Life
Now
"Community-sourced pictures
with a purpose to visualize and help grasp a problem"
(For visitors who like to follow up on footnotes, fear not. More footnotes are on their way.)
Who: A gathering of 20,000 people.
What: A celebration to have a good time and raise money for a worthwhile cause ended in death, injury and mystery.
When: Night of Oct. 18, 2015.
Where: Downtown Ft. Myers, Lee County, Florida.
Why: Still under investigation.
How: Gun shots dispersed the crowd, killed Expavious Tyrell Taylor, a 20-year-old recent high school graduate from Clewiston who was enrolled in junior college and injured five other people.
Witnesses described the scene as "chaotic." A friend of Mr. Taylor explained to the Ft. Myers News-Press: "There was no confrontations before that. It was unexpected, it was so fast." [footnote, return with your BBB - Browser Back Button.]
The murderer has not been found.
The community responded not by letting loose with undirected violence in the streets or cowering behind subdivision gates. When shots rang out; the community came together.
Within days, people started talking with each other and ideas began to form.
This did not happen by itself.
Mr. Mohammed was the reluctant convener. Originally from New York, he has been a presence in Ft. Myers for 25 years. He established the Quality of Life center and has been providing after-school shelter, safety, activities, jobs, hope, visions of a better future with scaffolding and ladders to get there. One high schooler on his way to college says he grew up at "The Q" starting when he was 4 years old.
Teens said the problem that brought us together was violence, and violence in our community - as they see it - results from poverty.
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These "apprentices" - children entering adulthood - explained that teenagers from families living in poverty often have to contribute financially to their household. Regularly, around their schools, they see recruiters for the criminal economy advertise big bucks or food-on-the-table without making teenagers fully aware of what they are getting into.
One teenager said she and her friends had not yet graduated from high school, yet one employable skill they have already learned is how to handle a gun.
Since not everyone can be the star who wins football games or science/technology/engineering/math competitions, the teens felt there was no realistic alternative to getting money for their families than by aiding in the commission of crimes or, at a minimum, doing things some people might consider immoral.
On the other hand, the teens who spent their weekends meeting with members of the broader countywide community in task forces to build a better future said they were grateful for minimum-wage jobs which brought them into contact with mentors who opened their eyes to greater opportunities, such as college, a certificate and a good-paying job or even an undergraduate degree and a career.
In other words, jobs that paid something, did not require a certificate and provided mentorship were preferable to lives of crime and violence. If every teen who wanted to work could work at minimum wage jobs with opportunity, then the available pool of labor for criminal activities would shrink. Crime would be reduced, as would violence in the streets. The goal of the group became the end of poverty in Lee County.
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The problem of poverty is so great, people living in poverty are, by the nature of the problem, busy trying to keep themselves and their households together. Most people living in poverty do not have the time to write songs like Woody Guthrie, poetry like Maya Angelou, or novels like J. K Rowling or Sandra Cisneros who wrote from her experience that "Revenge only engenders violence, not clarity and true peace. I think liberation must come from within."
Yet, expression is part of human nature and people living in poverty have a lot to say to each other about the hurts and highlights of their day and could share those insights with outsiders, but are rarely asked.
Outsiders look at statistics and get to work on policy papers or hear sound-bites on television and walk away. Like ostriches with heads buried in work or hobbies, they don't notice what is happening around them.
How many times can someone turn their head,The answer, my friend, in Lee County, is that those times came to an end when shots rang out and people came together to productively and pro-actively take charge of their lives. Like passengers on the 9/11 plane over Pennsylvania, they had reached the point where there was nothing else to do. They decided to face the situation and change it.
Of course, as the old saying goes, freedom is not free. The cost of freedom to take charge of our lives is having to give up a few weekends and evenings to gather together with our neighbors to share lessons learned from our previous training and experience and work on something serious, together.
Thanks to the teens, we've taken on the problem of poverty.
The problem of poverty is not new.
Local leaders recognized poverty as a problem at least as long ago as the 1500s, in England. Everywhere there must be some way of providing life-lines to those who cannot fend for themselves. See, for example, Frances Coppola "An Experiment with Basic Income" (Cache)
More recently, in the 1960s, despite his best efforts, the commander in chief of the War on Poverty could only take on the forces that were in place in his time. [See, footnote]
Lyndon Baines Johnson was a white-boy born in 1908 to a family living in rural Texas poverty. His father had been active politically and done well but fell out of favor. His fortunes took a tumble. Johnson grew up with role models that gave him courage, strength and vision. When he was a young adult, yoked to a plow behind a horse clearing land for a road, he was not bragging when he told his older co-workers: "I'm going to be President of the United States someday." He was stating a fact about the future as he saw it in the 1920s. [See footnote]
This is an outline to spark memories in those who were there or studied that era and interest in readers who would like to learn more. In other words, this is not meant to be an exhaustive biography. For that, Google Robert Caro. [See footnote.]Johnson's road to the top was clear (to him): "His path ran only through Washington - it was paved with national, not state power - and it had only three steps: House of Representatives, Senate, presidency." [See footnote.]
