Many critics of the Great Society's war on poverty accuse the Administration of spending too much too loosely. Last week a group of dedicated anti-poverty warriors charged heatedly that it is doling out too little too cautiously.
The unlikely forum was a two-day annual meeting of the Citizens Crusade Against Poverty at Washington's International Inn. C.C.A.P., which represents 125 social-welfare agencies and other groups, seeks to complement Sargent Shriver's Office of Economic Opportunity with long-range planning and aid local anti-poverty groups with trained personnel and expertise.
One of C.C.A.P.'s tenets is that the poor must play a decisive part in planning and bringing about their own salvation, a concept that has caused conflict with city politicians and confusion in Congress. At last week's conference were delegations from urban and rural slums, from Watts and Harlem, Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta.
"Political Assassination." C.C.A.P. Chairman Walter Reuther, whose United Auto Workers bankrolled the two-year-old organization with a $1,000,000 donation, set the critical tone at the outset by saying that the Great Society could not be built with "halfway, halfhearted" measures or by "making appropriations with an eyedropper"—though President Johnson is asking $1.75 billion in anti-poverty appropriations for the next fiscal year. The N.A.A.C.P.'s Roy Wilkins warned that the war in Viet Nam must not be al lowed to divert funds from the war on poverty.
In committee meetings the poor talked of "organizing against the political and economic structure" that has denied them control over anti-poverty expenditures. There was talk of "political assassination" to oust officeholders accused of "keeping us down." Mrs. Unita Blackwell of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party declared: "The Federal Government ought to be ashamed of itself. The same men who pay us $3 a day and are bent on putting people off the land—that's the men who are on the poverty committee. You just come up with the resources, and we'll show you what we can do with the money." Carl Johnson of Harlan County, Ky., said his area was no better off despite $1,000,000 in poverty funds.
"Step Aside." Shriver spoke the second day. He had been warned to expect hostility, and rewrote his speech to prepare for it. "I know you have got the grill," he began, "and I'm the hamburger, freshly ground yesterday and ready to be cooked today." He met the opposition head on, detailed OEO's considerable accomplishments, and expressed his own impatience with not being able to do more faster. He likened the poor to labor-union members, who must sometimes settle for less than their full demands. "The American society can't afford wildcat strikes in the industrial area; even less can it afford wildcat strikes on the entire social order—and that's what Watts was."