Sunday Forum; National Welfare Rights Organization Fifth Annual Convention

What the hell are you doing here? The voices you hear are in sales hall on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. On the hot summer night of July 28, these 800 to 1,000 delegates and visitors comprise the 5th annual convention of the National Welfare Rights Organization. By recording, National Public Radio will take you there. You are over 40 years.

You are black people. You are white people. You are Indians. You are Chicanos. You are Mexican Americans. You are Puerto Ricans. You built this country dammit. The rich did not come to this country and built it. They first went to England and Europe and France and brought indentured servants and slaves here. They went to my father's home land, Africa, and stole my great-grandfather and my great-grandmother to build this nation. They went to California and stole that land from the Mexicans and made them labor. Who are you? Who are you?

And you are the people. You must understand that. You must wake up to who you are and you must wake up to what you are about. You came here, I hope, and I truly hope, that you came here because some old folk have to go hungry at night and die in little rooms. I hope you came here because some children don't have decent shoes and coats to go to school in the wintertime. I hope you came here because this nation wants to send women back to slavery. What are you here for?

You make me angry. You make me angry because the fire is not within you. Some of you don't got fat. Some of you don't got lazy. Some of you don't got fat. I'm sick of you. I'm sick of you because I can take you on any street in any neighborhood you come from and show your old woman who ain't got enough and nobody came to see her in a month. Do you hear me? I can take you in a wintertime and show you some kids going to school. You dressed and I'm angry, God damn it. When I get angry, I sing a song. I would like you to help me and it goes like this. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I can't hear you. Oh, yeah, we're gonna change this country. We're gonna change this country. We're gonna beat some children. We're gonna build some houses. We're gonna make some jobs. So sing no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Sing! We're gonna change this country. The National Welfare Rights Organization is a body made up of 400 local welfare rights organizations in the 50 United States. The group, called NWRO, claims a group's paying membership of 75,000 four people. Black, white, Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Indian.

Speaking for themselves and fighting for their share of America. The NWRO has reduced its stated goal to just four words. Jobs or income now. They say decent jobs with adequate pay for those who can work, adequate income for those who cannot. At the base of their goal, a sentence repeated again and again in the posters, platforms, pamphlets, and from the participants in this convention. We demand a minimum of $6,500 a year for a family of four, from welfare or wages. This demand is made against a backdrop of a piece of pending legislation we shall hear referred to many times, a program which the NWRO is diametrically in opposition to. That program is in the United States Congress as HR1, the Family Assistance Plan of the current administration. You will hear reference to the Family Assistance Plan through abbreviation and alteration. It will be called HR1, the Family Destruction Plan,

and most frequently, simply FAMP. But no matter the words or initials used to indicate the program, you will have no difficulty discerning the determination and opposition to defeat this bill as inadequate. And the severity of this opposition may be measured by the pleas of speakers and representatives throughout the convention. You will hear the words Coalition and Union again and again. From the American Standard Dictionary, Coalition, and Alliance, especially a temporary one of factions, parties, or nations. Union, a combination or confederation of persons, parties, or political entities for mutual interest or benefit. Let's go now to the podium where Mrs. Johnny Tillman, of the National Executive Committee of the NWRO, will introduce the first speaker from the opening session. I'm supposed to say greetings to you, and I see that the building is full,

and if they're all on the outside, listen to the loudspeakers. And I think I said to you two years ago that our organization is growing bigger and bigger every year. And we come a long way from 1967 with 108 delegates. And I don't know how many we got here tonight. They have not given me account, but I see a lot of people. I know that you've been organizing in your own states, and as you show them, because you've gotten here. And I stand before you tonight with one of the most beautiful ladies, and you know where it comes from, that means that we got a delegation from all the way from Honolulu, Hawaii. We also have representation from Alaska, up in the cold country. To my understanding, we got representation coming from Puerto Rico and third time in the Virgin Islands.