Johnson set his goal and worked against great odds "in a desperate, seemingly hopeless campaign." He won. [See, footnote.]
FDR asked Johnson to become Director of the Rural Electrification Administration, the agency that built infrastructure to bring electricity to farms when electricity for everyone was a good idea and the markets were not incentivized enough to entice the private sector into rural areas. A significant example of the huge undertaking involved in this endeavor is the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority). LBJ declined. [See, footnote.]
Johnson vacationed at the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia with two people who had known him well for a long time, a very wealthy Texas developer and a very wealthy Texas publisher. They offered him a share of a lucrative oil field worth three-quarters of a million dollars with no money up front. He could "pay for it out of his profits each year." This would not hurt him politically, in Texas. LBJ refused. His friends got the idea that he was looking beyond the yellow rose of Texas. Being an oil man from the South could have been an extra burden in a campaign for national office. [See, footnote.]
In 1940, Johnson was appointed Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve. To borrow from an article I wrote in NewsBlaze, just after Congress declared war, Congressman Johnson went on active duty inspecting manufacturing facilities with a focus on efficiency and labor issues.
In May 1942, he was stationed in New Zealand and Australia and is said to have participated in a number of missions in the South Pacific. On June 8, 1942, Johnson spent the night "in a double bed with a Colonel Francis Stevens." They left Townsville aboard the B-17 'Swoose' and flew to a staging area at Port Moresby, New Guinea, where they transferred to 11 B-26s preparing to fly across the mountainous jungle, bomb the Japanese airfield at Lae, and return.
Johnson was seated in Lt. Bench's B-26 "The Virginian." He left to retrieve his camera and Col. Stevens took his seat. LBJ never saw Col. Stevens again. Apparently, The Virginian was boxed in by other planes and crashed, although some claim the plane was shot down during the mission.
LBJ received the Silver Star from Gen. MacArthur for his participation - or, as Ray Holyoak put it, his "dubious involvement" - in that mission.
Mr. Holyoak is an Australian heritage consultant and determined doctoral candidate. In a series of emails, he confirmed that Johnson - who was still called "Johnson" at the time since he did not assume the three-letter appellation until after FDR passed away - was not a ne'er–do–well. He did do something else that was significant on that trip to Australia.
On June 17, 1942, Johnson had dinner with Robert 'Bob' Sherrod, a Time Magazine reporter. They talked about black soldiers fragging their white officers in Townsville. The violence was so directed and overwhelming that it has been called a mutiny. The U. S. military lost control of its own human resources. The Australian military set up roadblocks to either redirect or kill the "mutinous" Black U. S. military personnel.
The reporter was concerned that the censors would bury the story and expressed his hope that the congressman would not be under such restrictive censorship and would take the story back to the States. Sherrod wrote it up. Johnson may not have delivered the entire report to the president, but he did bring the matter to the attention of FDR. [See Footnote.]
Johnson returned to Washington when President Roosevelt recalled legislators to their legislative duties. Most of the actual document Johnson received from Sherrod went into the National Archives and the Johnson Presidential Library provided a copy to Mr. Holyoak. [See, footnote.]
October 1942, the North American Service Club B14 for African-American soldiers opened at 380 Flinders Street, Townsville, QLD in response to the violence between white and black U. S. military personnel around Kelso Field.
I do not know if the black service club facilities were equal to those of the white U.S. military personnel, but they were separate which meant less contact and less chance for violence.
The Kelso Mutiny was unusual and the depth of its cover-up lasted about 70 years. It is only through the inspired and diligent research of Ray Holyoak and the webmastering of Peter Dunn (OzAtWar) that so much has been revealed in the past few years.
There were other race-based incidents of violence among U. S. military personnel both in Australia (the Battle of Brisbane, Nov. 26-27, 1942) and the United States (Zoot Suit Riots, LA, 1943).
In 1943, Bishop John Gregg of the African Methodist Church in the north central United States visited black troops as an envoy of President Roosevelt. He had a military escort, Chaplain DeVeaux. Together, they traveled approximately 100,000 miles to visit war zones in Australia and Europe.
Bishop Gregg reported that the Townsville facilities were inferior to the facilities for black U. S. personnel in Brisbane and Sydney. [See Footnote.]
The depth of the president's concern is demonstrated by another VIP visit to Australia in 1943. Eleanor Roosevelt, on behalf of the Red Cross, very genteelly toured Australia.
