One of the greatest problems facing America today is the rapid urbanization process characterized by specialization, dispersion of authority, estrangement of people from the governmental process, inadequate complaint channels and the complexity of service bureaucracies.
Today it is simply too hard to be an informed citizen. Things are too complex! How many times have we heard each other say "what good does it do?" or "I can't afford to get involved." Our system of government vests final authority in the governed. As such, democracy depends upon an alert and informed citizenry.
If being a good citizen is too hard for most of us who have achieved some sophistication in knowing how to use the system, imagine what it is like for many millions of poor Americans who are without resources, skills, education, organization or power. Most of us do tolerate some inconvenience when we must depend upon certain bureaucracies for particular services — income tax, license plates, etc. We resign ourselves to accept and depend upon them since that particular bureaucracy holds a monopoly on that service.
What would it be like, however, if we had to depend upon these monopolies for our daily existence?
This is the plight of the poor who cannot identify the system let alone use it. How many of us have gone to the employment agency and asked for work for ourselves or our family members; asked for money from an agency; ridden the bus to the clinic; or even walked to the laundromat with a basket full of clothes? Most of us feel helpless without that second car.
It is the poor who must negotiate with vast bureaucracies that are sophisticated, complex, specialized and governed by policies that "they" make (though no one knows who "they" are). There is, however, something even more ugly than asking for help; it is the fact that there is a draining away of the spirit, and a sense of subservience, which is more dangerous to an individual and our system of democracy. As the Cahns stated in the Yale Law Journal:
"It is exceedingly difficult to have dignity without food or clothing or a job. But it by no means follows that the provision of services and the supplying of material wants will yield a sense of self-respect. And the elimination of want will not necessarily produce the kind of alert and concerned citizenry on which our democratic process relies.
"The mentality of despair, apathy, passivity and the vulnerability to exploitation, harassment and manipulation will not automatically disappear because a vocational skill has been acquired. Indeed, reinforcement of those patterns may be the price which the customary donor-donee relationship exacts for the service or goods imparted. And this is perhaps the most serious cost of a service orientation: it neglects the poverty of the spirit in ministering to the needs of the flesh."
If we are to eliminate the sense of hopelessness, apathy and despair, which the poor must tolerate, we need to help them achieve a sense of dignity and a sense that they can control their destinies rather than being victims of circumstance. As the late Sen. Robert Kennedy stated:
"We have to begin asserting rights which the poor have always had in theory — but which they have never been able to assert in their own behalf. Unasserted, unknown, unavailable rights are no rights at all.
"I am not talking about persons who injure others out of selfish or evil motives. I am talking about the injuries which result simply from administrative convenience, injuries which may be done inadvertently by those endeavoring to help — teachers and social workers and urban planners."
We all have the right to challenge the decision of a government agency, but how many of us actually do?
The above are excerpts from "Bureaucracies and the Poor," a paper I gave to the American Civil Liberties Union at the Guadalupe Center in 1968.
As I reflected on those observations 36 years later, my first thought was that things don't change. And then, on second thought, maybe they do — and now affect all of us.
Utah native John Florez has founded several Hispanic civil rights organizations, served on the staff of Sen. Orrin Hatch and on more than 45 state, local and volunteer boards. He also has been deputy assistant secretary of labor. E-mail: jdflorez@comcast.net