1 New Anti-Poverty Strategies Needed April, 2004 By Jim Masters
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| 1 New Anti-Poverty Strategies Needed April, 2004
By Jim Masters I think the Transformational Leadership Project is an excellent project, and I urge the CAA=s in Regions VII and IX that are involved to Akeep on truckin@ with Move the Mountain. I think their challenge and their process is excellent. I just hope CAA=s can come up with the content in terms of new strategies. One challenge in creating new anti-poverty strategies is that we are in serious trouble in terms of anti-poverty theory. I have been working on a book review for NACAA of “Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History@ written by Professor Alice O=Connor. She traces the theories-in-use from the end of the Civil War to the present. This is a powerful book for us and offers much insight and guidance. I urge everybody to read it. The most powerful theories of poverty actually existed from about 1900 (W.E.B. DuBois) to the 1930's (political economists, Hull House, and the AChicago School@ of sociologists). Since the Depression and the New Deal-era programs -- except for the spurt of insight and action from the civil rights movement in the 1960's -- public policy has essentially been constricting and discarding poverty theory, not refining or expanding it. O=Connor shows how much of our current idea of Acommunity action@ is primarily a social control strategy that was developed for juvenile delinquency programs in the 1930's. How a 1930's delinquency prevention program was transmuted into a theory about poverty is a convoluted story in itself. Over a 30-year period, the theory moved from the University of Chicago to the streets to the foundations to the President=s Council on Juvenile Delinquency to the Task Force headed by Sarge Shriver. O=Connor traces how the conservative think-tanks have, in the past 30 years, hijacked the debate on poverty. They have framed the poverty agenda as being Athe welfare state causes poverty and our strategies should focus on reducing the role of the welfare state by getting people off welfare.@ We have discarded most theories about the causes of poverty being caused by national or global economic and social systems. (This can be also be seen as the Afailure of the academics@ or Afailure of the left,@or Athe implosion of liberalism.@ Lots of blame to go around.) We have no theory-in-place about how to eliminate poverty at the community level. I am intrigued by Scott Miller=s ACircles of Support@as an intentional community that seems to work on a small scale (e.g. 50 to 100 people), but can the approach be taken to a large scale? What the conservatives have us working with today is theory that says: focus-on-the-victims-and-blame-them.@ It assumes that Asociety is O.K., and the strategy is to help individuals fit in.@ This is the cousin or descendent of a theory and strategy described in 1918 about how to assimilate new immigrants into the existing society. So even though the economy and the society has undergone incredible transformations from the 1930's to 40's to 50's to 60's to 80's to now, our working theory is B Afit in, and if you don=t it is mostly your fault.@ This theory ignores the powerful structural causes of poverty including: a. technological change (manual labor and manufacturing jobs are disappearing), b. globalization (good bye to jobs, wage decline), c. social values (women must work but there is not enough child care), d. labor policy (worker organizing is discouraged not encouraged), and e. political economy (minimum wage, benefits policy) We had a discussion about these larger forces in the NACAA strategic planning seminar in January, and I plan to expand it in April to do a more thorough review of the systemic causes of poverty. We will look at: * demographics and technology, which drive the economy, and then
* the economy and social values, which drive public policy. I will help the participants to identify both the causes of poverty and to develop strategies to address the causes at the national level and community level as well as the individual level. The three tiers: Tier One is the society as a whole B in the context of a global economy. Tier Two is primarily regional but includes some community-level causes of poverty. Their Three includes individual/family causes. At the moment, all our strategy chips are bet on Tier Three. One problem is that Tier One and Tier Two strategies take years to accomplish, and often require the power of a social movement to produce action. Only Tier Three has actions that can be accomplished in a few months by a few people. We do not have a Aunified field theory@of poverty that links all levels. We have been squeezed down into the lowest level, working with the victims. But, if my work is successful, at least we will know more about how America is built, and how the economy and social systems work to create prosperity for many and poverty for some B and how this has been true for about 130 years. We should always acknowledge the good stuff about America and the opportunity and prosperity that do exist. But B if we want something different, we have to challenge and change how America is structured and operates. I know that change is possible, because I have personally part of the social movements, strategies and organizations that created the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1962, the Anti Vietnam War movement, the civil rights movement, the Voting Rights Act, the passage of Medicaid, etc. I am not sure if this adds up to a seminar or workshop that meets your needs, but there is certainly some overlap in interests. Maybe something called The Causes of Poverty and What You Can Do About Them. Directory: ROMA ROMA -> Where do you usually spend your holidays? at the sea side 5 ROMA -> Roman Fever by Edith Wharton (1862-1937) ROMA -> Romania’s answers to the Questionnaire addressed by the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context ROMA -> Review questions and reflection ROMA -> P. O. Box 6000 (850) 524-0802 Binghamton, ny 13902 ROMA -> Tasty musical confection from broadway sweetens intimate stage of north coast rep book and lyrics by barry harman ROMA -> John turturro romance & Cigarettes ROMA -> The romantic atlantic Download 10.81 Kb. Share with your friends:
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