December 1936-September 1962 Eleanor Roosevelt wrote a column, "My Day." [See Footnote.] During her trip to the South Pacific, Aug. 28 - Sept. 23, 1943, proceeds from her column were divided between the American Red Cross and the American Friends Service Committee. [See Footnote.]
Little remembered, and therefore probably little publicized at the time, Eleanor Roosevelt visited the North American Service Club in Townsville, around Sept. 7. [See Footnote.]
The Democratic Party in Texas urged LBJ to run for governor. He would have been virtually unopposed. LBJ refused. [See, footnote.]
LBJ could not see beyond the age of 40. He was 40 and felt like he had done very little with his life, "there was no bill ever passed by Congress that bore his name." Desperate, "he entered a Senate race he seemed to have no chance of winning." LBJ pushed "the elastic boundaries of Texas politics." LBJ won. [See, footnote.]
LBJ's family history informed him that he would die young, of a weak heart. Although he had survived past 40, he did not expect to live much past 60.
LBJ put up a valiant fight for the presidential nomination, and came up a little short. About 8 a.m., Thursday, July 14, Senator Kennedy called Senator Johnson. They were staying in the same hotel for the convention. JFK asked if he could come down and see LBJ. They agreed he would and gave themselves about two hours. Johnson started calling his advisors. What would the Kennedys want? They figured it was to offer LBJ the vice-presidency. LBJ was inclined to say yes. A lot had to do with his age. If he was out and Kennedy was in for two terms, it would be 1968 before he could run again. And, he would be 60. Even if the Kennedys lost in '60, JFK would be in a better position in '64. When Johnson did the math, it did not add up to him winning election for the presidency, ever.
Early in 1960, LBJ had considered another possibility and asked his staff to find out "How many Vice Presidents of the United States had succeeded to the presidency? The answer was ten: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Author, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Harry Truman. That route was well traveled."
LBJ had seen it happen: 'He had known Truman for years as a senator, and then Harry had been plucked from the Senate to be Vice President - and then, less than four months after he had been sworn in, he was President." [See, footnote.]
At the time, even the transition from poverty to being a heartbeat away from the presidency was unlikely for someone with LBJ's origins.
Shots rang out violently killing JFK. The Secret Service rushed the vice president to the security of Air Force One where he could take the oath of office required by the Constitution. Regime changed. For the first time since the Civil War a southerner was in command of the nation.
LBJ was masterful at counting votes, shepherding the civil rights acts through congress, and commanding the administrative agencies that changed the face of poverty and employment inside the United States.
July 2, 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was originally enacted. Since then, it has been amended several times. The Obama White House calls the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction." (Cache)
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was systemic structural change.
Just as a reminder of what the times were like, in 1954 the Supreme Court announced a sweeping change in the way people live in the United States. Jim Crow separate and unequal segregation in education was declared unconstitutional. People across the country heard that forced segregation was ending. Communities voluntarily integrated.
However, some communities thought the Court's admonition to act with "all deliberate speed" meant "take as much time as you like." The Court expressed its concern about this, and schools in more communities integrated.
Kentucky is probably a good example because, in many ways, it was and still remains a border state. In 1904, Kentucky passed the "Day Law," named after Carl Day, the Democrat from Breathitt County who proposed it in the state House.
The law is formally titled “An Act to Prohibit White and Colored Persons from Attending the Same School.” The purpose of the law was to de-integrate Berea College, then the only integrated school in the South.
The Supreme Court, in Berea College v. Kentucky, 211 U.S. 45 (1908) decided for the state, mostly on the grounds of corporation law. After Kentucky adopted its new constitution in 1891, Berea College reincorporated.
Corporations are a product of the state government and, the Court reasoned, the state could amend its laws concerning the activities of corporations chartered under its laws. Justice Harlan, joined by Justice Day, dissented. Kentucky amended the Day Law in 1950 to permit voluntary integration of schools.
In 1954, the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (Cache). Within two years, 92 of Kentucky's 160 counties with bi-racial populations had integrated their schools. However, there was also Sturgis, a coal mining town west of Louisville with a population around 3,000. Blacks and whites worked together in the mines, but on the surface schools and housing were segregated, the movie house was segregated so blacks sat in the balcony, and the park was segregated with blacks on one side and whites on the other.
This history of Sturgis comes from Keeneland's Ted Bassett: My Life (The University Press of Kentucky, 2009, pp. 96-99):
Black students from Sturgis attended Dunbar Negro High School, which was in Morganfield, eleven miles away. Nobody of African American heritage had ever attended Sturgis High. But in late August 1956, nine black students registered for the upcoming school year. The reasons for their decision to do this were explained in the simplest of terms by the mother of one of the students, who told the Lexington Herald reporter, 'It's closer, and they don't have to wait for buses. Besides, they can get better classes at Sturgis.'
