"Community Action Program" redirects here. For the workfare scheme in the United Kingdom, see Community Action Programme.
In the United States and its territories, Community Action Agencies (CAA) are local private and public non-profit organizations that carry out the Community Action Program (CAP), which was founded by the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act to fight poverty by empowering the poor as part of the War on Poverty.
CAAs are intended to promote self-sufficiency, and they depend heavily on volunteer work, especially from the low-income community. The Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) is the agencies' core federal funding. Agencies also operate a variety of grants that come from federal, state and local sources. These grants vary widely among agencies, although most CAAs operate Head Start programs, which focus on early child development. Other programs frequently administered by Community Action Agencies include Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) utility grants and Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) funded through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
Each CAA is governed by a board of directors consisting of at least one-third low-income community members, one-third public officials, and up to one-third private sector leaders. This board structure is defined by federal statute and is known as a tripartite board.[1]
There are currently over 1,000 CAAs, engaged in a broad range of activities; typical activities include promoting citizen participation, providing utility bill assistance and home weatherization for low-income individuals, administration of Head Start pre-school programs, job training, operating food pantries, and coordinating community initiatives.[2][3]
History
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.[4][5][6]
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."[4][5][6][7][8]
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.[5][6][8][9]
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.[5][6][8][9][10]
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.[11]
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.[12]"
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.[10][13]
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.[5][6][8][9]
Nevertheless, some federal emphasis on anti-poverty programs remained, including the (modified) CAP/CAA system. By 1973, the U.S. poverty rate dropped to 11.1 percent, a 7.9 percent decrease in 10 years, and the lowest it would be between 1959 and 2004.[4] One of the ways in which the CAAs were clearly effective in combatting poverty––and unexpectedly so––was by increasing the public's awareness of already existing welfare programs, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children.[14] 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.[15]
Conservative backlash & Relf v. Weinberger
During the conservative-backlash era of the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as the federal government (under Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush) cut away programs for the poor and minorities, the CAPs and CAAs were defunded, underfunded, or warped into a strange variation of their original intent, with far less influence of the poor and minorities in how they would be served by these entities.[4][5][6][8][9]
Nixon officials presided over CAP and CAA groups during the Relf v. Weinberger case which saw a pair of young black girls from Montgomery, Alabama surgically sterilized without their consent.[16] 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 1980s Reagan 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.[4]
Between 1993 and 2004, the U.S. poverty rate first declined (from 15.1% in 1993, to 11.3% in 2000), but then increased to 12.7% by 2004. The 2008 poverty rate was 13.2%.[4]
Today
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2020)
However, despite these challenges, around 1,000 CAPs (and their CAAs) still operate today, across the United States.[3][6]
↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-02-03. Retrieved 2011-02-11.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) U.S. Code Title 42 Chapter 9910
1 2 3 4 5 "Public Deliberation in an Age of Direct Citizen Participation," academic essay by Nancy Roberts, professor of strategic management, Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, Naval Postgraduate School, as extracted from her article "Age of Direct Citizen Participation," in Amer. Review of Public Admin., Vol. 34 No. 4, December 2004, pp.315-353, Sage Publications (posted on Univ. of Minn. website).
1 2 "Mayor Daley on the Community Action Program,"Archived 2016-06-06 at the Wayback Machine audio recording Dec 24, 1965: conversation excerpt (President Johnson and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley discuss Daley's strong objection to the poor controlling community action programs serving their communities), Conversation Number: WH6512.04-9329, The Miller Center
↑ G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot. The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s.
↑ Klaus P. Fischer. America in White, Black, and Gray: the Stormy 1960s.
Kazuyo Tsuchina, Reinventing Citizenship: Black Los Angeles, Korean Kawasaki, and Community Participation. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and 1965. The term was first referenced during a 1964 speech by Johnson at Ohio University, then later formally presented at the University of Michigan, and came to represent his domestic agenda. The main goal was the total elimination of poverty and racial injustice.
A cultural subsidy is a payment from the government to specific cultural industries to ensure that some public policy purpose in culture are preserved and maintained in society. Cultural subsidies work similarly to other forms of subsidies such as industrial and consumer subsidies and have similar goals of expansionary economic results and increased utility for their targeted recipients.
The war on poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national poverty rate of around nineteen percent. The speech led the United States Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty. The forty programs established by the Act were collectively aimed at eliminating poverty by improving living conditions for residents of low-income neighborhoods and by helping the poor access economic opportunities long denied from them.
The Office of Economic Opportunity was the agency responsible for administering most of the War on Poverty programs created as part of United States President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society legislative agenda. It was established in 1964 as an independent agency and renamed the Community Services Administration in 1975. In 1981, it was moved into the Department of Health and Human Services as the Office of Community Services, with most of its programs continuing to operate.
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 11, 1965. Part of Johnson's "War on Poverty", the act has been one of the most far-reaching pieces of federal legislation affecting education ever passed by the United States Congress, and was further emphasized and reinvented by its modern, revised No Child Left Behind Act.
