Sunday Evening Readings
I See Patterns...
September, 19, 2021
Yes, I see patterns in both thought and behavior. But there are specific patterns that seem to abound in the ways our country has attempted to reduce poverty. And oddly, similar patterns pop up in our attempts to moderate the impacts of systemic racism and diminish humans’ environmental impact. These patterns seem to reflect our innate need to turn everything into conflict, a contest of some kind, or war, and are intensified by our historic ineptitude in managing relief programs of any kind.
In this first issue of Crime and Punishment’s “Sunday Evening Readings”, I’ll share with you a few published articles, both historical and current, that I think are important to help us understand how these patterns developed, and how we can break free of them to create a new space for a new way of solving problems.
— This first piece is an archived newspaper article from the 1964 New York Times where Sargent Shriver, at the time the Director of the Peace Corp and of President Johnson’s anti-poverty program, declared that the U.S. government had the resources and the know-how to eliminate poverty in our country and challenged the Soviet Union to do the same—may the best country win!
SHRIVER PROPOSES A POVERTY ‘RACE’; Challenges Soviet to Contest to Eliminate Want
April 19, 1964
WASHINGTON, April 18—Sargent Shriver challenged Soviet Premier Khrushchev tonight to a race to see whether the United States or the Soviet Union can be the first to eliminate poverty.
Mr. Shriver, coordinator of President Johnson's antipoverty program and director of the Peace Corp , said that the United State would win.
“We will win because our poverly program does not rely exclusivey on big government, on big bussiess or ca big labor,” Mr. Shriver declared. “Happily we do have the support of the leaders in these three crucial groups. But more important we have the enthusiastic support of those Americanpeople who actually know what the battle is all about. Mr. Shriver spoke at the annnval dinner of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
He notted a recent Gallup roll reported that 83 per cent of American people did not believe the war on povertv could be won.
“I know the majority is not well‐informcd about the ability we now have to eliminate poverty,” Mr. Shriver said. “The American people must become better informed.”
He asked the editors to help get the facts to the American people.
It is now possible, he said, to eliminate in the nation all forms of human poverty. Mr. Shriver termed this “another watershed in the history of mankind.”
“This unprecedented possibility did aot exist 50 years ago,” Mr. Shriver said. “No nation at that time had the essential ingredients for success in this crucial war against poverty.”
Today, in the United States, he said, there is the wealth, the knowledge of economics, the educational techniques, the means of communication and mobility of population, and the will to eradicate poverty.
The Administration's antipoverty program is not a“political gimmick,” Mr. Shriver insisted. Nor, he said, is it a “handout program.”
“This is not a program which proposes a quick and easy solution to poverty, nor is it the begnning or the end of the war on poverty,” he said. “It is part of a coordinated attack on poverty—the first one in history with a real chance to win.”
— This investigative article from ProPublica details a very specific hassle single parents have to navigate to get financial aid—unfortunately, it puts their security and their children’s security at risk and adds another layer of stress (and time) to receive the funds they otherwise legally deserve.
— This New York Times opinion piece reflects on Robert Kennedy’s visit to the Mississippi Delta in 1967 to get a glimpse of poverty first hand…and it shocked a nation. But why, over a half century later, is this region still unspeakably poor?
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
What Mississippi Taught Bobby Kennedy About Poverty
By Ellen B. Meacham
April 12, 2017
OXFORD, MISS. — The toddler had no time for this white man in a fine dark suit. Robert Kennedy may have been a former attorney general and the brother of a slain president, but Annie White’s son was focused on the cornbread crumbs scattered on the floor of his dilapidated home in Cleveland, Miss.
Mr. Kennedy was in the Mississippi Delta, 50 years ago this week, for a Senate subcommittee examination of War on Poverty programs. While testifying before the panel, Marian Wright, a 27-year-old NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund lawyer, had sounded an alarm: The Delta was in crisis. The senator decided to see for himself.
What he saw on his widely publicized trip shocked a nation used to postwar abundance. Americans would be even more shocked to know that 50 years later, the Delta remains desperately poor. In the three counties Senator Kennedy visited, poverty rates for children younger than 18 still hover around 50 percent. Too many families there face a hard knot of problems: food deserts, failing schools, poor infrastructure, unhealthy populations, shrinking economies, the long shadow of segregation and discrimination.
It’s easy to conclude that little has changed since Mr. Kennedy’s trip. But a closer look reveals bright spots. Many of the programs that are working well align with Mr. Kennedy’s core convictions about how to improve the lives of poor people.
Mr. Kennedy was convinced, especially after his time in Mississippi, that poverty programs are most successful when they are informed by the voices of poor people themselves. He trusted the families he met there, and later in Appalachia, blighted city neighborhoods in the Northeast and the fields of California, to know what would help them the most.
This same spirit animates programs like the Sunflower County Freedom Project, a nonprofit begun in 1998 by Teach for America alumni. The families of the seventh through 12th graders who participate help shape programming and keep students on track. Students tell the stories of their Delta through art, drama, poetry and song. They learn to tend a garden and work for justice in their communities. Graduates are now enrolled in colleges across the country, and in 2016, the students improved their ACT scores over the summer by three points to 20.2, above both the county and state averages.
