Did any DUers participate in the Great Society programs?

[bluestateguy]

Was anyone here involved in any of the Great Socirty programs like VISTA, the Community Action Teams, JOB CORPS, Neighborhood Youth Corps? If so I'd like to hear your story.

[Rowdyboy]

1. I was in Neighborhood Youth Corps....

Summer job in 1970 (my dad was sporadically employed as a long-haul driver so we were economically disadvantaged). My crew had five black guys, four white guys, a Choctaw Indian and me. That was the summer we integrated the local black high school with the local white high school. Our crew dismantled and moved lockers from one school to the other, dismantled the science labs and packed up the library. We also did a lot of outdoor, clean up work around schools and the city school bus shop.

I was 16 and had never been around blacks. These guys got to be pretty good friends of mine (years later one later stepped in and kept me from getting my ass kicked in a fight). I didn't get along with the white guys at all (mostly thugs) but the Choctaw and I got to be best friends. We talked a lot and ate lunch together everyday.

Learning how other guys of different races my age thought was a very useful lesson. I matured pretty much that summer, and made a little cash to boot.

[seventhson]

2. I was a VISTA worker in the inner city (Volunteers in Serice to America)

I was right out of high school and my lottery draft number was too high for me to get called up as many of my friends were.

I worked for a Youth Legal Services Program which I helped to design in response to police brutality in the inner city.

I was required to live in my inner city community where the program was run under funding from the Office of Economic Opportunity.

That bastard Rumsfeld and Nixon gutted the program's operating funds to pay for the illegal and covert wars in Cambodia and Laos and the program eventually totally folded.

I ionvestigated criminal cases for the defense and acted as an advocate in court alongside the staff attorney for whom I prepared the case investigations and interviews.

It was an awesome time. I worked with members of the Black Panthers and their defense teams and fought for alternative sentencing for young people in the adult criminal system as well as juvenile.

My fellow VISTA worker included a former heroin addict hooker with whom I became good friends and my best friend ended up being my supervisor. When Rummy/Nixon gutted the program my friend went back to hooking and drugs and eventually aids (although I think she is completely cured now without meds).

I was inspired by this experience to work with kids, teens, and troubled adults and to go to college to get my degree and go to law school (which I did). I have continued throughout my career to work with the poor, disenfranchised, "minorities", etc., while pursuing goals of writing, journalism, and other political activism. It led me to work with the American Indian Movement, William Kunstler, and a number of other progressive peoples and causes.

The best part is running into kids I helped keep out of jail or get out and who is now grown up, alive, happy and successful because I made a difference in their life.

Some do not make it. Many died.

But I also did an oral history for a grad student and the archives at Howard University.

There is more but -- any questions?