Now, if they think that poor folks are not getting themselves together, we have gotten ourselves together, they ought to be out of your mind. And I'd like to introduce you now, ladies and gentlemen, one of the most handsome as Congressmen's in the U.S. Congressmen, no, Congressman Ryan Dillham. Here at this conference, to evaluate the victories and the defeats of the past year, to look at the issue of the strategies of national welfare rights organization, to look at the whole question of the defeat that we suffered on the repressive,

racist, expedient liberal piece of legislation called HR1, euphemistically known as the Welfare Reform Bill. But it seems to me that if we're going to develop a strategy for dealing with the human misery in this country, then we've got to get out of the bag of dealing in the fantasies of Americans, start dealing in the realities of the politics of this country. Health is a major problem in America for all human beings. And let's say that we were fortunate enough to get a comprehensive health bill on the floor of Congress, which would be a major miracle. But for the moment, let's go on a little fantasy trip. And let's assume that that bill got on the floor. Some gentlemen from one of those funny states would leave to his feet, and the chairman would say,

for what purpose does the gentleman rise? I rise in opposition to the bill. You recognize for five minutes. He'd then walk down in the well and give us brilliant speech against comprehensive health for all people in this country. And he'd end in his last 15 seconds by saying, I oppose it and I urge the House to oppose it because it is creeping socialism. And then I will leave to my feet. And I will say, will the gentleman yield because we're very polite to each other? I yield to the gentleman from California. Question number one. Have you ever used the services of the House Physician? Because we have a whole set of physicians and nurses that take care of the Congressman. He'll say, yes. Then I'll say, have you ever received free medicine from the House Physician? Yes. Have you ever been hospitalized in Walter Reed or Bethesda when you needed to be?

He'll say, yes. Then I'll say, if that ain't creeping socialism, what the hell is it? I hope so. I hope so. I hope so. I hope so. I hope so. I hope so. I hope so. I hope so. But do you see my point? It's for the elite. Ron Dellam says the United States Congressman. So I have a little identification card that says, U.S. Representative, 7th Congressional District, I call it my super nigga card. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! And when I pull out that card, when I pull out that card, I can get all the free medical care I want. I can get all the socialism I want, dig on that. But for the elite, not for the average person living in this country, for if I walk off the floor of Congress,

tore up my identification card and say, I resign and then come back to fight for everything for you and I that I had as a congressman, they called me some revolutionary extremists. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! But as long as I'm a United States congressman, well, these are benefits that accrue to your station in life, sir. Why in the hell do you have to be a congressman to live a decent life in this country? Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! We've got congressmen that haven't done a thing in 20 years and they're drawing a $42,500 a year welfare check and they want to wrap on you for a few dollars. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! So we've got to talk about the contradictions and the politics of elitism in this country because

everything that you and I are desperately struggling for somebody in this country has it because they have enough money and enough power, enough prestige and enough influence. That's the name of the game and we're going to achieve us some power, some prestige, some influence. Let's now go to another reason why we lost the politics of hypocrisy. I was culturally deprived when I came to Washington DC. I am no longer. I now know the difference between a subsidy check and a welfare check. One is bigger than the other and it goes to fewer people. Politicians in this country have mounted podiums all over America, governors, senators,

congressmen, mayors, councilmen, all attempting to get themselves in office by wrapping on welfare. But why in the hell don't they wrap on SST contracts, farm, subsidy, special provisions and the loot holes and attack structure? You know why don't they talk about those cost plus war contracts where they sign a contract with a corporation to do a job for a quarter of a billion dollars. Three months later they come in and say with inflation and unanticipated costs, we're going to have to rewrite the contract for another half a billion dollars and then we give it to them. But when a black brown red yellow poor person comes in for a loan to get into the middle of this country they say well he is an economic risk. That's the politics of hypocrisy because we never talk about the real welfare in this country. We've got the white silent majority thinking that everybody on welfare is black and brown. Thinking that the only people who work for a living are the hard hats.

