In 1964, the U.S. poverty rate (income-based) included 19 percent of Americans. Rising political forces demanded change. Under a new White House
Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), the concept of the federally-funded, local
Community Action Program (CAP)—delivered by a local
Community Action Agency (CAA), in a nationwide
Community Action Network—would become the primary vehicle for a new, federal
War on Poverty.
Establishment Lyndon B. Johnson's landmark
Economic Opportunity Act of 1964—drafted by former
Peace Corps founding director
Sargent Shriver—established Community Action Programs in Title II. In concept, a Community Action Program was defined as a program "...which provides services, assistance, and other activities of sufficient scope and size to give promise of progress toward elimination of poverty or a cause or causes of poverty through developing employment opportunities, improving human performance, motivation, and productivity, or bettering the conditions under which people live, learn, and work." A controversial feature of the Act was the requirement for "maximum feasible participation" of the people directly affected (the poor, basically) in the decision-making about how federal funds would be spent on them, in their community. This flew in the face of long-established
power structures, where elected city councils, county commissions, state and federal officials ruled over everything—mostly people from the
power elite and
upper-class communities. The notion that the poor (largely minorities) should have a say in their affairs created some opposition at first, but was in keeping with America's
civil rights and
reform movements, and war on poverty, in the 1960s and 1970s, and generally accepted, at least at first. In each community, the local
Community Action Program (CAP) was provided by a local non-profit
Community Action Agency (CAA), overseen by a board made up—initially—of residents of the target neighborhood or population being served. This gave poor, working class and minority citizens a voice in how they would be served by federal funds aimed at improving their lives. However, this caused some anger and frustration among the nation's power establishment, especially in local governments used to running their communities, and among the power elites (particularly in the business community) used to dominating their local governments.
Problems, pushback, pullback, and successes Although Johnson and other architects of the legislation expected Community Action Programs and Agencies to be an effective weapon in his
War on Poverty, many of them were riddled with problems. In more extreme instances, local political regimes were threatened by the empowerment of poor political activists with funding and resources from the federal government. One of the most dramatic episodes resulting from these clashes between CAA leaders and local governments occurred when, following cuts in funding for a summer youth CAP, black activist Charles Sizemore and thirty others barged into San Francisco Mayor
John Shelley's office demanding resources and threatening that if the CAP was not funded once again, "this goddamn town's gonna blow." By the mid/late-1960s, many political leaders—including
President Johnson, U.S. Senator
Richard Russell (D-GA) (leader of the anti-civil rights
conservative coalition), and Chicago's powerful Mayor
Richard J. Daley—publicly or privately expressed displeasure with the power-sharing that the CAA brought to poor and minority neighborhoods. In 1967, conservative and establishment pressures brought two amendments to the Congressional funding bill for the OEO (
Office of Economic Opportunity—overseer of the CAA/CAP programs): • The Green Amendment gave city governments the right to decide which entity would be the official CAA for their community. • The Quie Amendment gave two-thirds of the seats on CAA boards to elected city officials and "private sector representatives" (businesspeople), effectively outnumbering neighborhood citizens on their own CAA boards. The net result was a halt to the
citizen participation reform movement and a fundamental shift of power away from the nation's poor and minorities. Indeed, between 1960 and 1973, and especially in the years following the passage of the
Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, spending on the AFDC quadrupled as the number of individuals who enrolled in the program rose sharply. The Relf case's revealed administrative attitudes of the era which suggest that forced sterilization was an acceptable tactic in Republican management of federal welfare. The troubled economy of the mid-to-late 1970s, brought on by the
energy crisis and the
Early 1980s recession was especially hard on America's poor. Between 1973 and 1983, the national poverty rate rose from 11.1% to 15.2%. Another decade later, in 1993, the poverty rate was virtually unchanged at 15.1%, just a 0.1% decrease from 1983.
Today However, despite these challenges, around 1,000 CAPs (and their CAAs) still operate today, across the United States. ==See also==