The goals of the national welfare rights movement: Why we need them thirty years later

Feminist Studies

Volumn 24, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 65-78

  Kornbluh, Felicia ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0032020923     PISSN: 00463663     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3178619     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. See my "Welfare and the Women's Vanguard," In These Times, 11 Dec. 1995, 39-40, and "Feminists and the Welfare Debate-Too Little? Too Late?" Dollars and Sense, November/December 1996, 24-25, 39-40.
2. See my "Welfare and the Women's Vanguard," In These Times, 11 Dec. 1995, 39-40, and "Feminists and the Welfare Debate-Too Little? Too Late?" Dollars and Sense, November/December 1996, 24-25, 39-40.
3. Martha Davis, Brutal Need: Lawyers and the Welfare Rights Movement, 1960-1973 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Daniel J. Walkowitz, The Muddle of the Middle Classes (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
4. Martha Davis, Brutal Need: Lawyers and the Welfare Rights Movement, 1960-1973 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Daniel J. Walkowitz, The Muddle of the Middle Classes (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
5. Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Vintage Press, 1977), 264-361; Guida West, The National Welfare Rights Movement: The Social Protest of Poor Women (New York: Praeger Press, 1981); and Nick Kotz and Mary Lynn Kotz, A Passion for Equality: George A. Wiley and the Movement (New York: W.W. Norton, 1977).
6. Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Vintage Press, 1977), 264-361; Guida West, The National Welfare Rights Movement: The Social Protest of Poor Women (New York: Praeger Press, 1981); and Nick Kotz and Mary Lynn Kotz, A Passion for Equality: George A. Wiley and the Movement (New York: W.W. Norton, 1977).
7. Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Vintage Press, 1977), 264-361; Guida West, The National Welfare Rights Movement: The Social Protest of Poor Women (New York: Praeger Press, 1981); and Nick Kotz and Mary Lynn Kotz, A Passion for Equality: George A. Wiley and the Movement (New York: W.W. Norton, 1977).
8. "1971 Membership Lists, by Region," box 1971, file titled "Regional Group Lists-1971," National Welfare Rights Organization Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C.
9. For example, Barbara Nelson, "The Origins of the Two-Channel Welfare State: Workmen's Compensation and Mothers' Aid," in Women, the State, and Welfare, ed. Linda Gordon (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 123-51.
10. It is difficult to estimate precise NWRO membership because the organization's recordkeeping was inconsistent and membership was volatile. The number paying dues at any given period bore little relation to the (much larger) number engaged in local welfare protests. See assorted membership tables in box 8, folder 4, George Wiley Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin (SHSW), Madison.
11. "Goals of the National Welfare Rights Organization," from ATOW/ (NWRO pamphlet), "Organizing Individual Problems into an Action Campaign" [1967], from Social Action vertical file, box 36, folder titled "Nat. Welfare Rights Org.," SHSW.
12. For use of the phrase "right to live," by a lawyer whose work many welfare rights advocates read, see A. Delafield Smith, The Right to Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955).
13. On social and welfare rights, see Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon, "Contract versus Charity: Why Is There No Social Citizenship in the United States?" Socialist Review 22 (July-September 1992): 45-67; and Jeremy Waldron, "Social Citizenship and the Defense of Welfare Provision," Liberal Rights (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 271-308.
14. On social and welfare rights, see Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon, "Contract versus Charity: Why Is There No Social Citizenship in the United States?" Socialist Review 22 (July-September 1992): 45-67; and Jeremy Waldron, "Social Citizenship and the Defense of Welfare Provision," Liberal Rights (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 271-308.
15. The terms "civil," "political," and "social" rights are T.H. Marshall's. See "Citizenship and Social Class," Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 1-85.
16. George Wiley, "Testimony for the National Welfare Rights Organization before the Fiscal Policies Sub-Committee of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress," 12 June 1968, box 22, folder 4, Wiley Papers.