But you see we've got to convert the hard hats and I'm going to talk about that a little further down the road. What I'm trying to say to you now is we lost because of the politics of hypocrisy. Management talking out of one side of their mouth because they're not about to talk about the real welfare in the country. They're not about to talk about the fact that socialism does exist for the corporate elite. The only people required to be competitive is the working class in America. That's too dangerous. That means that they won't get the money to get re-elected. Because the real power in the Congress is not the congressman who run around like cocky primadanas on the floor of Congress, but the lobbyists who pay their checks on the real power in the Congress. Let's move on to the politics of poverty. We've developed a notion in this country that the poor have always, therefore, shall always

be among us. I reject that fundamentally. We live in a nation with a gross national product of almost $1 trillion. We live in a nation where 5% of the people control the substantial majority of the wealth. The only reason why the poor are with us is because we've tolerated it, because we've exploited the poor in this country. There's nothing inherently wrong with a human being who is poor, but there is something inherently evil in a society that perpetuates poverty. The politics of expediency, expedient liberalism, perhaps even more dangerous than the politics of reactionaryism, because the politics of expedient liberalism gives you the illusion that something is taking place, that something is happening good, but the politics of expediency

has pitted black against black, brown against brown, white against white, poor against poor, all over this country. And so the liberals in the Congress think it's a big thing to appropriate $2.5 billion to wage a skirmish on poverty, who's kidding whom? I've worked as a consultant in 35 states in the United States with virtually every single federal program in the last 10 years to deal with the problems of the poor, the problems of the racial minorities, and I don't have to make a demagogic statement. They did not work. I've gone around to some of the poverty boards throughout the country where the brothers and sisters came to the poverty meeting with razors and guns and things, all fighting over who gets the lion's share of the crumbs in this country. I've gone to meetings where people are fighting each other, black against black, over who

gets a $25,000 contract to serve 5,000 people. You can't even divide that money up and do anything about poverty for an hour of demand's life or the woman's life. But that kind of expediency continues to pit us against ourselves, giving the illusion because of the lack of their courage to lead in this country. They're continuing to talk about the politics of consensus. The politics of consensus means that the politicians on the right and those on the left who called themselves liberals constantly keep taking their cues from the middle of America who is the most manipulated, duped program group in this country. And the politics of consensus is strangling this country, it's strangling the Congress because the politics of the consensus did not allow people to come forward and assume the courage, responsibility, and the risk of leadership. The politics of consensus allows you to sit back, wait till it's formed, and then jump

out in front of the folk and say, if this way you're going, then I'll lead you. But I was standing in Sprout Hall on the campus of the University of California when a great billion black man stood up, being attacked all over the country because he had courage to say, I opposed the war on Indochina, his name was a man called King. And he said, I'm being attacked because I went out there, but I'm not a politician, I'm not a leader of consensus if you're going to lead you mold the consensus. And as out of that spirit that we came to Congress, as out of that spirit that we have to change this country, the politics of consensus would never do that. We only come forward with expedient pieces of legislation where some of my liberal friends in the Congress said, but Ron, it's a start. And my response was, dammit, we've been starting for 100 years. Let's move on to the politics of fear and divisiveness.

There's a difference in this society today in 1971, because you don't have to be black anymore to be a nigga, as Lieutenant Kelly. You can be Chicano, you can be Native American, you can be Oriental, you can be poor white, you can be young with a beard, you can be young with long hair, you can be a woman, you can be old, you can be an advocate of change in your nigga in this society. And when that silent majority stands up in screams, help at the top of their lungs because they suddenly realize that they're overworked, underpaid, overtaxed, and their kids are fighting and dying in a miserable war in Indochina, then the system says, Angela Davis, Black Panthers, Kamperson Rest, Sessor Chavez, welfare rights, but you and I have got to develop a strategy

to counteract that, and if you don't do anything else in this conference, you've got to deal with that issue, you and I, because that's where our survival is. The blacks are on the move, the third world is on the move, the women are on the move, the young, the old, the poor are on the move. One group that continues to prop up the status quo in this country is the good old silent majority, because they brought the program in the 1930s about patriotism and Americanism. So they never question whatever the politicians say, this is in the best interest. So you see bumper strippers, I fight poverty, I have a job. If you don't like it, leave it.

