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Nevertheless, the Administration has been caught in angry crossfire between warring city factions, and Poverty Czar Shriver is under pressure from President Johnson to calm the storm. Two weeks ago, Shriver killed a controversial research project that OEO had financed at Syracuse University. The program, aimed at encouraging the poor to promote their own interests more vigorously, was canceled after federal funds were used 1) to transport mobs to heckle Republican Mayor William Walsh during his re-election campaign, and 2) to bail demonstrators out of jail. Declared Walsh: "This program from its inception has tried to promote class warfare. Its concept, its purpose and its methods are completely alien to our American way of life."
The trouble in many cases is that some administrators seem to believe that the war on poverty begins at home. Last month OEO held up further funds to Boston pending an investigation of charges that 130 less-than-deprived youths collected $25,000 in wages last summer on anti-poverty projects. In New York City, Livingston Wingate, executive director of Harlem's HARYOU-ACT youth agency, stepped down at least temporarily from his regular duties last week, ostensibly to work full time on the agency's books. Official audits have not yet been completed, but HARYOU reportedly is unable to account for up to $2,000,000 of the funds it has received in the past year.