Simple Things/ Lang Kenneth Haynes

      Great Society
     There was a feeling of hope in the air. Like perpetual spring. We walked around the housing projects and old apartment buildings on the Lower
East Side of New York City with our noses wide open. Like adolescents in love. We were entering our next phase of being. Promises were about to be
realized. Old obstacles removed. It was more exciting than scary even though we did not know what the new world would look like.
    There was a rumor that you could take a pretty basic test and be admitted to college and have your tuition and books paid for. The rumor turned
out to be true. There was talk that summer jobs were easy to find. The talk was true. Word was out that many of the opportunities our parents had been
denied were now there for the taking. And the talk on the street was overwhelmingly true. It was like a modern-day gold rush. Streets lined with the dust
of precious metals that could be parlayed into cash to buy houses with actual backyards and cars with seats more comfortable than sofas. Prospectors
staking claims all over the place. The difference was that the gold of the Great Society was unlimited, or so we thought, and its value increased by
sharing rather than hoarding it. I told my best friend Stephen about the chance to go to college. He checked it out and got to go to City College too.
He told someone he knew and they got to go to college also. That’s the way it worked. Sharing was part of the deal. Giving away knowledge of
opportunities generated more opportunity. What a concept.
    Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson was credited with the Great Society programs that began following his inauguration after the assassination of Pres. John
F. Kennedy. Although some of the names have changed, many of these programs are in existence today despite the late Ronald Reagan’s caustic
and telling comment: “LBJ declared war on poverty and poverty won.” The programs include Head Start, Job Corps, Community Health Centers,
Foster Grandparents, Upward Bound, Green Thumb, Indian Opportunities, Migrant Opportunities, Community Action, VISTA and Legal Services. The
programs just listed are under the auspices of the Office of Equal Opportunity that was one of many huge advancements of the War on Poverty that
was part of the Great Society. It is more than a shame that some consider the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to be a mere footnote of that era. Great
Society programs benefit even those for whom the word “program” is a bad word. The Great Society encouraged and supported research designed
specifically to confront heart disease, cancer and stroke. This was a time during which there was more concern shown for community health and the
concern translated into more doctors, nurses, paramedics and other health care professionals. Part of the goal was to reduce the dependence of poor
people on emergency rooms as the primary health care provider. In short, the Great Society was seen as a way to provide the promise of the United
States of America to all its residents. The Great Society made available to the poor people of this nation the very same benefits that their more
affluent counterparts had come to take for granted.
    I graduated from high school in 1967. I remember hearing and reading about the War on Poverty and the Great Society. But these
pronouncements about the ways the Johnson administration proposed to make life, liberty and the Americans regardless of skin color and income
status went beyond words. There was evidence that the words had substance. It seems that there are a couple of ways to think about opportunity: one
form is connected to hopes of winning the lottery or – as was the case when I was a kid – off-track betting or playing the numbers. Hope can take the
form of a few people who make millions of dollars as sports figures and endorsers of products. The easiest way to characterize this realm of opportunity
is to say that they are few and far between, not impossible, but the long and short is that they benefit very few. It’s like waiting for a bus or train that
comes along every once in a while or in many cases not at all.
    The other type of opportunity is like waiting for a train in a busy train station and you know from past experience that if you miss one another will be
along in a matter of minutes. You might be required to travel a route other than the one you had originally intended to take, but you know that you
can and will arrive at your destination. That’s what the Great Society felt like to me. I knew that my biggest job was to decide what opportunities I
wanted to take advantage of with the full knowledge that the guidance, encouragement and financial and other resources needed to embark on my
trip and arrive at my destination were there for me. It was about choice, and illegal and otherwise negative choices were not required for my survival.
And if I chose to go negative it would be because of habit in combination with any number of other influences, but necessity would not be a
legitimate motivator.
    There was the sound of hammering and sawing coming from hundreds of storefronts of old buildings all over the Lower East Side, and Harlem and
other parts of New York City and its boroughs. Formerly useless buildings were being renovated and transformed into clubhouses and training centers
that taught kids the skills they needed to secure jobs. The whole enterprise was positive and growthful. The gutting and refurbishing of old buildings
was a very important lesson in itself. I remember working on such a project on 6th Street between Avenue D and Avenue C. I remember the feeling of
busting up the plaster walls to expose the wood lath underneath. I had never seen how a wall was constructed and I had very little experience in using
tools like hammers, crowbars or saws. The experience fed my curiosity. On a deeper level I began to internalize the idea that I could build as well as
destroy. Even more importantly – I began to assume my responsibility to build and to teach others to do the same by merely doing what I knew to be
right for me. I became a carpenter many years later. I’m sure the Great Society had something to do with it.
    I remember the many visits I made to the nation’s capital when I was a child. I saw the Washington Monument at cherry blossom time, the Lincoln
Memorial, visited the theater where Lincoln was assassinated, witnessed the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and saw the
United States Treasury. I also wandered to the edges of not-so-glorious neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. Desperate and terrifying places where poor
people struggled for survival day after day and these places were literally a stone’s throw from the White House. Something was clearly and
fundamentally wrong and it appeared to me, some years later, that the president of the United States was fessing up to this monumental wrongness
and the Great Society was an earnest attempt to balance the scales.
     I mentioned earlier that I attended college as a result of Great Society educational programs. I couldn’t have afforded me eligible for the largesse
of any benefactor and my interest in and passion for sports was tepid at best despite some ability. The Great Society worked for me and thousands or
millions of others in ways that are often forgotten. We didn’t need a special password, secret handshake, family connection or fat bank
account to have a legitimate chance of connecting with the treasures of the United States of America. And these treasures came in many treasure
chests with labels like: health care, job training, employment, education, the right to vote and most of all, the right to be human. Attempts to
dismantle the fundamental assurances of the Great Society continue to this day and the underlying and often unspoken sentiment is that there are
people in this country who do not matter. And instead of removing the beams from our eyes we devote inordinate attention to the, admittedly —
sometimes large, specks in the eyes of others. We wage wars in other lands rather than look at the neighborhood across the street, on the other side of
the tracks or behind a thick row of hedges. And when the need arises to divert attention away from disasters we have exacerbated on this planet, we
turn to the heavens to shoot down a disabled U.S. spy satellite before it enters the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s like throwing a dart in the air then covering
your head with your hands. Better to not throw the dart in the first place. And saying that the plan is to “intercept” the satellite doesn’t diminish the
insanity of “shooting” it down. I’m not a betting man, but my suspicion is that the satellite “shoot down” will be a “success” and used to justify arming
the heavens. The sophisticated justification of insanity does not render it sane. If the painfully transparent and persistent attempts to diffuse the
essential premise of the Great Society halt the march to fairness and equality, we will all lose. What an awful way to be equal.