You see what they've been so thoroughly brainwashed, but I'm saying it's Spiro Agnoukin programming to the right, you and I have show got enough confidence to program back to the left. The point I'm trying to make is we've got to help people understand the politics of fear and the politics of divisiveness. When they talk about the Panthers and Angela Davis and welfare rights and Cesar Chavez and the women's liberation and all the campus unrest and all these issues, then we've got to come back and say, we never had a black or third world president. We don't control the Congress, we don't control the Senate, we don't control the corporations, we don't control the Pentagon, how absurd can you be, continue to say where your problem. The struggle for women's rights in this country is potentially the most powerful movement

in America, because when you start dealing with the problems that confront the lives of women, whether they black, brown, red, yellow, white, rural, suburban, rich, middle class or poor, they understand in an instant what you mean by the struggle of women's rights in America. One thing I clearly realize, the mother who gave birth to me has been victimized because she is black. She's been a secretary for 25 years because she's a woman because of some weak frightened ineffectual male's ability to perceive women as human beings in this country. Let me tell those people who feel that the struggle for women's rights is antithetical to the freedom of black people, Sapphire was not a liberated woman.

Sapphire was made hard and callous because white male dominated society was so busy castrating us that she had to help that family survive. We're so busy ducking in blows that the sister had to take over the leadership. So her hands became callous, her body became hard, her emotions became stilted. But that was another form of slavery, not freedom. And so it's not antithetical to talk about the struggle of women's rights in this country as not being antithetical to the struggle in the freedom of blacks and racial minorities and poor in America because how can I stand and talk about freedom when 53 to 55% of this country is women and the black and brown red and yellow women have been most victimized in this society, most screwed in this society, most exploited in this society.

We've got to talk about women's rights because all freedom is no freedom unless everybody has it. And those brothers who are continuing to operate as showin' this in sexist, you better hurry up and wake up and find out that when that woman is standing alongside you, you tend time stronger than three feet behind for your trip. Okay, we could go on all night about what's wrong while we lost HR1. But let's talk about what does all this mean? You gotta deal with the question of whether the strategy you've employed to date is realistic

given the politics of this country. Perhaps welfare rights has to expand its focus. Perhaps the banner that you must now charge forward with is not helped the welfare but an adequate income for all the poor in this country. Forty percent of the labor force in America are blue collar employees earning between $5 and $10,000 a year. They pay all the taxes, they're the ones who Madison Avenue TV, newspaper, advertising magazine, advertising tells you can't be a man without a Mustang. You can't be a woman without an electric can opener. And so that group, that group earning $5 to $10,000 a year are the working poor. Now when you mouth the podium and say we want $6,500 a year to replace the recalcitrant

of the present welfare system, there are a whole lot of brothers and sisters who are not going to mount a podium. But in the quiet of their living room they're going to say child how can I support $6,500 when I got seven kids named making the 52. And so we have been neglect in our ability to cut across the class issue in this country. Seventy-five percent of the black people in America live in families earning between $5 and $10,000 a year. They're eligible for nothing except the misery of working every day to be poor. So the strategy that we must survive is to counteract the empty nature of the politics of the Democrats and the Republicans who keep playing games between the classes, keeping the poor and the working class fighting, the blacks and the whites fighting. We've got to develop a strategy that speaks to the human question in this country, the

human right of people to live outside of misery, outside of hunger, living a society where the money is and it should produce a quality of life worthy of all of us. And so let welfare rights now discuss the strategy of broadening its attack and talk about a redistribution of wealth in America. Martin Luther King was killed one day and after I got over the emotionalism of his death I asked myself intellectually and politically why was he killed, why was he not killed when he led a quarter of a million people walking, marching for civil rights in Washington DC. That's because that march didn't shake up this society. But when he put a black man from Mississippi, a brown man from Georgia, other people from other states all colors, sexes and shapes, suddenly they said he got a goal. The question in this country is not one of civil rights, I'm not a civil being, I'm a

human being. And it's got to be human rights that we talk about. When King said I have gone to the mountain top, he suddenly realized that economics cut to cross race, economics cut to cross class, across sex, across generations, across religions. He said if we deal with the economic issue in this country, the economic exploitation of people in this country, we can build a people's movement capable of turning America around. And then he became a threat because that movement does threaten the foundation of this society because its express function is fundamental institutional change. There's one thing I would give you in dealing with the strategy of how you build the coalition. At this moment it's not important to affect the coalition. But what is important is that we create an educational climate in this country that

