Playing with Austerity? By Louise Annarino, 3-3-2013
In 1964 the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) was created by Sargent Shriver and William Mullins to implement President Johnson’s War on Poverty and lay the basis for his Great Society. Many of the programs initiated under the OEO continue underfunded and under constant attack within HHS.
In March,1968, Martin Luther King,Jr. was assassinated and African-Americans living in segregated enclaves within large urban areas erupted in grief and anger. But not in Indianapolis where then-presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy spoke to the crowd gathered to hear a campaign speech. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCrx_u3825g
Senator Kennedy announced the assassination and then identified with the pain,grief and vengeful feelings likely to be felt, having experienced the assassination of his own brother. He called for love,wisdom,compassion and justice for those who still suffer in our country. He acknowledged that most people Black and white “want to live together and improve the quality of life,and provide justice for all human beings who abide in our land.”
Shortly after the assassination, the OEO created a pilot project to establish summer recreation programs for children in poor urban neighborhoods. The Salvation Army agreed to pay the $40 per week salary of recreation leaders for each of four anticipated programs in my small town. We four were 18 year old freshmen at OSU Newark. I was assigned to the near East-End African-American community, where the Reverend Charles Noble,Sr., pastor of the Shiloh Baptist Church had agreed to allow us to use a vacant lot across the street from the church. After weeks of meeting to figure out what we do and how we would do it with no firm plans in place I had had enough. It was already May and children would soon be out of school but we had nothing to show for all of our meetings but serious frustration. I announced I would not be attending the next meeting.Instead I could be found in my assigned neighborhood should I be needed.
I first introduced myself to Rev. Noble who could not have been more displeased to see a naive young white woman coming into the community with nothing to offer. I was equally dismayed at the lot I was to use. It was huge and covered with rocks,not gravel, interspersed with rusty cans,broken bottles, and gross detritus best unnamed. Next,I walked door-to-door introducing myself to the parents and aunties,asking what they wanted to see happen on the lot,and what type of program would be most helpful. The answer: a playground for the younger kids, a basketball court for the older boys and young men,horse shoe pits and picnic tables for the community-at-large. I had no budget.
I did have S&H green stamps earned at the local A&P. I called the number on the back of the folder where Mom pasted stamps to ask how many stamps would be needed to earn swings, a merry-go-round, teeter-totters,and monkey bars. They laughed but after a few minutes of discussion decided they could help and would provide those items if I delivered several thousand coupon books to the local A&P for redemption. When I asked my uncle how to make a horse shoe pit,sand boxes, and picnic tables he said “leave it to me. The guys at the missile plant can build them for you.” And they did. But, I needed sand. So, I called a Newark sand and gravel company agreed to supply the sand for the sand boxes and horse shoe pits if I could find a truck to pick it up. A Newark truck company agreed to do so. A Newark fence company agreed to install a chain link fence around the entire perimeter. The Newark asphalt company agreed to pour a basketball court and the Newark High School basketball coaches agreed to paint the lines and install the hoops at regulation height.
The community collected every green stamp they could find and within a few days our playground equipment was on-order. Within three weeks,we had a fully functioning playground. Needing playground equipment:basketball,footballs,bats and balls,hula hoops,jump ropes etc. I played a game with two local stores. Sears agreed to match J.C. Penney’s donation of toys and raise the amount; Penneys agreed to match Sears and raise it. The Farm Store donated the shed to store all our equipment. Soon more than 200 children were regulars. Older sisters and brothers bringing little ones,even infants in strollers while their mothers worked. After the factories let out, the young men came by to shoot hoops. When I invited the A&P manager to see what they had helped accomplishment I asked if he could help with a hunger issue I had noted. A&P provided cereal,milk and fruit each morning for every child,with hot dogs and chips on friday afternoons. My girl friends’ mothers rotated baking and delivery of cookies each afternoon.
The local gang provided security. We never had a theft,graffiti art,nor vandalism on our playground. The gang leader became our martial arts trainer, and at my insistence, learned the Queensberry rules to ref boxing matches we held using my dad’s old boxing gloves. Rev. Noble visited,his eyes narrowed, taking it all in, making a brief nod my direction before returning to the church. I let out my breath!