17. Franklin Folsom, America before Welfare (New York: New York University Press, 1991), esp. 180-86, 231-354.
18. Poverty/Rights Action Center, "Goals for a National Welfare Rights Movement," 6-7 Aug. 1966, Poverty/Rights Action Center, Pamphlets (PAM 87-2883), SHSW.
19. On the 1967 Social Security Act amendments and the work-referral or W.I.N. Program, see Sonya Michel's discussion in this issue. NWRO activists, who generally opposed mandatory work for mothers of young children, called WIN the "WIP Program."
20. Susan E. Lawrence, The Poor in Court: The Legal Services Program and Supreme Court Decision Making (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
21. Box 1988, files titled "Welfare Law-Larry Silver," "Lawyers," and "Rachlin," and assorted correspondence files in box 1971, NWRO Papers.
22. In his Goldberg v. Kelly opinion, Justice Brennan argued: "Public assistance [was] not mere charity, but a means to 'promote the general Welfare' "; and that it might be more appropriate to consider "welfare entitlements as more like 'property' than a 'gratuity.' " See Goldberg v. Kelly [397 U.S. 254, 25 L Ed 2d 287].
23. On poverty law today, see Louise G. Trubek, "The Worst of Times . . . and the Best of Times: Lawyering for Poor Clients Today," Fordham Urban Law Journal 20 (1995): 1123-40.
24. Carol Medaris, Wisconsin Legal Services, Memorandum to Welfare Advocates on Selected Provisions of "Wisconsin Works" (W-2), 10 Nov. 1996 (in possession of author).
25. On the continued significance of Goldberg v. Kelly, see Rebecca E. Zietlow, "Two Wrongs Don't Add Up to Rights: The Importance of Preserving Due Process in Light of Recent Welfare Reform Measures," The American University Law Review 45 (April 1996): 1111-49.
26. Lucie White, "Subordination, Rhetorical Survival Skills, and Sunday Shoes: Notes on the Hearing of Mrs. G.," Buffalo Law Review 38 (winter 1990): 1-58.
27. Lizabeth Cohen, "A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Consumption in Postwar America," from the workshop "Consuming Politics: How Mass Consumption Has Shaped and Been Shaped by Political Systems and Cultures," Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, 16 Apr. 1993.
28. Marshall, "Citizenship and Social Class," as quoted in Fraser and Gordon, 48.
29. For a discussion of budgets and Sears, see my "To Fulfill Their 'Rightly Needs': Consumerism and the National Welfare Rights Movement," Radical History Review, no. 69 (fall 1997): 76-113.
30. Edward T. Devine, "The Normal Life," excerpted in American Standards and Planes of Living: Readings in the Social Economics of Consumption, ed. Thomas Eliot (Boston: Ginn & Co., 1931), 25-29.
31. Juliet Greenlaw, "Statement of National Welfare Rights Organization to the Democratic Platform Hearing," 16 Aug. 1968, box 2101, file titled "Demo Platform Aug. 19, 1968," NWRO Papers.
32. Patricia Williams spoke eloquently about the contemporary "spectacle of work"-for welfare recipients, on the chain gang, in other prison-based labor, and so forth-at the Teach-in on Labor and the Academy, "The Fight for America's Future," Columbia University, 3 Oct. 1996.
33. Johnnie Tillmon and George Wiley, National Welfare Rights Organization, draft letter to Robert Finch, Secretary of H.E.W., n.d. [January-February 1969], box 1988, file titled "HEW Demands," NWRO Papers.
34. Carol Honsa, "Mothers Welcome Welfare Decision," Washington Post, 19 June 1968,4.
35. For a summary of research on links between welfare and domestic violence, see Martha Davis, "Feminist Strategies and Welfare Reform: The Domestic Violence Dilemma," paper in possession of author. For a general treatment of welfare and heterosexuality,
36. see Mimi Abramovitz, Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present (Boston: South End Press, 1988).
37. Beulah Sanders, "Statement to the Presidential Commission on Income Maintenance," 5 June 1969, box 22, folder 4, Wiley Papers.
38. Charles Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
39. Frances Fox Piven, interview by author, New York City, 11 Aug. 1997.
40. See Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty (New York: Free Press, 1969); Allen Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1984); and Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).
41. See Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty (New York: Free Press, 1969); Allen Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1984); and Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).
42. See Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty (New York: Free Press, 1969); Allen Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1984); and Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).