Download New Antipoverty Strategies Needed

New Anti-Poverty Strategies Needed
By Jim Masters
April, 2004
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-victimsand-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.
b.
c.
d.
e.
technological change (manual labor and manufacturing jobs are disappearing),
globalization (good bye to jobs, wage decline),
social values (women must work but there is not enough child care),
labor policy (worker organizing is discouraged not encouraged), and
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.