allows people to understand that we're in the same bag and all the various revolutions that are taking place are one and the same. How can you talk about the freedom of black people and women are not free? How can you talk about the freedom of women and you haven't dealt with the environment? So we got everybody free in the world and suddenly pollution kills us all. And that's a major question. They're a handful of scientists all over this world trying to tell the world that we're destroying the entire planet for human beings. If that's true and the curtain is falling on act three of the last big show, namely life on the planet, you better hurry up and deal with racism and hunger. That's a detail, baby. You see what I'm saying? It is in the best interest and the self-interest of the middle class to solve the domestic issues. Stop war because we're going to have to deal with polluting the air, polluting the environment,

destroying the ocean and all the other things that are potentially killing all people. And how insane would it be if the last person on earth, as regards pollution, we're white? And he stood on the highest mountain top and said, hey, I told you I was superior and then fell dead. It's so empty. We're talking about a human question here. We're talking about human misery here. Justice breathing bad air cuts across racial lines, living bad lives without food, without housing, without funds, without education is bad. But those issues got to be dealt with. There's something we all learned at some point, whether it's struggling in the ghetto, dealing in soul, veil, or whatever. We learned that people move for their own reasons, not ours. So let us build our strategy on that notion. The blacks don't have to be moving for the same reason that you kind of move.

The third world doesn't have to be moving exactly for the same motivation that the women move. The young people don't have to be moving for the same reason the old move. That's not what brings us together. Our self-interest, the objective that speaks to all of our self-interest is what brings us together. Take it to war, pacifists are opposed to the war, and there's some brothers out there who are not so pacifists who are also opposed to the war. But they're able to come together because the objective is to end the insanity of war. That's what will produce the coalition, the objective, not the individual motivations of the different individuals or groups. There have been a lot of people walk the face of this country trying to save all the children and save all the babies, trying to save a world that's destined to die. One of them was King. He walked this earth in a short period of time, but he walked a very long journey. From manhood to martyrdom, from Montgomery to Memphis, and from the depths of misery to the top of the mountain.

If he could walk that long time in that short period, you and I, black, brown, red, yellow and white, man, woman, young, old, rich and poor, can come together to take this country on a trip, from madness to humanity, from exploitation to equality, from racism to freedom, from war to peace. Congressman Ronald Dellens of California, addressing the opening session of the fifth annual convention of the National Welfare Rights Organization. Second Vice Chairman, Mrs. Bueller Sanders of New York City, introduced the next speaker. She happens to be on that steering committee along with me and 2019 other women, which is the National Women Political Caucus that is organizing across this country now to put more women in the House of Representatives. I give to you, Congresswoman, Congresswoman, Bella Abzu from New York. We, the American people, have allowed this country to be dominated by the military and

the corporate power that has determined that the energies and resources of this country are for the benefit of the few against the interests of the many. And when he speaks about the fact that this country understands welfare, it's not against welfare. The administration is not against welfare. It's just against welfare for the poor. When he talks about this country and its institutions and talks about the fact that they understand welfare for the rich, he's right. We can look around us with some very interesting little stories. They worry about the cost of welfare, but they don't worry about what government costs. We just sense Byru Agnew around the world and a little trip.

To send this one man around the world, we sent him on a good will trip, if you recall. The administration assigned 141 persons to go with him. They traveled in a caravan of four planes. An additional cargo plane carried two bulletproof Cadillacs to be used by the vice president to commute between the airport, his hotel and the golf course. The hotel bill alone for this traveling, managed about $3,000 a day. And in conducting this great good will tour across this country, this world, Byru Agnew took the occasion to attack the black leadership in this country. Byru Agnew attacked the leadership in this country, which is a leadership which I think

has moved very significantly in the direction of helping to bring America as it approaches its 200th anniversary onto the right American course. Because a movement that started out with a fight for the right to have a seat in the front of the bus has now become a movement which is fighting for economic justice, for political equality, not only for the blacks, but for all people in this country. I also don't think I have to tell you that the reason there isn't any money for adequate income in this country is that the rich know better than you do how to get this welfare. The oil industry knows how to get its depletion allowances. The big money makers in this country know how to get bank accounts and Switzerland so they can't get taxed.

