Fifty years ago this nation was concerned about those living in poverty, but now 50 years later the undoing of that national concern for marginalized communities is almost complete. Workers are now experiencing a so-called modern economic and workforce development system that is so politicized, and has been so privatized, that it undermines every effort workers make at supporting themselves and their families. Last week we watched as the city of Detroit was forced into declaring bankruptcy and now this week we watch as fast food workers in cities all over the U.S. have risked arrest by going out on strike and protesting the abysmally low wages that keep so many American workers in poverty, while the corporations they work for experience record profits.
How did this happen? It seems to have begun with the almost immediate decimation of the very programs meant to help the jobless and working poor lift themselves out of poverty, programs put in place following the The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom that occurred 50 years ago this month .....
The Johnson Administration responded to this growing popular grassroots movement for civil rights, for social and economic equality, with a broad array of antipoverty legislation.
" The Economic Opportunity Act (1964) provided the basis for the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), the Job Corps, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), Upward Bound, Head Start, Legal Services, the Neighborhood Youth Corps, the Community Action Program (CAP), the college Work-Study program, Neighborhood Development Centers, small business loan programs, rural programs, migrant worker programs, remedial education projects, local health care centers, and others. The antipoverty effort, however, did not stop there. It encompassed a range of Great Society legislation far broader than the Economic Opportunity Act alone. Other important measures with antipoverty functions included an $11 billion tax cut (Revenue Act of 1964), the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Food Stamp Act (1964), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965), the Higher Education Act (1965), the Social Security amendments creating Medicare/Medicaid (1965), the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (1965), the Voting Rights Act (1965), the Model Cities Act (1966), the Fair Housing Act (1968), several job-training programs, and various Urban Renewal-related projects. " - Kent B. Germany, See: http://faculty.virginia.edu/sixties/readings/War%20on%20Poverty%20entry%20Poverty%20Encyclopedia.pdf
"AFTER President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he reportedly turned to his press secretary and lamented that Democrats 'have lost the South for a generation.' Johnson's judgment was optimistic. Despite brief flashes of strength during the presidential elections of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Democrats—particularly white Democrats—have been losing ground in the South for half a century." The ECONOMIST, Politics in the South, The Long Goodbye ~ Is the white Southern Democrat Extinct, endangered or just hibernating? Nov. 2010mocrats
Not only have Democrats lost ground, it seems many have defected and remain Democrats, particularly white southerners of the party, in name only, wearing the clothing of equality and democracy while capitulating to the same moneyed private interests as Republicans. Southern Democrats are as responsible for rising joblessness and poverty as Republicans, despite their rhetoric.
It was Nixon however, a short time after his election that began the dismantling of the Office of Economic Opportunity by putting Donald Rumsfeld in charge of the office, who then hired a young Dick Cheney. The rest is history as we know it.
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