48
TOM HAYDEN
said he needed time to do things within the law. He said a "survey"
was needed before the City could decide on a light, but he would
take "immediate" precautions for children in the area. We left, giving
him no sense of what we would do next.
We had a short meeting back on the street. Sampson and his
brother, Fred Douglas, decided to make a leaflet telling the neighbor–
hood what happened. Otherwise, we decided to wait a couple of
days to see what the City would do.
I felt sick from not enough food and sleep, so I went over to
Louise
Patterson's and tried to rest on her couch. But staff people kept
coming in, asking
Louise
for money (she's the "banker").
I went hack to 18th Avenue, and spent the late afternoon sitting
with some people on their porch.
EIGHT O'CLOCK:
Stopped by at the Program Committee (weekly
decision-making meeting in the Clinton Hill project) to tell them what
happened at Reilly's office. About twenty-five people were there,
half old people and half new. They are tied up especially in anti–
poverty politics, since NCUP people elected the officers to the local
area board. Since then they developed a proposal for a community–
run recreation program. Already they are fighting with the police
over who should run the "play streets"; the police are the official
sponsors, but NCUP people make up much of the paid street staff.
The hattle will really come over the question of whether the City
Administration will permit local people to set up a recreation program
which would strengthen NCUP and independent poor working in the
anti-poverty program. In Mississippi, they blow up the Movement's
community centers; in Newark I think it might come to that
if
the
City can find no "legal" way to undermine Movement institutions
(play streets, recreation centers, a proposed cooperative store). About
twenty-five people went down to Washington during the "Assembly
of Unrepresented Peoples," and talked to the Office of Economic
Opportunity about pressuring Newark to respect the participation
of the poor in the War on Poverty. Like the Justice Department
"protecting" Negro voting rights against hostile Southern officials,
our people feel Shriver's office should protect the poor in the Poverty
program against City Hall. Results of the meeting were vague; but
at least an investigation
is
going on, and people now see the national
character of the problem much more concretely.
It
was hoth difficult and important to spend time at the Program
