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-COMMUNITY ACTION. Shriver has called this organization "the boldest of OEO's inventions" and "the business corporation of the new social revolution." As Congress framed the Community Action Program, it was to run local projects "with maximum feasible participation of residents of the areas and members of the groups served." Generally, that has worked out to mean that residents of poor neighborhoods occupy 30% of the seats on city anti-poverty boards. Initially, these representatives were supposed to be elected, but after fewer than 1% of the eligible voters turned out in Los Angeles, 2.7% in Philadelphia, 4% in Cleveland, Shriver abandoned the idea.
Its fundamental concept nonetheless is that the poor can effectively help themselves only by mobilizing their potential political strength. In practice, this theory has stirred the loudest and most lasting controversy of the entire poverty program. City governments, bitterly resentful of any encroachment on their own powers, object that the poor are hardly qualified to dispense millions in anti-poverty funds. "Asking the poor how to win the war on poverty," cracked Columnist Art Buchwald, "is like asking the Japs how to win World War II."
Boston Tea Parties. The poor responded quickly to Community Action —too quickly, as far as many mayors were concerned. In Cleveland, slum dwellers organized, marched on city hall and left dead rats on the steps to dramatize their demand for better housing. In Washington's Lafayette Square across from the White House, 90 Mississippi Negroes pitched tents to publicize their own pitiable housing situation. In Syracuse, an OEO-financed group sent jeering squads to heckle Republican Mayor William Walsh during his 1964 re-election campaign, used poverty funds to bail out demonstrators. When their funds ran out, they sent a 25-man delegation to besiege Shriver for more, and when he turned them down, they went to the White House in a vain attempt to see Lyndon Johnson. Some of the same people were in the audience last month when Shriver, addressing a convention of an independent group called the Citizens Crusade Against Poverty, was shouted down by hecklers.
In city after city, groups of the poor began demanding outright control of anti-poverty programs. Concluded one congressional aide: "We've funded a monster in community action. The programs are a bunch of Boston Tea Parties all around the country. They're creating a third force."
At their national convention last June, the mayors even gave serious consideration to a resolution condemning the OEO for "trying to wreck local government by setting the poor against city hall." Though it was rejected, Washington got the message. "We never said that the poor need to control the programs," said Shriver. "But neither should city hall nor the welfare agencies. No group should have complete control. It must be shared." Indeed, Shriver has held up funds from Los Angeles and Chicago because the poor were poorly represented on the boards, and has threatened to cut off others unless they give the poor a voice.