They're all experts at finagling their taxes. More than 300 Americans with incomes over $200,000 paid no income tax at all last year. And you know that Governor Ronald Reagan paid not a penny in state taxes last year. I think we're a rich and a very beautiful country, but only for a few. According to the Department of Labor's own figures, we know what the facts are, 25 million American people at least living in poverty. What does this all mean? Why am I standing up here making a speech to you about the business of what's happened with the resources of this country, why is Congressman Dellens speaking to you along the same lines? I think what we're here to say is that it is in you, oddly enough, that the capacity to change this exists.

Because we're not only talking about ending a war in Vietnam that has cost us billions of dollars, as well as millions of lives, we're not only talking about the fact that we have to insist that instead of spending $76 billion in a military, we have to spend it on health and housing and education and childcare for all human beings. We're talking about something much more significant. We're talking about the fact that in 1972, we, the American people, have got the rest of power from the military and the corporations that have taken it from us. We're talking about the fact that that was never the way it was intended because it was our own friend and our founding father, Thomas Jefferson, who said that it is in the people that the ultimate power resides. We are here, you, and people like you all over this country, the women that gathered at

the National Women's Political Caucus less than three weeks ago to serve notice that as we approach the two-another anniversary of this nation, we, the women, and we the minorities and we the young people and we the working people shall no longer take second place in this nation to the military, to the corporations, or to anyone. We are here, gathered today as others are gathering in other places in this nation to make clear that the people in this country demand and will win equal status, not only in politics, but equal rights in the great economics of this society. This is the richest country of the world and we have a right to demand that we not only participate in its decision-making processes, that we all have a right to be part of that damn power structure that has shut us out all of these years, but that we have a right to demand and expect that the vast economic resources of this country will be made more

available to all of the people in it. You know it's very interesting. The women, we've been women a long time and we've been 51% of the population a long time and we're even 53% of the electorate in this country now, but there are some people in the power structure who just can't face it. So that for example, a gentleman who comes from the same city as I do, one of whom I get along quite well, but with one of whom I disagree very deeply, representative Emanuel Seller, who is the head of my delegation in New York and is also the chairman of the judiciary committee, always talks about the fact that God or a dame that women shall not be equal to man. But ever since Eve was made out of Adam's rib, we were unequal, we were only a rib. And that it was ever been such and it will always be such and he uses that argument and

used it last year to defeat the equal rights amendment. And this year he went through the same historical analysis and said, the women have always been unequal from biblical days on and then to prove his point with much more emphasis he said, why, they weren't even at the last supper. When this was reported to me, I went up to my friend Manny and I said, listen Manny, we may not have been at the last one, but you can be sure that we're going to be at the next one. What I'm trying to say here tonight is that women, and there are lots of women here, that women look at a nation that is run by essentially males in the White House, in the Congress, in

the state legislatures, in the city legislatures, in the courts, in the institutions. They look at a male Pentagon that has done nothing but commanded the American people to live in war and militarism. They look at male corporations and banks. They look at unions that are mostly run by males and they say, would we, if we shared equally with men, the authority of government, would we condone the spending more than a trillion dollars in the past 25 years for killing and useless missiles when our cities are dying of neglect, when families go homeless and hungry, when our young people are becoming more and more alienated from a society, when the old people can't stand to figure out where they're going to live tomorrow, when people are on welfare, and are being denied a right to adequate income, and a right to have a place in which children can grow in child care centers.

When they look around this country and they say this has truly become a country without soul or purpose, would women have allowed that, had we been allowed into that power structure? The fact is that we're only 11 women in a house of representatives, out of 435 men. The fact is there's only one woman senator out of 100 senators. The fact is that there are only 12 blacks or 13 blacks, and what I'm saying is that the house of representatives has to have women in it, has to have women in it, has to have more young people in it, has to have more people who come from every single arena of American life, if it's really to be a house of representatives. You have to be able to suppose, you see, because that's what you're going to be doing from

here on out, you're going to make that suppose into something that is, and what I'm trying to do with you here tonight is to suppose, so that we can really get to work, to make it what it really must be. Now suppose, instead of just having a bunch of middle aged, an old man on Capitol Hill, suppose that there were at least 50% of women in that's Capitol Hill, suppose instead of having just business men and lawyers, we had representatives of poor people, of working people, of trade unionists, of migrant farm workers, of social workers, and artists, and city planners, and scientists, and Vietnam veterans of Americans whose lives and experiences have not been a question of their law offices on Wall Street, or in the advertising firms of Madison Avenue, but who are Americans whose lives and experiences have been molded in the real and total America, and are tormented, and are polluted, and are overpopulated,

