Portland observer., September 30, 1976, Image 8

“Poverty creates crime. A family who
has to push an 18 year old man or woman
out of the home, maybe a law abiding
young person, because the welfare pay
ments and the unemployment compensa
tion or social security doesn't apply to an
18 year old. And when that young person
wanders up and down the street for a
week.-two weeks, three weeks, without a
chance for a job, there is a pushing
toward shop lifting, breaking into auto­
mobiles, selling numbers rackets, prosti
tution, drugs. Poverty is not an excuse
for crime but it is a reason for or a cause
of crime. So what this Republican admin­
istration has done to our country is not
only devastating in economic terms but is
devastating in human terms."
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"This is not just a large figure two
and one half million. It is a large number
of families in our country where a mother
or a father in the past, maybe twenty or
twenty five years, they have been able to
hold the family together, with respect for
on«- another and the respect of the child
ren for the head of the family. Now. two
and one half million Americans - maybe
some of you no longer have a job, who
had one two years ago. That’s not part of
the character of our country. It must be
changed. We've got 6'/« per cent inflation
average for the last eight years. Under
Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, the in­
flation rale was about two per cent. This
is not just a figure, it is a constant daily
robbing of those who are retired, who
have fixed incomes, who have a savings
account with 5 per cent interest, who see
their earnings grow absolutely none but
shrink 1% a year."
'Tve never hear of an interstate high­
way going through a golf course. Rut I've
seen a lot of interstate highway projects
and urban renewal projects tear down
two hundred homes which people had
invested their life savings."
“There is no reason for us to be divided
along racial lines; or sexual lines or parti
san lines; between government and pri­
vate industry; between the President and
Congress; between Black or white
lieople; those who speak English, those
who don't; those who've been here two
years, those who've been her«’ 200 years.
There's no reason for these divisions We
need to unify our nation, not because of
an absence of differences among us indi
vidually but with a common purpose to
•■orrwet our mistakes, to bind ourselves
together, to answer difficult questions
ami to have once again a spirit. It is
endemic in our people, it has been absent
in our government a spirit of hope, and
truth, and compassion, and love, and
brotherhood and confidence
for a
change."
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