War on poverty
32
MENTIONS
18
EPISODES
18
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Search complete. 32 mentions across 18 episodes found for "War on poverty".
Oct 7, 2026
Matt WalshHOST
We could have issued an annual dividend to everyone to make it easier to buy a home or start a business.
Matt WalshHOST
We could have invested in our own country to an unprecedented degree, but in the name of civil rights and attempting to integrate Black Americans with the rest of society, um, and the interests of, uh, you know, waging a, quote unquote, War on Poverty, LBJ and the Democrats created all of these massive programs.
Matt WalshHOST
And, and here's the key point.
Matt WalshHOST
When the opposition party, quote unquote, took over, instead of scaling these programs back or finding some way to pay for them, namely by raising taxes, if you're gonna keep them and pay for them, that's the only way to do it, they kept everything intact.
speaker_1NARRATOR
Most people just call it ESEA.
speaker_1NARRATOR
Congress passed it in nineteen sixty-five as a centerpiece of President Johnson's War on Poverty.
speaker_1NARRATOR
It remains the nation's principal federal law affecting K-twelve education.
speaker_1NARRATOR
The goal, send extra federal dollars to districts serving high concentrations of low-income children and equalize educational opportunity.
Ashley MolzenGUEST
Thank you.
Siobhan SpainHOST
Head Start originated as a component of President, uh, Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty in 1965.
Siobhan SpainHOST
Head Start currently provides a comprehensive early learning service to nearly one million children from birth to age five each year through nearly 50,000 classrooms across the nation.
Siobhan SpainHOST
That is awesome.
Gary DeMarHOST
That's no longer the case.
Gary DeMarHOST
The reason is, is the government came in in the 1960s, when Lyndon Johnson became president, they started this thing called the War on Poverty.
Gary DeMarHOST
And the War on Poverty was to try to help people who were poor.
Gary DeMarHOST
And so what they decided to do is to start paying people who were poor, giving them money.
Gary DeMarHOST
And one of the things that they decided they'd do is if a woman had a baby out of wedlock, and she was now dependent, they would give her money.
Agnes BaronGUEST
And so he gave me okay.
Agnes BaronGUEST
So then I went into war on poverty.
Agnes BaronGUEST
That was a federal government thing.
Agnes BaronGUEST
And then they put me in charge of a whole territory, which was supposed to be very strict in poverty.
Clint SmithHOST
And today, we're learning about Reverend Jesse Jackson and Operation PUSH.
Clint SmithHOST
Operation PUSH was an organization founded in 1971 as a supplement to and a continuation of the civil rights victories of the 1960s, as well as a response to the War on Poverty the Watts Rebellion of 1965, and the subsequent rebellions that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Clint SmithHOST
Push attempted to fill a void in largely urban, poor, and predominantly Black centers.
Clint SmithHOST
Its leader, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, worked directly with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Clifford RosenthalGUEST
Honestly, I conceived this movement from our perspective because of the extreme need for capital among credit unions that specialize in serving low-income communities.
Clifford RosenthalGUEST
There had been an unsuccessful effort in the 1960s during the War on Poverty to establish hundreds of these institutions and at local anti-poverty organizations.
Clifford RosenthalGUEST
Most of them failed.
Clifford RosenthalGUEST
The organization that I came to head, the National Federation, represented those institutions, but they were a shrinking number.
Maurice IssermanGUEST
... "Oh, Michael Harrington, the well-known, notorious socialist, is helping shape this legislation," but they weren't afraid of it.
Rund AbdelfatahHOST
And not long after these meetings, in January 1964, LBJ announced his war on poverty to the world.
speaker_17UNKNOWN
This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.
Rund AbdelfatahHOST
That year, Harrington voted for LBJ in the presidential election.
Rund AbdelfatahHOST
He now had a front-row seat to power, and made some tangible impact.
Doug GreeneGUEST
As having the potential for building a new leftist majority within the Democratic Party, which he definitely sees as a possibility by 1964, 1965
Rund AbdelfatahHOST
1965By 1965, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts had passed.
Rund AbdelfatahHOST
The War on Poverty was underway, and Harrington was in the Johnson administration's inner circle.
Mike HarrisGUEST
Well, let me answer your first question first, because you said, is this what the powers that be, is this what they want? It may or may not be.
Mike HarrisGUEST
And Lyndon Johnson, with the War on Poverty, designed the structure of the poverty programs in order to break up the black family in particular and to keep them in a down state in the perpetuity.
Mike HarrisGUEST
And here we are three, four generations later, and it's worked brilliantly according to Johnson's design.
Mike HarrisGUEST
So it comes back to one of my fundamental premises here is who does the government work for? Do they work for we the people? Are we a democratic republic where the people have influence over our government and control over our government? Or are we an oligarchy? Because if we're honest about this, the oligarchy has been winning because they have us living our lives, following all the rules as if we are a democratic republic.
Mike HarrisGUEST
And this relationship would be very, very toxic for that political class and the oligarch class that controls them.
Mike HarrisGUEST
Very toxic.
Mike HarrisGUEST
And so I'm trying to advocate for restoring and reclaiming our validity as a democratic republic where the vote of the individual matters and that you have to have the common good at hand i mean our foreign policy that hasn't done anything to benefit the american people since you know 9 11 you know and and our domestic policy doesn't do anything that benefits the american people for for longer than that since 1964 when uh 65 when johnson started the war on poverty we can do better there are better solutions there are better Larry Crumpler, Jr.: solutions to resolve this problem that actually benefit the American people and don't destroy the American people, the American dream was built on opportunity and the middle class and what i'm proposing and what i've discussed here today.
Mike HarrisGUEST
is how to restore that American dream so that the middle class becomes our strongest class, our most influential class.
Sally PipesGUEST
Right.
Sally PipesGUEST
Well, first of all, we need to know that Medicaid and Medi-Cal, the California version of Medicaid, was signed into law in 1965 under Lyndon Johnson and his War on Poverty, his Great Society.
Sally PipesGUEST
So it's been around a long time, but it was really designed, Medicaid, Medi-Cal in California, to help those people who were disabled, who were vulnerable, low-income people.
Sally PipesGUEST
And now it has expanded to cover about 80 million Americans.
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