and are scared, and are violent, and are divided, but are still promising magnificent land. Supposing people came from the real America, the one thing that I have never gotten over, since I've come to Congress, I knew we had no women at, that's why I ran. And I knew there weren't enough minorities in it, and that's why I always urge people to run, but what I didn't know was that really there are only very few people in that Congress that are really represented. How can a Congress care about a draft and a war? How can a Congress care about doing anything about ending militarism and building a peaceful and a constructive society for young people, where there aren't even any young people in it? You only have to be, you only have to be 25 to be a member of the House of Representatives. There aren't any women in it, and is there any wonder that they've continued to discriminate

against women? And when they passed a so-called welfare bill, what they do was further oppress the women by insisting that she's got to go out and earn money in a low-minion-paying job without having any place to put her kids or any hope for the future. These people don't even begin to represent their own constituencies. Now, that's something I've also learned since I'm in Congress. I have traveled all over this land. I have been to the South, and I've been to the West, and I've been to the North, and I've been to the East, and I've been to the Midwest, and I have talked with the people. All kinds of people, people who are blue-collar workers, people who are poor, people who are working poor, people who are middle-income, young people, senior citizens, and the people in this country really want the same things. Everybody knows that everybody has a right to have a decent home, has a right to have

a full kitchen and a nice box, has a right to have a decent school for kids, has a right to have a health opportunity to be able to take care of whether or not you have the money to pay for a hospital or a doctor. Everybody knows that they don't like to see drugs devouring our nation in our culture. People want to fight for the same things. Three quarters of the American people are now part of the peace movement. It used to be, it had to be a nut to be against the war in Vietnam. It now is that every American except the nuts in the White House and the Congress want to end that war in Vietnam. What is this we see all over this country? What does this mean? It means that at one time when they had the wrong idea that the issue was not to fight for economic justice and political rights, that the issue was to fight those who were different from you, to fight the races that were different from you, to fight the classes that were different from you, to fight the age groups that were different from you. People are beginning to realize that those are not the enemies, that the enemies is a limited power structure which is allowed itself to be dominated by the Pentagon and

by the corporations in this country. All over this nation there is really an opportunity for the people to take power because people have come to understand that they have been had. People in all classes and all groups and all races and all ages have come to be understood. Not only did the military deceive the Congress with its Pentagon papers, but that the Congress has deceived the people, but that the people are no longer going to be deceived. So I believe it's a woman in this country with the organized political power and with the form coalitions with the young people, many of whom are women. From the ages of 1820 to 21 who now have the right to vote, that's 11.3 million new voters. In 1972 there will be 22 million people under the age of 25. We know that the women are 53% of the electorate.

We know that the working people are sick and held and tired of sending their children to be killed. They're sick and tired of giving their taxes for killing. They're sick and tired of now losing their jobs for a military establishment and they will now the working poor and the poor and the working people have now, I think, for the first time in the history of this country and many years, come to understand that they must unite with other people in this country to fight against corporate power, to fight against military power, and to fight for the people's power. I believe that if we could develop such a coalition and I believe we can, and I expect that the women will lead it, that we will develop a Congress that will be much better equipped to meet the problems of our society than is our present house of semi-representatives, a semi-Senate. I believe that this kind of a Congress would not tolerate the laws on the books that discriminate against women and all phases of their lives.