An individual development account (IDA) is an asset building tool designed to enable low-income families to save towards a targeted amount usually used for building assets in the form of home ownership, post-secondary education and small business ownership. In principle IDAs work as matched savings accounts that supplement the savings of low-income households with matching funds drawn from a variety of private and public sources.
Appalachian Volunteers (AV) was a non-profit organization engaged in community development projects in central Appalachia that evolved into a controversial community organizing network, with a reputation that went "from self-help to sedition" as its staff developed from "reformers to radicals," teaching things from Marx, Lenin and Mao, in the words of one historian, in the brief period between 1964 and 1970 during the War on Poverty.
In the United States, poverty has both social and political implications. In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty. Some of the many causes include income inequality, inflation, unemployment, debt traps and poor education. The majority of adults living in poverty are employed and have at least a high school education. Although the US is a relatively wealthy country by international standards, it has a persistently high poverty rate compared to other developed countries due in part to a less generous welfare system.
AmeriCorps VISTA is a national service program designed to alleviate poverty. President John F. Kennedy originated the idea for VISTA, which was founded as Volunteers in Service to America in 1965, and incorporated into the AmeriCorps network of programs in 1993. VISTA is an acronym for Volunteers in Service to America.
The Older Americans Act of 1965 was the first federal level initiative aimed at providing comprehensive services for older adults. It created the National Aging Network comprising the Administration on Aging on the federal level, State Units on Aging at the state level, and Area Agencies on Aging at the local level. The network provides funding—based primarily on the percentage of an area's population 60 and older—for nutrition and supportive home and community-based services, disease prevention/health promotion services, elder rights programs, the National Family Caregiver Support Program, and the Native American Caregiver Support Program.
California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. (CRLA) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit legal service and political advocacy organization created to help California's low-income individuals and communities. CRLA represents all types of individuals and communities, including farmworkers, disabled people, immigrant populations, school children, LGBT populations, seniors, and individuals with limited English proficiency. CRLA's current executive director is Jessica Jewell.
The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 authorized the formation of local Community Action Agencies as part of the War on Poverty. These agencies are directly regulated by the federal government. "It is the purpose of The Economic Opportunity Act to strengthen, supplement, and coordinate efforts in furtherance of that policy".
Paul F. O'Rourke was a founding member of Operation USA and its first board chair, the first Director of the California State Office of Economic Opportunity, a public health advisor to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and numerous state and federal agencies, and a Board Chairman of the San Francisco Trauma Foundation.
Operation Breakthrough, an anti-poverty movement, was established in Durham, North Carolina in August 1964. It played a prominent and influential role in the expansion of the Civil Rights Movement in Durham. Terry Sanford, its founder, managed to develop that through the help and involvement of the North Carolina Fund. A Member of the Democratic Party, Sanford was the former governor of North Carolina and was highly respected for his intervention in the improvement of public education. Indeed, in the 1960s, the education system in place in North Carolina was very poor as one quarter of the adults above 25 years old had received an education inferior to sixth grade, making most of them illiterate.2 Because of the high success of the program, the concept developed through the North Carolina Fund was mimicked throughout the nation, transforming what initially was a state wide program to a national program. Throughout this movement, activism played a fundamental role as the main aim of the program consisted in changing the economic situation of a state through the use of political and social power.
The East Los Angeles Community Union (TELACU) is a nonprofit community development corporation (CDC) founded in 1968 for the purpose of servicing disadvantaged communities in Eastside, Los Angeles through economic development. Over the years the CDC has impacted the community through its involvement in local Latino politics, community organization, housing development, scholarship funding, and job creation and training. With a revenue stream stemming from its many for-profit businesses, government grants, and private donations, TELACU has recently expanded its services to the Latino community outside of East Los Angeles, in some cases outside the state of California.
The Watts Labor Community Action Committee (WLCAC) is a non-profit, 501 (c) 3 organization incorporated in the State of California, in 1965. Its mission "is to improve the quality of life for the residents of Watts and neighboring communities."
Jean Camper Cahn was an American lawyer and social activist who helped establish federal financing of legal services to the poor. Cahn was the first director of the National Legal Services Program in the O.E.O. and later founded the Urban Law Institute at George Washington University. In 1971, she co-founded the Antioch School of Law with her husband and law associate Edgar S. Cahn.
Richard "Dick" Wolf Boone was an American philanthropist who worked through both the government and social organizations to improve conditions for the poor. He had worked under the Kennedy administration in the Office of Economic Opportunity until 1965, where he had been one of the leading figures in the War on Poverty. In 1965 Boone left the government, choosing instead to continue his efforts through independent charitable organizations. Some of Boone’s most notable work was done as the director of the Field Foundation, in which he initiated many new programs to help those in poverty. He died February 26, 2014, in Santa Barbara, California, reportedly as a result of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and Parkinson’s disease.
Minnie Lee and Mary Alice Relf are two African-American sisters who were involuntarily sterilized by tubal ligation by a federally funded family planning clinic in Montgomery, Alabama in 1973. News coverage of a class-action lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center brought the fact of U.S. government-funded sterilization abuse to the national spotlight.
The following is a timeline of the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson from January 1, 1964, to December 31, 1964.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