"... On the first day of school ... a yelling, shoving crowd of approximately 500 blocked the way of the black students into the building. The crowd was carrying shovels and pitchforks and picket signs that stated such things as, 'Niggers, go home or get hurt!' One of the black students said a white man told him, 'If you try anything else, we'll put you in a car, and you know what comes next.'
Initially, the local police did nothing. That helped inspire (Governor) Chandler to send in the Kentucky National Guard. Four units from Lexington, Henderson, Livermore, and Owensboro rolled into Sturgis. On the lead, standing atop an M-47 tank, was Major J.J.B. Williams from Somerset. It was one of four tanks that accompanied the units, which bevouacked on the grounds of Sturgis High School."
Fast forward to the next day:
"By this time, news reporters and segregation proponents were descending on the area. Some of the reporters were being threatened - a group that had ventured into Clay was escorted out of town by men on motorcycles. The segregationists were holding rallies in Sturgis Public Park. A common theme of their rhetoric was, "If the National Guard and State Police don't leave, we will take care of them." Chandler threatened to declare martial law, and segregationist leaders such as Millard Grubbs, who had flown to Sturgis from Louisville, responded that the governor should be impeached."Similar events were occurring in places like Tennessee and Alabama. The following year, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent the integration of schools in Little Rock and President Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne Division to enforce the Supreme Court's decision and defend the U.S. Constitution. Ted Bassett continues his personal history:
"I don't know how many historians would consider Happy Chandler a visionary. But I do believe that when the Sturgis incident occurred, Chandler decided to make not just a local or regional statement but a national statement. He was actually serving his second tenure as Kentucky's governor .... Sandwiched between Chandler's terms as governor was a six-year stint in the U.S. Senate, a position from which he resigned to become commissioner of Major League Baseball. During Chandler's tenure as baseball commissioner, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers."Chandler was shrewd. He was fifty-eight years old at the time of the situation in Sturgis and probably had aspirations for higher national office than the Senate. I believe he sensed that the civil rights issue was becoming a major political force, and if his record reflected strong support of desegregation, that would make him more attractive to the national leaders of the Democratic Party as well as to the national electorate. He wanted to dramatically show that he did not need to be prodded to enforce public school integration in Sturgis. He suspected the situation would receive national attention, and it did - the New York Times and newspapers as far away as London, England, covered the story."
By the middle of the following week, emotions calmed. Fewer black students were trying to enroll and the angry mobs disappeared. The National Guard and State Police went home. Eventually, the Kentucky Attorney General, Jo Ferguson, issued an official opinion that the Supreme Court had directed its decision at school boards and parents could not just decide, on their own, to enroll their children in different schools. Bassett continues:
The black students went back to Dunbar. And in September of the following year, Sturgis High was integrated - somewhat grudgingly, but without the presence of the National Guard or State Police."
Today, Berea College continues its proud heritage of purpose and action. According to its website, Berea College was "Founded in 1855 as the first interracial and coeducational college in the South. ... The College has an inclusive Christian character, expressed in its motto 'God has made of one blood all peoples of the Earth.'”
August 7, 1964, LBJ withheld pertinent information requested by Senator Wayne Morse (Oregon) and rushed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution through Congress. Result: Like the War of 1812, the Vietnam War ended up not doing much - other than costing a lot of money, killing and losing many people on all sides, leaving a vacuum in many families, creating rifts in our communities. As a result, LBJ decided not to seek or accept his party's nomination for re-election. The 1968 Democratic Convention was held in Chicago. Richard J. Dailey controlled Chicago as Mayor and chairman of the Cook County Democratic Central Committee.
While the Convention was choosing Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey (HHH) as the Democratic nominee for the presidency, television showed students and other protesters being beaten by the police.
Official investigations following the Convention confirmed that Dailey's police rioted against the protestors while the whole world was watching. This contributed to HHH losing the election.
The Vietnamese War became a problem for Richard M. Nixon, and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.
Kissinger spent months in Paris trying to negotiate the shape of the table around which there could be negotiations for peace. [See footnotes.] [Personal aside: I can attest to the sophistication of Vietnamese restaurants and quality of Vietnamese food in Paris at that time.]
Some say it has been a better peace than it was a war. But, the first draft of history is too personal to be objective. It is hard to know the contours of a problem when you are inside. One thing that seems to have become conventional wisdom is that it turned into a quagmire, easy to get into and difficult to exit.
To understand LBJ's war on poverty, let's look at Newark, NJ with an ode to Willard Heckel, Dean of Rutgers Law School.
Cities across the country, like Newark, New Jersey, saw the white power-structure eventually give way to the peaceful transition of electoral politics.