The Army,Navy,and Airforce recruiters provided drivers and buses for field trips.
A month after the playground was completed I was fired for failing to attend meetings and immediately reinstated once the OEO regional organizer finally paid the visit I had asked for weeks earlier. Mine was the only recreation program to be implemented in our town that summer.
Why am I writing about this today? Because the republican view of private enterprise, and the democratic view of government investments as engines for productive growth are both correct. There is a place for each. Without the OEO and its efforts there would have been no playground. Without the private donations there would have been no playground. Without the Salvation Army paying my salary,and Rev. Noble’s donation of land there would have been no playground. Without the volunteer efforts and donations from so many local businesses, there would have been no playground. It took all of us working together. It took INVESTMENT of time and money, public tax dollars and private funds. A balance of government and private investment built that playground.
What is NOT acceptable is an economic development viewpoint that austerity can build a new America. It can’t build a playground,nor a country! When President Obama talks about balance,calls for increased revenue and sensible cuts to programs which don’t work, he is absolutely right. to do so. Like me, he was once a community organizer.He knows how to get things done,how to get this country moving. He is doing so despite great odds. His Organizing For Action group is the embodiment of community organization. You can get involved by clicking https://my.barackobama.com/page/s/organizing-for-action.
Cutting taxes for the wealthy does not create growth. It merely creates more wealth for the already wealthy. Working men and women, built our playground. There were no wealthy donors standing in line to build a playground for poor kids. We need tax revenue to build a nation,a nation made up of local communities and neighborhoods like the east-end of Newark. We need government involvement to stimulate people and small businesses in those communities to help rebuild the infrastructure and programs which will “improve the quality of life,and provide justice for all human beings who abide in our land,” a goal that both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King,Jr. sought to achieve. Austerity is the function of dying. If you have watched a love one die,you know exactly what I mean. I want America to live and grow.
annarino writes 
A LETTER TO US ALL
Dear Us:
Did you ever hear of the Golden Rule? “Treat others as you would be treated.” When asked which of the ten commandments Moses shared with the Israelites was the most important, Jesus advised questioners to “Love others as I have loved you.” In the 60s, even non-believers of any religion, or of even the existent of God, followed the precept “Lead with your heart.” “Flower children” believed in love, for everyone, at all times. And those were turbulent times. We watched freedom riders maimed and killed, their busses set on fire, their murdered bodies hidden and buried in shallow graves. We watched the perpetrators of violence go free; the Citizen Councils ( marketing change for KKK) often included law enforcement and local judges. This is the America currently referred to when Trump supporters urge us all to “Make America Great Again.” They no longer wear white robes nor hide their faces. They wear red ties, dark suits and sometimes red hats.They pretend to be news anchors on FOX News and elsewhere. They pretend to be president like Elon Musk. The delivery system of hate may have changed; the racism and sexism have not. We are experiencing a backlash to the progress made over the past 50 years. It took 50 years for it to grow this strong.
I was a resident student advisor (RA) at Lincoln Tower on the OSU campus in Columbus, Ohio in the late sixties and early 70s. I was also a student activist. I had to become one because I believed in the Golden Rule. I watched Black students, Jewish students and women students derided and demeaned. I was privy to racist commentary because white students assumed they could say them to my white face with my full agreement. White men also felt safe making sexist comments to me despite the fact I was a woman. As an Italian-American I was sometimes mistaken for Jewish and heard my share of anti-semitic remarks. Much of the time such hate-talk was passed off as a joke. Whenever I heard the joke I stopped the speaker and explained nothing they said was funny, nor factual. I demanded such language never be used while in my presence. Those who just joined in to feel safe in the crowd became serious and apologized. The bullies did not apologize. But they shut up. “Stand up to shut them up” became part of every day life on campus. That is activism at its core.
I had a few empty suites on my floor due to an on-going criminal investigation. A mentally ill student was on trial for arson, having set fire in a suite the year before. Once the case was resolved, those suites were re-opened and spaces filled, as were other vacancies on my floor. Who moved in to those spaces? Black women looking for a safe space. Some had repeatedly been locked out of their rooms by white roommates. Several had threatening notes nailed to their door; threats to rape or kill them because they were Black. Most were ostracized and demeaned daily by white roommates. Their complaint to Student Affairs fell on deaf ears. When the spaces opened on my floor, they found refuge there.
