Welfare Families Organize, Demand Adequate Income; Community Effort Grows

Lately there's a great deal of concern with the underprivileged people in our society. Our own university has taken a step toward relevancy by involving students in volunteer services. But volunteers, who function as parts of different community agencies that deal directly with poor people, have only touched the outer fringes of the problem by helping people on a small scale. This help is necessary and certainly not ineffective, but, the poor arc still poor. Something more is neededsomething that goes beyond the usual agency work. One of the main reasons the efforts of Ihosc working for poor people have met with frustrating opposition is the organized and repressive system thai presently handles poor people. This system, with its accompanying racist attitudes and stereotypes is based on a dichotomy—the poor vs. the non-poor. While this is a simplification of the basis of this system, it does function to keep the poor poor. This system leads the working man to believe that the reason he himself can't get ahead is because more taxes are needed to support the "lazy bums on welfare who won't work." The working man, as well as others, must realize thai poor people, and poor Blacks in particular, are victimized by our system—more than any other group. Rather than the cause of a declining economy, the poor are the most obvious manifestation of the inadequacy of our economic system. An organized and unified effort on the pari of poor people is needed in order to eliminate some of the living conditions thai are the reasons why poor people are in need of help. The work of scattered community agencies and volunteer services is important hut will only lead to frustration in view of the probability that the poor will still be poor. There is an organized effort in the making here in Albany in the National Welfare Rights Organization. NWRO is a nation wide grassroots organ i/.al ton of welfare clients and others with inadequate incomes. Their concern is with all people whose income does not provide a decent standard of living. The immediate concern of the group is with the public welfare system that keeps the poor down. The main goals of NWRO are adequate income, dignity, justice, and bread (there are still hungry people). NWRO recognizes that people are poor because they don't have enough money. Poor people have never been able to secure enough income from whatever wages they earn to enable their families to live decently. As a remedy to this, NWRO has proposed a guaranteed