According to Prof. Paul L. Tractenberg, Rutgers School of Law - Newark in A Centennial History of Rutgers Law School in Newark: Opening a Thousand Doors (The History Press, 2010):
"Violence erupted one hot evening after a black cab driver, John Smith, was arrested for tailgating a police car, and a rumor spread rapidly that he had been beaten to death by police. He had, in fact, been transported to a local hospital. Regardless, the news and rumors brought simmering tensions to a breaking point and resulted in five days of violence, looting and chaos. The riots left twenty-six people dead and hundreds injured.
"The riots defined the 1960s in Newark. They brought to light the misery of poverty, the city's public housing crisis, the substandard public education, the inadequate healthcare and the ubiquitous unemployment that shaped most black Newarkers' lives.
"Even after the acute tensions had ceased, the city's residents dealt with the results in their own way. Black residents grappled with the devolution of their community, now in disarray. "White flight" began in earnest ....
"As the racial balance of Newark shifted, so did the city's political guard. Hugh Addonizio was voted out of the mayor's office, leaving behind a legacy of corruption in city hall. He would be the last nonblack mayor of Newark (at least to the present time).
"At the same time, administrators, professors and students at Rutgers Law, who were still predominantly white and male, stepped forward, in many cases for the first time, to engage themselves in the problems of an unraveling city. They worked with community and activist groups to bring their legal and human skills to bear on the problems of Newark residents caught up in the aftermath of the July 1967 upheavals.
"The law school's dean, Willard Heckel, led the effort at Rutgers Law and, in short order, wound up as the head of Newark's federal anti-poverty agency, the United Community Corporation. Heckel's efforts were combined with those of his longtime partner, Malcolm Talbott, who had served as a university vice-president in charge of the Rutgers-Newark campus beginning in 1963 after a long career as a Rutgers Law professor."
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in remarks at Rutgers, April 11, 1995, "Dean Willard Heckel (was) one of the kindest, finest men I have ever known." [Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Remarks for Rutgers (Apr. 11, 1995) (on file with the Columbia Law Review)]. Justice Ginsburg was finishing her first year of teaching and was on track for tenure at Rutgers Law School. Tenure is prized in academia because it is, in effect, a life-time employment contract that frees professors to concentrate on their narrow field of scholarship. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of the few tenure-tracked or tenured female law professors in the United States at the time. She went on to say that Dean Heckel was unyielding in discussing the terms of her employment.
Willard was dean for many years which means he had a good understanding of the people affecting his school, inside and out. When he had reason, he could be stubborn.
My father, Alfred W. Blumrosen, the Thomas A. Cowan Distinguished Professor of Law, Emeritus, pulled back the curtain for me, from time to time, and I could peer into activities at the law school, including negotiations for this or that. I think that is where he learned "No" is merely the first word in a negotiation. But, by then he had tenure. He was not a woman law professor worried about getting her second annual teaching contract on her way to earning tenure while hiding her pregnancy from her Dean who, himself, habitually hid the fact that he could not be open about who he loved.
It must not have been easy being Willard or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then. (See Herma Hill Kay, "Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Professor of Law," Columbia Law Review, 2004.) See also, a version of these times from the perspective of a former student, George W. Conk, who is more open about some things in "People’s Electric: Engaged Legal Education at Rutgers-Newark Law School in the 1960s and 1970s," Fordham Urban Law Journal, 2013 (Cache).
Here is just one more example of Willard's quiet yet determined method of organizational change. In 1972, he was Moderator of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. In 1976, he was one of 19 members of a task force to study "Christian approaches to homosexuality, with special reference to the ordination of avowed practicing homosexuals." In 1978, the General Assembly adopted its official "Policy Statement and Recommendations" in a 60-page publication titled The Church and Homosexuality. Rather than footnotes, explanatory documentation was provided in the first 56 pages. The Church's official "Policy Statement and Recommendations" begins on page 57.
Willard was a quiet driving force with an impact so great that he was included in the following list in the February, 1995, update of the More Light Church (Cache):
"Let us all admire one another for the best that is within us, whatever our sexual orientation. And should that seem impossible for you, then think about these people: Julius Caesar, James I of England (the VI of Scotland, the man who commissioned the King James Version), Dag Hammarsjold, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, John Cheever, James Baldwin, Gertrude Stein, Tchaikovsky, Camille Saint-Saens, Aaron Copeland, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Rudolf Valentino, Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power, Montgomery Clift, Heddy Lamar, Marlene Dietrich, Wally Cox, John Henry Newman, Pope Paul III, Presbyterian General Assembly Moderator Willard Heckel, San Francisco Forty-Niner Dave Kopay, Washington Redskin Jerry Smith, tennis great Bill Tilden, and even Wild Bill Hickock; they all, and thousands more like them, were or are homosexuals.
