It's Very Simple: The True Story of Civil Rights
Chapter 15

This chapter begins with a discussion of President Lyndon Johnson's "war on poverty." The author points out, in a humorous way, that all the while Americans are supposedly suffering in so many ways, the federal government is sending "a few billion dollars of foreign aid to foreign countries" every year.

President Johnson's declaration in this new "war" has a familiar ring to it:

He has the federal government spend $861,500,000 "for projects to help the poor" in the ghettos "in each of the riot cities," and states that these poor who need help so bad "are, for the most part… the Northern urban Negro."

He also says

The author points out that a U.S. president should know that "in a free society one man's fortune isn't the next man's handicap. In a free society it's the next man's opportunity to get a job and to make his own fortune. You would know that it is only the man who 'has' who can hire the man who 'has not.'"

He points out that it is "envy" that drives the "have nots" to want the property of the "haves," and that it "always ends up impoverishing all."

A U.S. president who "really wanted to destroy poverty" would instead "make it possible for all to produce" by "removing restrictions in creative men, on trade, on business and industry."

Instead, the president invented the Office of Economic Opportunity, directed by one R. Sargent Shriver, who immediately asked Michael Harrington to tell him how to "abolish poverty." Harrington is "a close associate of Bayard Rustin," and a Socialist who has been discussed previously in this book as the chairman of the board for the League for Industrial Democracy, "which… is dedicated to the abolition of capitalism."

Harrington says that focusing on all poverty, instead of just Black, they can draw in White allies for their revolutionary cause.

The author here wants us to notice that "the war on poverty has something to do with civil rights," and he provides us with some quotes to that effect, including one from executive director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Center, stating that "integration is no longer the issue. The issue is poverty," which they claim is "a political problem."

We next investigate exactly what our tax dollars started paying for under the Antipoverty Act. One of the organizations we began funding was Mobilization for Youth, which received almost all of its money (over $13 million, initially) from the federal and city governments, with the remainder coming from the Ford Foundation.

In August 1964, the New York Times reported that nine of their staff members had been "members of the Communist party or of Communist-front organizations" in the 1930's and 40's, according to the FBI. One year earlier, the number had been fourteen. None were dismissed by the organization, but nine remained a year later.

Their chairman denied that Communists had "taken over" the agency, and claimed that their "professional abilities" were all that mattered, and not their "political beliefs."

Four days after the Times article, the FBI checked on the MFY staff again, and found "'at least' thirty-seven current staff members who have been busy with Communist activity."

The Times, for their part, published an article right before this new FBI report came out, claiming that this was a "witch hunt" driven by "right-wing criticism," and that social workers feared it would lead to control over organizations that receive "Federal, state or local funds." The author points out that they are concerned that those who fund the programs will want to call the shots. They despaired over "McCarthyism."

Another Times article had the associate executive director of the National Association of Social Workers "[estimating] that 50 percent of the organization's 40,000 members have at one time belonged to groups that some would consider left-wing."

The ACLU and NYCLU both declared that this was all "McCarthyism" and disparaged the City Council president who "had the temerity to wonder whether public money should be used to employ Communists." They complained that the FBI was charging these employees and their organization with "guilt by association."

The Community and Social Agency Workers Union argued, basically, that "[j]ust because a few zealous employees have joined the Communist party–why, that doesn't prove anything… just because you're a Communist doesn't prove you're a subversive."

Instead, we learn that federal officials were more worried about "the mounting Republican attack on the social philosophy behind Mobilization for Youth."

MFY went on to hire an attorney to investigate itself, but them became concerned when he suggested they should fire anyone guilty of "the promotion of civil disorder or illegal activity." The New York News reported that MFY tried to force the attorney to resign, and complained that "attempts to learn the political leanings and backgrounds of MFY personnel… would violate the employees' civil rights."

The author next points out that we can learn what MFY is all about by looking at its programs, which included supporting boycotts, strikes, and demonstrations, sponsored by known Communists. George Brager, a director for MFY, admits that "If somebody's gaining something, somebody else is giving something up!"

Says the author:

We learn that MFY operates "a luncheonette, a service station, a woodworking shop, an auto repair shop and two espresso houses… workers for public housing construction… all sorts of services–legal, psychological, tutorial, remedial, printing, secretarial, etc."

These are all paid for by tax dollars.

Yet, President Johnson declares that MFY is "one of the most promising in a variety of efforts to bring opportunity to neighborhoods where it has long been absent."

MFY also supported rent strikes, for which they called in known Communist Jesse Gray as "a rent strike expert consultant." An MFY report entitled The Community Organization Housing Report "describes the court system as 'real-estate controlled and a tool for landlords'" and they describe the purpose of their own housing program as being "[t]o organize tenants as a political force… drawing together and staffing a committee which will coordinate direct action campaigns in a militant manner."

They also hired a man named Leroy McRae, a Trotskyite and member of the Socialist Workers Party, to assist in rent strikes. He remained employed by MFY even after his affiliations were known.

"Another leader of the rent strike sponsored by MFY was [Esther Rand,] 'named by the FBI in 1960 as a spy courier for the Soviet Union.' … Another lady whose salary you supplied is the 'wife of a member the U.S. Communist Party's national committee,' and 'an officer of the Brooklyn party organization in her own right…' Constance Bart."

After MFY's attorney released his report, "there [were] more than 50 staff resignations, both voluntary and at the 'suggestion' of the directors."

