Blacks May Do The Right-Wing Thing

It was one of those scenes that, at first glance, just didn’t compute.

Here was “Sweet Alice” Harris, a short African-American woman who has become a folk hero in Los Angeles because of the self-help programs for poor people she started in her Watts living room 30 years ago. She was barely visible behind the thicket of microphones at the U.S. Capitol news conference podium (except for her red pillbox hat), but she could be heard.

“Thank God for our friend here, Mr. Woodson,” she said, “and thank God for the speaker of the House.”

One doesn’t usually think of black community activists calling down blessings on Newt Gingrich. And not many of the reporters even knew Robert L. Woodson, though the Philadelphia-born, highschool dropout will probably be a crucial player in shaping welfare reform.

The news conference was held last Thursday to announce that Gingrich had appointed Woodson chairman of an advisory panel christened the “Grassroots Alternatives for Public Policy,” or GAPP.

Alice Harris was one of the grass-roots leaders from across the country present to testify that Woodson is right when he says that expenditures on poverty can lift more people out of poverty - if the government gets behind programs that really work.

Woodson believes that effective help for lowincome Americans has been blocked by an “iron triangle” of civil-rights organizations, liberal politicians and “the Poverty Pentagon.” Together, he says, they have conspired to subvert antipoverty programs into bureaucracies that exist mainly to provide jobs for middle-class blacks.

“Two out of 10 white Americans with college degrees work for the government,” he says. “But six out of 10 blacks with college degrees work for the government.”

Black social workers, he contends, have no interest in getting people out of poverty. It could cost them their jobs. Black teachers vehemently oppose school-choice programs, even though they often send their own kids to non-public schools, for the same reason.

The most amazing thing about Woodson may be the ease with which he crosses ideological lines. One night he’s at a “Salute to Newt,” and the next day he’s at a reception for newly elected Philadelphia Democratic Rep. Chaka Fattah, an old friend. Twice in the past year, he has been in the offices of Alice Rivlin, head of President Clinton’s Office of Management and Budget, to discuss welfare-reform strategies with her staff.

Woodson believes he stays on speaking terms with almost everyone because they recognize the sincerity of his efforts - and because he has paid his dues.

After dropping out of Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, he went into the Air Force, “which discovered I had talents I never knew I had.” He was grateful for that, but angered by the racism that persisted in off-duty activities. He once caused a Florida base to go on full alert out of fear of riots after he led a successful effort to integrate base dances fully.

He then graduated from Cheyney State University and received a master’s degree in social work at the University of Pennsylvania, while working with troubled youths “like the ones I grew up with.” He became active in civil rights, leading marches for racial equality in West Chester, Pa.

Several episodes led to his break with the civilrights establishment, but perhaps the most crucial was the decision to adopt forced busing as a strategy. He says this tactic was chosen by white liberal lawyers “and civil-rights leaders whose kids never had to ride those buses.” The wishes of grass-roots people, he says, “were always ignored.”

He then went his own way, eventually starting his own organization, the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. It is devoted to promulgating his ideas that anti-poverty programs work best when the organizers “live in the same zip code” as the participants and when the programs demand that recipients do something in return. He is also convinced that the best programs bring about a “spiritual transformation.”

He’s not sure at this point what specific legislative proposals his group will be making, but they will likely spring from one of his favorite aphorisms: “If you want to get someplace you’ve never been, you have to do something you’ve never done.”

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