"'No man is an island,' said John Donne, and in these days he would probably say that no person is an island. We are all connected to one another, regardless of age, status, income, race, nationality, or sexual orientation. To deny our connection does not disconnect us, for God has made us all one. Of all people, Christians should remember that.
"The apostle Paul was such an irascible, erratic, crusty, curmudgeonly genius. After having virtually told all of us that none of us stands a snowball's chance in hell of making it into heaven, and after having laid out a laundry list of sins sufficient to incorporate everyone who ever lived into it, he said, 'Therefore you have no excuse, O man, whoever you are, when you judge another; for in passing judgment upon him you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.' He was hard on everybody, including homosexuals, but he ended up gently. It is a grace note, of which we all need all we can get."
In The Newark Frontier: Community Action in the Great Society Mark Krasovic explains on p. 36: "Community action under the War on Poverty was essentially a grants program, and it is part of the logic of grants that a transfer of funds is also a transfer of power. That transaction took place between the federal Office of Economic Opportunity and, in Newark's case, the United Community Corporation (UCC)," which was led by Dean Willard Heckel.
One of the most important activities of a manager, including a president of the United States, is to select people who will come next. Democrats from across the country gathered for a national convention in Atlantic City, late August 1964. This was about six weeks after the president signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and about eight weeks after Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were murdered for volunteering to register voters in Mississippi's Freedom Summer. One point of bitter acrimony at the convention was selecting the delegation to be seated from the great state of Mississippi: the "official" all-white delegation or the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Hubert Humphrey with his protégé Walter Mondale, Walter Reuther, Roy Wilkins, Bayard Rustin and other leaders negotiated a compromise. Like most compromises, no one got everything they wanted. Most of the "official" all-white delegation went home.
The negotiating group had decided to seat two MFDP delegates and chose the delegates to be seated. This drew new objections from the MFDP because, as Fanny Lou Hammer pointed out, "We didn't come all this way for no two seats." And, it was the leadership who made the selection, which did not seem very democratic to the "foot soldiers," the delegates who had come all this way but were made to feel undervalued. John Lewis (SNCC) was one of the MFDP delegates who was not seated. He was the youngest leader of the "Big Six" civil rights organizations which had been instrumental in organizing the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom the year before. The other five were, in birth order: A. Philip Randolph (Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters), Roy Wilkins (NAACP), James Farmer (CORE), Whitney Young (National Urban League) and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (SCLC)
In his 1998 book, Walking with the Wind, Lewis described how he felt:
"(F)or the first time, we had made our way to the very center of the system. We had played by the rules, done everything we were supposed to do, had played the game exactly as required, had arrived at the doorstep and found the door slammed in our face."
Humphrey became LBJ's vice-presidential running mate. [For more about Humphrey, see video, below.]
HHH and then LBJ took their oaths of office Jan. 20, 1965. In March, organizing to register voters in the face of terror culminated in several attempts to march from Selma (in Dallas County) to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. Seeking to petition their government, the marchers had to go through Klan-controlled Lowndes County, where no blacks were registered to vote. One of the leaders of one of the marches was John Lewis.
The First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." [See footnotes]
March 7, 1965, Hosea Williams and John Lewis were first across the Edmund Pettis Bridge. They were followed by about 600 people. 150 Alabama state troopers, sheriff ’s deputies and possemen blocked the road and gave the marchers 2 minutes to disperse. One minute and five seconds later, under color of law, the marchers were attacked with clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. John Lewis was one of the 58 people treated for injuries. His skull was fractured. (See original documents at "Confrontations with Justice" on the National Archives website (Cache).
On March 15, 1965, President LBJ went to Congress and urged passage of a voting rights act. He saw the brutal assault of peaceful protesters petitioning their government as a turning point in the search for freedom and equality. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed in August. [See Video, below.]
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission opened its doors in July, 1965. Other parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were already in place.
Systemic change was underway.
As a nation we had come a long way since becoming a bastion of white male power in 1776. Yet, for those still feeling the yoke of oppression, things were not moving fast enough. Demands rose for "Freedom Now" and "Black Power" no longer meant only in self-defense.
In May 1966, John Lewis stepped down as head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, usually pronounced "SNICK") and became an organizer in Atlanta. Stokely Carmichael became head of SNCC. In May 1967, Stokely Carmichael was followed by H. "Rap" Brown who, a year later, publicly allied SNCC with the Black Panther Party. In 1969, SNCC dropped "Nonviolence" from its name and became known as the Student National Coordinating Committee.
In 1986, John Lewis entered the race for Georgia's 5th Congressional District. His main opponent was just a few percentage points shy of preventing a run-off election. In the run-off election, John Lewis beat Julian Bond, 52%–48%.