I believe that a Congress with adequate representation of women in other groups would not allow this country to rank 14th and infant mortality rate among the developed nations of the world. I don't believe that they would allow a situation in which millions of our kids grow up without decent health care, because mothers either have to work for a living and have no place to leave them and there are 32 million of them, or else it prevents women from working if they want to because they have to stay at home because there are no child care facilities. I believe that there would never allow a situation where it could be suggested that a family could live on a minimum of $2,400, which is less than one-third of what our own Bureau of Labor Statistics says is necessary for a family to live in, which is $6,900. I believe that such a Congress would vote for an adequate income of at least $6,500 instead of the $2,400 we've now got. I believe, as some of you know, very deeply in the ability of a women's political movement

to lie, to make change. I believe that the women's political movement can reach out to include particularly those who have been doubly and triply disenfranchised. I know that not every woman agrees with every woman, that there are some women who are screened for war, and that there are some women that have stoned black children going to integrated schools, and that there are some women that have been prejudiced, but by and large, our society and its directions have been created and rolled by men. It seems to me that this is the time when we can build a coalition of women, and then we have an objective which goes beyond that, and that is to join with our coalition with the young people in this country who too can lead and must lead, because they are the ones who will be here longer than some of us, as young as we act, we're not so young. In order to continue leading this country in the directions that they must lead in, and the working people, all kinds of working people, and middle-income people, and the poor people

must come together in larger coalitions in each city, in each state, and in the nation to say, this country is ours. It was always intended to be ours, where the American people may have lost our way for a while, but we're now coalescing to bring it back on its path. In 1972 and 1976, which is the 200th anniversary, how the founding of this great nation may truly find us a declaration of independence in the July 4th to really celebrate. And I urge you and your deliberations here today, and the days to follow, to get down and gump the grips with how you can organize, with different groupings in your communities, and in your city and in your state, to organize the political power of the people, because this country shall be ours, because it is ours. United States Congresswoman Bella Abzug of New York, addressing the opening session of the 5th Annual Convention of the National Welfare Rights Organization in Rhode Island. Mrs. Abzug was the final formal speaker before the opening session of this convention,

a session which was to set the spirit of the meetings to come. In this session, there was at first a feeling of fun. The delegates experiencing annihilation over the sheer weight of numbers and diversity of representation gathered in the overcrowded hall. Some people were greeting friends not seen for a long time. Some commented on the enormous growth of the organization since the last convention. Puerto Ricans from New York greeted Chicanos from the Western U.S. and joined together in the revival meeting spirit of their first coming together. They cheered the talk of coalition and joining forces and beamed at the promises of victory for their cause through further organization. The executive director of the National Welfare Rights Organization, Dr. George Wiley, closed the meeting. The fact that we have a congressman and a congresswoman like Ron Delums and Bella Abzug is a tribute to the fact that some people have been getting it together in California and in the Lower East Side in New York.

But it turns out that we only had 31 congressmen out of 435 who voted with us to try to defeat that family assistance plan. And that means that there is a lot of work that has to be done in organizing the kinds of coalitions that they talked about and that as we go into the convention that we will be emphasizing through our workshops and through the programs we have, the nuts and bolts of how can we organize the kind of political movement that can put more Ron Delums and Bella Abzug into Congress. We will be talking about how we can develop the relationships with organizations of domestic workers, organizations of tenants, organizations of farm workers, how we can work around health rights, how we can work more closely with senior citizens, how we can learn about what are

the techniques of political organizing and how we can have the maximum influence on the conventions and on the political processes in 1972. So I hope that everyone is back here bright and early at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning so we can get the basic arrangements for the convention out of the way and get into the workshops and get into the panel discussions that open up these issues in this direction for the national welfare rights organization. This recorded report continues following station identification. This is National Public Radio. We have heard National Public Radio coverage of the opening session of the fifth annual

convention of the National Welfare Rights Organization from Providence, Rhode Island. This is the first program of a series of special recorded reports from this convention. In days to come, we shall hear excerpts from the convention's business sessions, workshops and panel discussions, as well as major addresses by United States Senator George McGovern, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Mrs. Coretta Scott King and Dr. George Wily. The National Welfare Rights Organization is made up of 400 independent welfare rights organizations from across the country and met in sales hall on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The convention ranged over the four days July 28th through July 31st, 1971 and was attended by 800 to 1,000 delegates and friends to organize strategies for the attainment of adequate income for the poor through both wages and welfare. In the words of the group, poor people speaking for themselves and fighting for their share

of America. This program originated in Rhode Island and was produced for National Public Radio by D.D. Doran. Technical Direction was by John Moran with Production Assistance by Rebecca Eaton. This is Robert Kerry speaking and this is National Public Radio.