In the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
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
Poverty is a state or condition in which an individual lacks the financial resources and essentials for a basic standard of living. Poverty can have diverse Biophysical environmen ...
by empowering the poor as part of the
War on Poverty.
CAAs are intended to promote
self-sufficiency
Self-sustainability and self-sufficiency are overlapping states of being in which a person, being, or system needs little or no help from, or interaction with others. Self-sufficiency entails the self being enough (to fulfill needs), and a sel ...
, 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.
[ U.S. Code Title 42 Chapter 9910]
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.
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.
[Bell, Mike, Office Assistant, Community Action, Inc.,]
"History of Community Action Agencies,"
circa 2010 (on website of Northeast Kansas Community Action Program Inc., Hiawatha, Kansas)[''A Brief History of Community Action''](_blank)
, (slideshow), circa 2013, presented by Jovita A. Tolbert, Nat'l Assn. for State Community Services Programs (NASCSP)["History of Community Action,"](_blank)
summary of the concept and history of the nation's federal Community Action programs, published on the website of the Illinois Association of Community Action Agencies - IACAA.
Establishment
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), also known as LBJ, was the 36th president of the United States, serving from 1963 to 1969. He became president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, under whom he had served a ...
's landmark
Economic Opportunity Act of 1964—drafted by former
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an Independent agency of the U.S. government, independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to communities in partner countries around the world. It was established in Marc ...
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."
["Public Deliberation in an Age of Direct Citizen Participation,"](_blank)
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).
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 structure
In political science, power is the ability to influence or direct the actions, beliefs, or conduct of actors. Power does not exclusively refer to the threat or use of force ( coercion) by one actor against another, but may also be exerted thr ...
s, where elected city councils, county commissions, state and federal officials ruled over everything—mostly people from the power elite
In political and sociological theory, the elite (, from , to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful or wealthy people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. Defined by the ...
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
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' political freedom, freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and ...
and reform movement
Reformism is a type of social movement that aims to bring a social system, social or also a political system closer to the community's ideal. A reform movement is distinguished from more Radicalism (politics), radical social movements such as re ...
s, and War on Poverty, in the 1960s and 1970s, and generally accepted, at least at first.[''Examination of " citizen participation" in the Model Cities Program and the demands of ethnic minorities for a greater decision making role in American cities''](_blank)
Model Cities 152A, by Ricardo A. Millett, 1977, published by R&E Research Associates, San Francisco; full text (scanned) at Archive.org .)
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.["Mayor Daley on the Community Action Program,"](_blank)
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
Problems, pushback, pullback, and successes
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.
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."
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
The conservative coalition, founded in 1937, was an unofficial alliance of members of the United States Congress which brought together the conservative wings of the Republican and Democratic parties to oppose President Franklin Delano Rooseve ...
), 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.[LBJ and Senator Richard Russell on the Community Action Program]
," audio recording Jun 02, 1966: conversation excerpt (President Johnson and Georgia Sen. Richard Russell express dislike and distrust of Community Action Program), Conversation Number: WH6606.01 #10205, The Miller Center
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.[
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.][ 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
Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was a federal assistance program in the United States in effect from 1935 to 1997, created by the Social Security Act (SSA) and administered by the United States Department of Health and Human Ser ...
. 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.[
]
Conservative backlash & Relf v. Weinberger
During the conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...
-backlash era of the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as the federal government (under Presidents Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. (October 1, 1924December 29, 2024) was an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party ...
, Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party a ...
, George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker BushBefore the outcome of the 2000 United States presidential election, he was usually referred to simply as "George Bush" but became more commonly known as "George H. W. Bush", "Bush Senior," "Bush 41," and even "Bush th ...
, Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...
, and George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...
) 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.[
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. 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
An energy crisis or energy shortage is any significant Bottleneck (production), bottleneck in the supply of energy resources to an economy. In literature, it often refers to one of the energy sources used at a certain time and place, in particu ...
and the Early 1980s recession
The early 1980s recession was a severe economic recession that affected much of the world between approximately the start of 1980 and 1982. Long-term effects of the early 1980s recession contributed to the Latin American debt crisis, long-lastin ...
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.[
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%.][ The 2022 metric is 12.6%.][Craig Benson. (December 202]
"Poverty in States and Metropolitan Areas: 2022"
Washington, D.C.: United States Census Bureau. U.S. Department of Commerce. Retrieved 9 November 2024.
Today
However, despite these challenges, around 1,000 CAPs (and their CAAs) still operate today, across the United States.[Community Action Partnership](_blank)
website
[
]
See also
* Community Action Services and Food Bank
Footnotes
Further reading
* Kazuyo Tsuchina, ''Reinventing Citizenship: Black Los Angeles, Korean Kawasaki, and Community Participation.'' Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
External links
Community Action Partnership
- The National Association, Washington, D.C.
National Archives of the United States
CAPLaw
- Community Action Program Legal Services, Boston, Massachusetts
Regional CAA Assn's.
Illinois Association of Community Action Agencies
IACAA), Illiniois
(INCAA), Indianapolis, Indiana
Community Action Partnership of Orange County
- The Orange County, California chapter of Community Action Partnership
Minnesota Community Action Partnership
(MinnCAP)
Missouri Community Action Network
(Missouri CAN) - Missouri's statewide association of Community Action
Community Action Partnership of New Jersey
- New Jersey's statewide association of Community Action
New York State Community Action Association
Vermont Community Action Partnership
{{Authority control
Great Society programs