Our dorm was typical for OSU where Black students made up a tiny percentage of the student population. My floor was unique. I held floor meetings to discuss expectations that we would all follow the Golden Rule. When I saw or heard of a racial incident I immediately intervened. Soon, I was doing racial mediation on a regular basis. Black women entered the elevator and experienced white women moving close to the emergency call button, with hand hovering, ready to cry for help from women just like themselves returning exhausted from a day of classes ? Time for mediation! Call everyone together and talk it through. Day after day. Incident after incident. It was exhausting for the Black women, and the Black men who visited them, to face daily racial challenges and outright discrimination.
Another RA and two students worked with me to develop a racial mediation program in our dorm. Whenever the Student Judicial Council was handed a case involving a white student and a Black student in dispute, it was handed off to us to mediate the conflict. Our efforts were not always welcomed, but we persisted. Incidents of violence, write-ups to judiciary, and racial conflict decreased. Today, this program would be outlawed by the President who gleefully extorts OSU by threatening loss of education grants and federal funds for programs and research. OSU has caved to the bullies. OSU is not standing up to shut up the racism. It would cost money. And money is god in America, and on college campuses.
OSU is caving to racists and bullies again. And, not just OSU. Columbia University, indeed nearly all colleges and universities, if not all, are caving to racist bullies under the guise of following the law, accepting the lawless and illegal actions of the current administration. Following the law would require universities to protect the free speech rights of faculty and students, to abide by employment contracts and civil service laws to protect both administrative employees and faculty. Universities with law schools had readily-available experts to stand up, speak out and take action. I was an Associate Director of Law at Ohio University. There is a national organization of such attorneys. Why are they so silent? Why have university presidents and provosts not joined arms to defend their campuses against illegal searches and seizures of students? Why did Columbia University not come to the aid of Mahmoud Khalil and his family? If they did so in any way, it was neither apparent nor sufficient.
The Poster Boy President leading the racist mob of greedy Americans spoke at the DOJ recently. His racist and personal attacks on lawyers, prosecutors and judges, was accepted and even cheered. Racism and greed cross all boundaries and sexual preferences, exist within every profession, religion and community group. It is a constant and persistent threat to the principles of democracy. Those whose racism had been laid low, who crawled under rocks to hide their sins, have crawled back out, empowered by the greed for wealth and power, threatened by those they spurn who have finally found success on a more equal path, and undermined by their own sense of failure despite the promise of an American Dream. Instead of blaming the greedy power-brokers of industry, banking and finance, politics and education they blame their fellow victims. Their racism blinds them to truth, and they willingly embrace false-hoods and disinformation. They would not recognize a fact if it stared them in the face. They would prefer to attack the fact and the experts offering the truth of the fact.
As a lawyer, as an educator, as a writer, I am heart-broken over the loss of my country, my Constitution and its guarantees of personal freedom for all persons who are in this country…no matter where they came from, or how they got here. That is the promise of America. That is the American Dream. Shopping for cheap goods because your existence only matters if those power-brokers can make a buck off you cannot fill the place freedom once filled within the American heart and psyche. Woke? Woke is what is required to survive the on-slaught against a free people who simply want to find a good-paying job, buy a house, feed and educate their family. The power-brokers want us to stay asleep. Like children, we are angels in our sleep, causing them no discomfort, and quietly staying out of their way as they take over our economy, our government institutions, our military, our banking system, our educational systems and local/public schools…even our post office!
Wake up, my fellow lawyers, my fellow professors, my fellow school teachers, my fellow social workers, my fellow counselors, my fellow retail workers, my fellow waitresses and caterers, my fellow babysitters, my fellow students, my fellow Catholics and people of faith, my fellow Americans. Wake up and stay woke! We have work to do, if we can stay awake to do it loudly and persistently. This is no time to lie down and feign sleep. God knows, none of us sleep well theses days.
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