I Was a Covert Agent in the War on Poverty - by Frances Moore Lappe

[bananas]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frances-moore-lappe/covert-agent_b_4589366.html

I Was a Covert Agent in the War on Poverty
Frances Moore Lappe
Posted: 01/14/2014 10:02 am

Okay, I didn't wear a hidden mic. (Did they have those in '67?) I didn't don gloves to mask my fingerprints that hot summer in Philly. But, I was truly an infiltrator, a provocateur-for-progress in the War on Poverty declared 50 years ago this month.

<snip>

After a stint in a Quaker-run organizing school in Chester, PA, where training included speaking against the Vietnam War on (literally) soap boxes in Rittenhouse Square and watching FBI agents snap our photos, it was increasingly clear to me: Ending the war was not enough, something was deeply wrong here at home.

<snip>

And that's the door that opened. It turned out that in addition to hiring actual housing inspectors, some gutsy folks launching the Neighborhood Renewal Program also began hiring organizers. They were hush-hush about it, but my bosses made clear: Pass the test to get on the payroll as an inspector but hit the streets as an organizer. In ending poverty, it's not enough to have dwellings in better repair if their inhabitants feel defeated. So just as critical as holding landlords to account was, in their view, going door-to-door to help spark what we'd now call self-organized initiatives. Coming together, poor people will find their voices and push for their rights, thereby helping, much more broadly, to right our broken system.

<snip>

Then came the moment -- the "Lilly's truth moment." Working on "fair housing" in racially segregated Oakland as part of my grad program, one morning I woke up with this thought: I can't do this anymore. I can't do anything to "save the world" until I understand how it contributes to uprooting the causes of Lilly's needless death.

So, starting with Diet for a Small Planet, I've spent decades pursuing that root-cause question, and, thank God, I have come to grasp how, within a systemic vision, bottom-up organizing is truly central to transformative democratic change. What's heart breaking to admit, though, especially in this anniversary year, is that as a society we lost our way.

<snip>

In this moment, though, I just hope that in reliving how Lilly's needless death forced me to dig deeper I'll rekindle my own belief in possibility: the possibility that today's staggering inequality - with 95 percent of all income gains since 2009 going to the top one percent -- could trigger a rebirth in America of a sustained quest for root-cause solutions with everyday citizens in center stage, a possibility just as unimaginable by most people today as was the War on Poverty before January, 1964.

[snot]

1. K&R'd.