New York City released performed its own investigation, during which they requested several times that MFY allow their Investigation Department to question certain employees that had been reported to them by "confidential sources" as to their having "engaged in subversive activity." They were told that any questioning would only be allowed if it was limited to their "activities as an employee of MFY," which of course defeated the purpose of the questioning.

The New York State Senate also released a report, which announced their own findings about many members with active involvement with the Communist Party, including members of the Communist Party's youth club, a girl who took a trip to Cuba paid for by Fidel Castro at a time when there was a State Department ban on travel there, and so on, as well as members of the Progressive Labor Movement and Socialist Workers Party. They noted that they hadn't even had time to investigate everyone they had information about.

The author next discusses a group called Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU), who "offer uniforms to boys 9 and older…drill with dummy rifles. Remedial schoolwork will be disguised in the form of military manuals." This program was given $118 million "in federal and city funds," including $3.4 million from the mayor of New York.

We next learn that both MFY and HARYOU were considered pilot programs, to be "copied throughout the United States." The New York Times says that MFY "is regarded as the prototype for the community action programs envisioned by Title II of the anti-poverty bill."

Of course, the leaders from several of the aforementioned organizations, including CORE, HARYOU, and the NAACP, took out an ad in the New York Times to complain that there was a "campaign to destroy Mobilization for Youth, and to cripple or abort other efforts to deal creatively with these problems in the city."

A Times editorial admitted that MFY had "made mistakes," but more importantly it "[had] broken important new ground… to restore the poor's sense of hope and purpose."

They further claim that Paul Screvane, author of one of the reports on MFY, "challenges one of the most important aspects of its entire program when he casts doubt on the worth of its community action projects." And claim that rent strikes, demonstrations, and boycotts "ameliorate the lot of the poorest elements of the community, by "[teaching] them to help themselves by concerted efforts."

After all of these revelations about MFY, the Acting Attorney General and the Secretary of Labor made the following comments:

It is shocking to hear about a U.S. president using such blood-red Commie language as was used by President Johnson when declaring his so-called "war on poverty." The goals and outcomes of this "war" are in line with Communism, of course, so it fits, but it is still shocking.

What's worse, however, is that he got away with it. Nothing in the Constitution allows for such things, in fact it expressly disallows it! Feds have "enumerated powers" that do not include control of private property.

Note also how the focus of those supposedly concerned over "civil rights" suddenly shifted to "poverty." This was necessary, as stated previously by the Communists themselves, to shift the focus more towards the economic side of the actual revolution.

It is a known fact that Americans are the most generous nation in the world, both currently and historically. This has been enabled by also being the most prosperous nation in the world. And all this without the government forcing us to be so. Even now, when so much of our money is taken by the government for socialist causes, millions of Americans still donate time, substance, and money to churches, charities, and causes, out of what little they have left. Because we don't need the government to make these things happen. We do them because it is right. And we would do more if the government wasn't robbing us.

In discussing program funding, it is interesting that We The People pay for every government program, and yet have little or no say in how they are run.

"Guilt by association" is an interesting beast. We believe that a man can have bad friends and yet, theoretically, still be good himself. However, we also allow people to go to jail for being an "accomplice" to a crime that was actually committed by someone else.

There is an old proverb that says "Show me your friends and I will tell you what you are." This has appeared in print since at least 1828, so it has been an accepted adage for at least the past two hundred years.[1] This shows that we, as humans, acknowledge the influence exerted on us by those we associate with. When we find that we do not agree with the things other people espouse, we generally tend to cease associating with them.

As the discussion turns to Communism, we must use an elevated sense of caution, since it is, literally, a conspiracy to destroy not only America but the whole world, and it uses secretive and subversive means in order to achieve its goals. It uses everything at its disposal to subvert and destroy the Constitution, which guarantees our freedom, and seeks to supplant it with an enslaving oligarchy.

To discover, then, that a man knows one or two Communists, we might raise an eyebrow and move on. But to discover that he associates with many, and that the organization he belongs to employs and associates with many, as well, we must raise alarms instead, withdraw public funding, and disband the institution.

While this may seem to contradict the position that there should not be "thought crimes," it is not. Communism is the literal antithesis, the exact opposite, of everything we cherish as Americans, and their theories and philosophies entirely destructive–by design–of everything that has made us a free people. This is not theory, either. We have now a hundred years of historical evidence, and we can look to present-day nations that have been enslaved by Communism already.

President Johnson's use of public funds to "bring opportunities" to so-called communities in need, may sound charitable, but it is nothing more than redistribution of wealth, which, of course, is the point.

One of the tactics we learn about Mobilization for Youth is their constant claims of "police brutality." As mentioned previously, this is also a tactic of Marxist groups like Black Lives Matter.

The mention of HARYOU's military training of children reminds one of the videos that surfaced around the time Obama became president, featuring camouflage-clad boys from Brooklyn, marching and chanting about him.[2] For this and many other reasons, we can understand what he meant when he described himself as a "community organizer."[3]

After reading this chapter, it should begin to abundantly clear that none of these Communist activities could have gained any ground without the concerted supporting efforts of agents both in the federal government and in the mainstream media!


References:

[1] “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future” (barrypopik.com) <https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/show_me_your_friends_and_ill_show_you_your_future, accessed 2021-02-17.>

[2] Obama Youth Brigade March in Formation (youtube.com) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOtGr1JFCnE, accessed 2021-02-17.>

[3] What Did Obama Do As A Community Organizer? (nationalreview.com) <https://www.nationalreview.com/2008/09/what-did-obama-do-community-organizer-byron-york/, accessed 2021-02-17.> This article will be particularly eye-opening after reading the present book.