Senator Kennedy’s trip to the Delta has become a touchstone for liberal politicians, but he never said government had all the solutions. Instead, he envisioned businesses and charities working with government to provide jobs and strengthen poor neighborhoods in rural areas. He already had a model: In 1966, he worked with other New York leaders on the Bedford-Stuyvesant Renewal and Rehabilitation Corporation, one of the first of its kind.
In the Delta, several agencies are still using that model to good effect. The Delta Health Alliance works in the 18-county region to improve access to health care. With a diverse list of more than 30 public and private partners, it operates medical clinics, visiting-nurse programs, parenting and early childhood education services, and heart-health initiatives. It also helps to improve the region’s health technology infrastructure.
Robert Kennedy was a data guy; he wanted to see hard numbers when searching for solutions. He became brusque when officials couldn’t tell him, for example, how many job-training graduates in Greenville, Miss., had actually found jobs.
Today, some of the most successful organizations in the Delta also recognize that reliable data is fundamental to success. Leading the charge is the lawyer who challenged Mr. Kennedy and other senators to act: Marian Wright Edelman’s Children’s Defense Fund, partnering with the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative and the Center for Research and Policy in the Public Interest, recently produced “Unequal Lives: The State of Black Women and Families in the Rural South,” which mined census numbers to get a more accurate picture of the problems facing these families.
The report, which includes several Delta counties, is a boon for researchers and program heads. Data for rural communities is hard to find, but essential for getting aid; now, advocates can use this report to support grant applications and push for better policies.
In spite of these bright spots, there are still threatening clouds. For many poor families in the Delta, the federal and state safety net, limited as it is — Social Security, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, free school breakfasts and lunches — provides most of the meals their children eat. And in the three counties that Senator Kennedy visited, one in three people run out of food each month.
Mr. Kennedy’s insights from his trip are as relevant today as they were in 1967, and it’s no coincidence that the programs that follow his lead are some of the region’s most successful. The challenge today is how to grow them and how to bring those insights to programs that are not having the impact they could.
If he returned to the Delta today, Mr. Kennedy would cheer the advances but be dismayed at how hard advocates must fight to maintain that limited progress. And his heart would break to see there are still so many children in the Delta, and across America, who, like Annie White’s boy, must grasp for every crumb.
Correction:
April 18, 2017
An opinion article on April 12, about Robert Kennedy’s 1967 trip to Mississippi, misstated the year that he worked on the Bedford-Stuyvesant Renewal and Rehabilitation Corporation. It was 1966, not 1964.
Ellen B. Meacham teaches journalism at the University of Mississippi and is the author of the forthcoming “Delta Epiphany: RFK in Mississippi.”
— Fast foward to the rental assistance debacle of today. How is it possible that only a bit over $3 billion of the $46 billion + allocated for “emergency” rental assistance for those facing eviction in the time of Covid has been distributed to date? I wonder how long it takes the military to receive the federal funds it is allocated…? Do the military’s top brass have to answer embarrassing, and even life-endangering questions to receive their Congressionally allocated funds?
— And finally for this evening, this recent article from The Guardian shows exactly how economic, racial and environmental inequities intersect. But why do the poor and minorities suffer some of the harshest impacts of climate change and other envirnmental insults? Does money really buy, well, everything?
What patterns do you see?
Please share!
And if you are not already a subscriber, please sign up for either the free or paid options.
And speaking of trees, here’s the link to my previous newsletter for your additional reading pleasure:
Great articles Joan!
I'd love to see the U.S. Govt. invest in 21st century industries that could provide a fair wage for an honest day's work for the next generation of Americans: For example, 30 years of work in a steel, coal, or auto industry. (airlines, shipping, trucking as well) Perhaps - the U.S. Govt. could invest a few trillion dollars (as they did for COVID) into Wind, Solar, and Geothermal energy industries? This one investment could put a damper on poverty; furthermore, when author/educator Dr. Ruby Payne talks about "generational poverty" in education - I believe planned parenting alone would nearly extinguish poverty completely. Young students and children are trapped in vicious cycles of poverty because of their lack of access to affordable contraceptives. If the U.S. Govt. invested in 100% FREE birth control - no questions asked - on the counter of EVERY pharmacy (CVS, Walgreen's, and Rite-Aid) and on the counter of every public school's library or handed out by school nurses - a whole slew of problems brought on by poverty would be eliminated or drastically reduced: 1. Teen pregnancies 2. High School dropouts 3. STDs 4. Crime 5. Incarceration and the list goes on according to Father Absence Statistics.
If we can mandate the COVID vaccine - why can't we mandate a Hormonal Implant (borth control) that lasts for 3 years on 15 year old girls?
Of course, we do not need to acquire 0% teenage pregnancies in order to eliminate poverty; we can seriously reduce poverty though by simply delaying teenagers and those without established careers from having children.