are impatient with traditional political processes and with the entire poverty program. They want change, radical, profound change, and they want it quickly. - Well, this is the whole thing. We're keeping away from the strength. You know, the money belongs to the people. It's a poverty program. It's poverty money. And right now, the poverty program, to me, is still in money for poor people. Giving money back to the same qualified people that could go anywhere else to get a job. - But we should be able to go from anywhere to get a job. - The man on the right is Lester Miller, Director of Project Action, a militant private group, which is now financed in part by the very power structure it crusades against. Some young Negroes in Venice, California, got together, scraped up a little money, and began helping one another find employment. They were so successful

that the official Los Angeles Poverty Board began paying the salaries of Miller and four aides without taking over control of the project. Nonetheless, Miller agrees with a visiting friend that the whole poverty war should be conceived and run from the bottom, not from the top. - Suppose you go, you know, through your program, you can go get a million dollars. But you get me a million dollars that I can't even use, like, if people wanted you, you get me a million dollars tied up in administration. You get me a million dollars tied up in professional workers and no money coming down to the grassroots of people in the community. You can give me a million dollars tied up just like the funds already tied up. - No, I'm not talking about that. That's what I'm talking about. That's what we can't. That's what I can't even talk to you about. You see, if the man's going to manipulate he's not sharing in the first place. - Right. Now, who determines who's qualified. Who is the program for? It's for the poor people, man.

If it's for the poor people and it's operated, manipulated and the poor people don't operate and manipulate the money, then it's not the poor people's program. Man, [inaudible] Look, this is what I'm trying to say. Washington DC is over there. Part of it. It's one-third of the structure. Right. So you got two-thirds working against the one-third. - What about the LA City Hall? - The LA City Hall? I tell you, this is what I'm saying. This is what I'm going to be competing. We're not going to go under LA. We're not going to go up under the county. We ain't going on an... The only one that'll be having anything to do with us is Washington DC direct. And then we have an otherwise... You know, the way the powers of manipulation come. That political power and pressure. It's what influences our government today. - Don't you know that Lyndon Johnson knows that this money here is here? - I know! But see Lyndon Johnson can't do nothing about it. But we can. - That's what I want to talk about.

- Lyndon Johnson can't do a thing about it. - That's what I want to talk about. - This is what I'm telling you. [inaudible] Look, we got guys right here on the way to work. We got guys here right now. They know that this money is there. They know that their money is being held up. They know it's there. They know that somebody is jabbing the life away. And then they tired of of it. Now, as soon as somebody starts burning down buildings. And, you know, knocking people in the head. Then somebody's going to want to know. "What's wrong with them Negroes down there?" You know. What's the thing? This is where you have to turn to the man and say, we know just as you say, he knows what's wrong. He knows what's wrong with those Negroes down there. Now, whether he's going to do something about it. It's up to us. It's not up to him. You see, he's not going to do nothing without pressure. Otherwise, you've got to, if you don't make him do anything he ain't gonna do.

Well I know that. [crosstalk] I know how my brother feels when he gets all emotionally involved. And stuff he thinks he's going to get. - Yeah. I mean, it's just like, you know, you're promising somebody something. And they're depending on you to do it. They need it. And now, waiting on it to come in. And then you come up with empty hands. I come up with empty hands. - Right. Well, this is what I'm trying to tell you. This is why I say he's mad at me. Within six weeks. - I'm mad at you already. And as I'm saying, what I was talking about... We got to get together on the matter. And let's stand first. First, it's going to be some political environment. From other people, once they know what's going on. Because they're going off. You know, during the election, they're going to want to get in on it But basically, what we've got to work with is the fact that once we get together. And we formulate a program. - Right. You see what I'm saying? We don't tell the people, yeah, well, we've got a program. We're going to get some money. You see what I'm saying? You don't deceive. You tell them how it is. We have a program and we're going to try to get funded. - Right. Right. Right.

And in the only way we want it funded... The only way we want it funded is so that we manipulate the funds. - Right. No, we have our own program, buddy. It's the whole deal. Now, when we get the program then we go from there. And when I'm saying I go from there, we have personal connection. And as people, we have power. And can put pressure on connections. And make them work. You see what I'm saying? - I know where I'm from. But this is needed because the people really, with the need, can apply the pressure. - And that's what the argument is about in the summer of 1966. Who manipulates the money, who runs the program, who puts on the pressures. But the frustrations and the aspirations of these young men are by no means limited to the poverty program. They and thousands of other young militants are telling the urban poor, "Forget city hall and its lousy paternalistic half measures. Come with us. Let us organize you.

And then together we'll tell the power structure what we want. And we'll get it. We'll start with the poverty program and we'll go on from there." Whether this can happen, whether it's all that simple, is quite another question. As we said at the beginning of this program, only one sixth of our population are poor. Not all of them are urban poor. And some can't be organized. They're too young or too old or simply indifferent. So the militant leaders are in effect directing their pitch at a small minority of a minority, less than 10% of our population. And the South, in the struggle for civil rights, a minority did win its battle. But it won because it was able to enlist outside support, including eventually most members of the Congress of the United States. It was helped in getting support by the nature of its opposition, those white southern leaders who brandished cattle prods and fire hoses and police dogs in an effort to hold back the inevitable. In the north, on the war on poverty, the opposition is not so identifiable.

Nobody is for poverty. Large cities tend to have liberal mayors and city councils. So those who propose to overthrow the power structure, merely by organizing the small poor minority, have their work cut out for them. But the ferment is there or whatever it's all to make result. You can feel it in every ghetto from Baltimore to Oakland. You could feel it at the recent White House conference on civil rights. In some cities, it has delayed or damaged the poverty program. In some cities, it has virtually wrecked it, and its ramifications extend far beyond the war on poverty. This ferment will be the subject of another NET program called the Cities and the Poor Part 2, one week from tonight. Good evening. [singing] I don't care what you do, don't care what you say. Everybody black and white, entitled to a decent place and state

got to go on the rent strike. The songs Burn Baby Burn, and Rent Strike Blues were composed and sung by Jimmy Collier. One week from tonight, the National Educational Television Network will present Part 2 of the Cities and the Poor. [singing] Then Lord, call this my building. I can't stand it anymore for the rent strike... Got to end me... [music] This is NET, the National Educational Television Network.