[See footnote.]In the turbulent 60s, when new laws were passed, many people were fearful of change and others wanted "freedom" right away. Still, people believed the government might help them and lined up to seek and attain better education, employment, housing and public accommodations. Change may have come slowly, incrementally, but it was change.
Change was reflected in the arc of Black representatives in congress. Before the Civil War there were zero blacks in Congress. Immediately after the Civil War there were some. With the "Birth of a (White) Nation" and imposition of Jim Crow, there was about 1. Following the Voting Rights Act of 1965, there were many. [See Footnote]:
The Intentional Job Discrimination reports on eeo1.com demonstrate that by 1999 8-million-people had better employment than they would have had without the civil rights laws. Still, few people could imagine a black boy or girl growing up to be president of the United States until election night 2008 when voters of every gender and color came out and made it happen by making millions of individual choices that collectively elected Barack Obama - a lawyer and community activist from Chicago who had grown up often without the presence of a father but with other strong family ties. [See footnotes.]
Poverty remains an equal opportunity problem that adversely affects people of all races, ethnic origins and shades of color.
So, we think we know what the problem is: poverty. And, we are sure that the solutions that have been implemented have not worked, completely.
| Pockets of Persistent Poverty, Lee County, Florida, 2015 | |
|---|---|
on the border of Collier County | |
In this table, names are in red like a traffic light so people will stop to become more aware of these situations.
Albert Einstein looked at the world around him and saw it in new ways:
"Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use, it
is the theory which decides what can be observed."
We have a theory, a hypothesis, that the main underlying cause of crime, community tensions and violence at peaceful gatherings is poverty.
Once thinking about poverty, we developed another theory with two branches:
As a result of these discussions, P4CP developed:
This website is an example of programming that grew out of these community discussions. People opened-up to each other and gave expression to a sense of hopelessness and ennui, a nameless fear that pervades our society, as do cell phones. Almost everyone, literally, has a cellphone. Almost all cell phones have cameras. While this is not an official program of P4CP, the idea of a place where people could turn their knowledge of cellphone pics into photographs with messages grew out of those community discussions.
Einstein might point out that if we want to see poverty, we have to have a theory. Poverty means something different to almost everybody. People who are rich have a way of thinking about themselves as not poor. People who don't have much money may still consider themselves better off than people living in the squalor of Dickensian poverty. People who are poor and think of themselves as living in poverty may strive for more money or may accept things as they are. Even within the same household, attitudes may differ.
If we want to look at Life Now in relation to "poverty" it is easier if we start with an objective definition of poverty.
Fortunately, there are several. Most exist because one person can have an effect on society. Mollie Orshansky had an idea that poverty is not just having less money. Poverty is not having enough money. Studying further, she realized that the amount of money that was "enough money" would increase as family size increased. If this seems obvious, it is only because she thought of it in the early 1960s and we have been using it ever since. [See footnote.]
| 1 person | $12,071 |
| 2 people | $15,379 |
| 3 people | $18,850 |
| 4 people | $24,230 |
| 5 people | $28,695 |
| 6 people | $32,473 |
| 7 people | $36,927 |
| 8 people | $40,968 |
| 9 or more people | $49,021 |
Why not give the Life Now Gallery a try?
– Gordon Parks |
The community of Ft. Myers started fighting to eradicate poverty because poverty was seen as a cause of crime and violence.
Eradicating poverty is not the only way to fight crime and respond to violence.
Police departments take a more heads-on approach. While we hope our police department will be sensitive to the community and prone to choosing escalating violence as a last resort, police officers are trained to take some action when necessary. Action may mean taking a split-second to make a decision that can save or take a life on the streets or it may start with an investigation after-the-fact that tries to figure out what happened and who might be legally culpable.
Randall P. Henderson Jr. has been mayor of Ft. Myers since 2009. He is the 61st mayor of Ft. Myers. Howell A. Parker became the first mayor when Ft. Myers became a town in 1885. Louis A. Henry was mayor in 1911 when the Town of Ft. Myers transitioned and became the City of Ft. Myers. (See footnotes.)
Apparently, being mayor of Ft. Myers is not a full time job because Randy is also:
This combination of personal and public interests may raise concerns in political science classes, but to me - at least with Randy in Ft. Myers - it may make sense. Since the mayor is supposed to make sure that laws are applied equally, to everyone, and that everyone is afforded the due process of law, for the mayor to be in a business like real estate and belong to organizations that focus on charitable activities, the mayor's mind might more easily remain focused on the needs of those whose needs are greatest and who are economically vulnerable (including the working impoverished), as well as those who have resources and abilities to help themselves.
