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FREEDOMWAYS           FOURTH QUARTER 1968

Acts. Those acts drove the English and Irish peasants off their small holdings into the city slums and finally drove many of them to America. The reason was then and is today to make agriculture more efficient and profitable but “rationalization” of production did not benefit the poor in the past nor has it helped the poor today. In fact, the argument could be made that the poor pushed into the he cities in the 18th century provided the hands and backs for the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and 19th centuries. They get jobs (rotten hobs, but jobs nevertheless), but today the rural poor drifting into the cities are not even finding rotten jobs. The economy marches on, and although the system is tinged with racism, it is one that goes beyond racism. Human beings, whatever their color, are only the instruments or the or the surplus products of this system. Even if we were all the same color, we would still be under a governmentally supported economic system which would spin off human beings in the name of economic rationalization where the business needs come first. 

The riots of 1967 were produced by some of the people spun off by the system. If things continue as they have been, these “rejects” will continue to riot. The options open to the powers that be seem simple enough: either repress the “rejects” with “shoot to kill” legislation and modern weapons or enact massive assistance, rehabilitation and education programs which would give the people left behind by our so-called progress a recently into productive roles in society. We must acknowledge that everyone has a right to a job, to health care, and to good, useful education. We must not settle for just more welfare for this is a rejection of the poor as merely a surplus population which we cannot kill but will merely keep alive with surplus food. 

“The People Left Behind” and the “Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders” are both shocking documents. They indicate that at least part of the Establishment (highly placed professionals and politicians) recognizes the urgent necessity to correct past mistakes and injustices. But is knowledge enough? Our collective guilt for racial, urban, and rural crises is discussed on every night’s television and in every day’s newspaper. But the Congress and the press did their beast to ignore the fifty specific requests of the Poor People’s Campaign and focused their attention on the mud and the organizational problems. On the day that Resurrection city was closed down Congress voted to start developing an antiballistic missile network at a first installment cost of $5 billion. Perhaps the 

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