The current mayor of Ft. Myers may be a good example of the type of person the "founders" were thinking about when they structured a republican form of representative democratic government that rewards competition and includes checks-and-balances that restrain unbridled authority.
Randy, personally, has been involved with this community's search for answers to violence. But, as mayor it is his job to get re-elected (if he chooses) so he must be responsive to:
It is a balancing act Randy seems to perform easily and well, while shouldering the heavy responsibility of doing it right.
Video 4, below, shows Randy explaining to the community gathered for a P4CP breakfast meeting how difficult it is to solve these problems without input from all stakeholders. He expresses an understanding of concerns community members may have about helping his police and urges people in attendance to work actively to replace fear with trust. Significantly, he promises to enforce the law when it comes to his police. If, with due process, it is determined a police officer has put their own prejudices above the requirements of their job, they will be "moved out."
In other words, Randy is doing his job and he hopes other leaders in that room will see that it is in their own best interests to carry on their activities in a more peaceful and productive city and that they will continue to actively engage in conversation and pursue conciliation.
While this website is a work in progress in space donated by the 24/7 Caregiving Products Company, LLC for demonstration purposes and membership in the Life Now community is beta with no expectations, no guarantees and no warranties, it is not too early to step back from your daily life, whether living in poverty or non-poverty, and make a photograph that says something about what you are experiencing; a photograph you would be proud to show someone. Stepping back from a problem may provide greater objectivity.
Then, register and - for free - become a member of the Life Now community. Think of an issue, create an album, upload your photograph and share your purpose.
When we bring our photographs together we will create a montage that may bring new perspectives to a problem.
Now that this project is underway, it may be used to record and create views of other issues, such as Alzheimers and aging in place.
It is hoped that this website will be the catalyst for better pics that achieve the goal of photography with a purpose.
Click Here to Enter The Life Now Gallery and Experience the World of Focused Photography
Disclaimers
1. The job of president is complicated. The U. S. is complicated. Some describe it as a "delicate balance." Like a tight rope walker, the president must try his or her best to keep some semblance of balance as various people and organizations try to pull the nation in the directions they think will best suit their needs.
The analysis above is based, in part, on the stated facts. While there may be comfort in jumping to conclusions about who really killed JFK, there are no easy answers.
The 1991 movie, "JFK," borrowed a phrase from Winston Churchill. Oliver Stone had an actor describe the complexity surrounding the murder of the president as a "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
This is particularly apt for purposes of this website because, today, the JFK assassination would not be such a conundrum if Zapruder had not been present using a camera.
In 1939, Churchill had been talking about Russia. He went on to suggest that "perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
Self-interest is one of the keys to understanding the complications faced by a U. S. President. We are an exceptional country because, way back in the late 1700s a group of people from every colony sent secret messages to each other and eventually met in Philadelphia. They discussed what was going on and found they had some mutual interests. However, not all of their interests were perfectly aligned and while they trusted each other enough to talk, they were also cautious. They were strong determined individuals representing differing interests who realized that they would achieve more striving for common goals than they could working on their own, so they compromised. Eventually, after some trial and error, they devised a government that has lasted over 200 years based on compromise. Modern democracy - with its ability to heal itself through elections, amendments, court cases, education and changes in popular culture - has been so successful that it is no longer exceptional, though at the beginning it was virtually unique.
In other words, the fact that LBJ was propelled into Air Force One and the Oval Office was an effect of the assassination of JFK. We may not know, until more documents are revealed, the full cause - the who, what, when, where, why and how - of the televised killing.
2. Life Now grew out of ideas spawned by discussions in the Pennies for Community Progress gatherings and the encouragement of Mr. Mohammed, founder and CEO of "The Q," to let the greater community know what P4CP is doing.
It is not official programming of P4CP but an independent project by an independent journalist, me, Steven Blumrosen, a bio-person with natural and constitutional rights to free speech and the vote.
Video 1: Peter, Paul and Mary - Blowing in the Wind
Video 2: The Legacy of Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr.
Video 3: President Lyndon Baines Johnson before Congress March 15, 1965
Paraphrase: "This non-partisan legislation will establish a simple uniform standard in Federal, State and Local elections. To local officials who want to maintain local control, open your polling places to all your people. Extend the rights of citizenship to all of your citizens. We shall overcome."
Video 4: Ft. Myers Mayor Randy Henderson before the Pennies for Community Progress movement January 23, 2016
Paraphrase: "This is a non-partisan issue; a real life human being discussion with compassion and seriousness. The notion that law enforcement in America are bad guys and bad guys are good guys is mind boggling and I blame those wayward law enforcement officers who choose to break the law in the duty they are charged with for that sentiment. We will catch those guys too, and move them out."
(See, as a point of reference, the 2006 FBI report on White Supremicists Infiltration of Law Enforcement, Cache).
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