SPATIAL DECONCENTRATION
\nby Yolanda Ward<\/p>\n
This article was researched and written primarily by Ms. Yolanda Ward,
\nsometime in the early Nineteen Eighties. It is based largely on material
\nthat is publicly available, especially the “Report of the National Advisory
\nCommission on Civic Disturbances,” otherwise known as the Kerner Commission
\nReport.<\/p>\n
A large portion of this document is, however, based on materials which were
\nnot publicly available, specifically a number of Housing and Urban
\nDevelopment (HUD) department files which Ms. Ward and her collaborators
\napparently stole from the HUD office in Washington, D.C. The material herein
\ncontained details a policy, known as “Spatial Deconcentration,” which rivals
\nboth Nazi Germany and present day South Africa in its injustice to
\nindividuals, its utter disregard for human and civil rights, and outstrips
\nthem both in the remarkable secrecy with which it has been, until now,
\ninstituted.<\/p>\n
This document was first published as part of a collection of notes for a
\nnational housing activists conference held in Washington D.C. some years
\nago. No more than five hundred copies were made at that time, and to the
\nbest of our knowledge, this was the report’s only publication, prior to the
\none you now hold in your hands. Shortly after this first publication, Ms.
\nWard and two associates were accosted on a Washington street one night by
\ntwo well-dressed white men, who singled out Ms. Ward from her two friends,
\nordered her at gunpoint to lie face down in the street, and then shot her in
\nthe back of the head. The documents she and her friends allegedly stole from
\nHUD have never been published, nor are they included here.<\/p>\n
— J.F.W., Editor (published in World War Three Illustrated circa1989)<\/p>\n
This book is the result of painstaking work done during the second half of
\n1979, mostly in Philadelphia, but also in St. Louis, Chicago, New York City
\nand Washington D.C.<\/p>\n
It includes a collection of materials from federal agencies such as the
\nDepartment of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the General
\nAccounting Office (GAO); from community sources, such as Philadelphia and
\nSt. Louis Legal Aid Societies; and from independent sources, such as
\nfoundations, private corporations, books, private papers, etc.<\/p>\n
The search for and collection of this material began in August, 1979, when
\nhousing activists in Philadelphia first stumbled across the strangely-worded
\ntheory called “spatial deconcentration.” A letter had been forwarded from
\nthe Philadelphia-area regional planning commission to activist attorneys in
\none of the legal service agencies announcing a new “fair housing” program
\ncalled the “Regional Housing Mobility Program.” It might have been all greek
\nto housing activists had they not already known that some type of sweeping
\nmaster plan had already swung into effect to depopulate Philadelphia of its
\nminority neighborhoods. The massive demolition operations in minority
\nneighborhoods; which had been systematic, and the total lack of
\nreconstruction funds from public or private sources spoke to that fact.<\/p>\n
Activists had fought pitched battles with the city administration over
\nhousing policies for some three years before the word “mobility” was ever
\nmentioned among their ranks. In march of 1979, in fact, Philadelphia public
\nhousing leaders launched an attack on a city organized and HUD sponsored
\nplan to empty the city’s public housing high-rise projects. The question at
\nthe time had been: “Where will all the tenants go?” When the mobility
\nprogram was unearthed in August, the answer fell into place like a major
\npiece in a jig-saw puzzle. The answer, naturally, was the suburbs. It seemed
\nto fit perfectly into the “triage” or “Gentrification” scheme, which froze
\nthe inner city land stocks for the returning suburbanites who were finding
\ncity life more economical than the suburbs.<\/p>\n
Focussing their attention on this phenomenon called “Mobility,” the
\nactivists dug for more materials at the planning commission office. With the
\nnew materials available they began to slowly understand that the Mobility
\nProgram was much more than met the eye. By late September they only
\nunderstood that the program seemed to be a keystone among federal housing
\nprograms and that HUD was making special efforts to avoid a confrontation
\nover the matter.<\/p>\n
It was tactically decided that the program was too massive to be fought on a
\nlocal level. Activists in other cities would have to be sensitized to the
\nProgram and encouraged to swing into action against it. Between early
\nNovember and late December, such contacts had been developed in St. Louis,
\nChicago and New York City — all key Mobility cities. All the information
\nthat had been collected in Philadelphia before November was distributed to
\ncommunity activists in these cities. This action helped uncover massive
\namounts of new information about the program, which would have been
\nimpossible to procure on the east coast for various reasons, and which
\nchanged the basic nature of the struggle the activists were waging against
\nthe government.<\/p>\n
The Philadelphia housing leaders had fought their campaign between 1976 and
\n1979 under the assumption that their struggle against the land speculators
\nand government bureaucracy had an economic base. They understood
\n“gentrification” perfectly, but thought it had developed because the
\nspeculators were slowly but steadily viewing the land in minority
\nneighborhoods as some kind of gold mine to be vigorously exploited at any
\ncost. The information uncovered about the mobility program slowly taught
\nthem that they were entirely wrong, and perhaps this misdirection had
\nprevented them from realizing any measurable amount of success in forcing
\nthe city or government to start-up housing construction projects in the
\ncity. It is now clear, in 1980, that instead of being economic the manifest
\ncrises that plague inner-city minorities are founded in a problem of
\ncontrol.<\/p>\n
The so-called “gentrification” of the inner-cities, the lack of
\nrehabilitation financing for inner-city families, the massive demolition
\nprojects which have transformed once-stable neighborhoods into vast
\nwastelands, the diminishing inner-city services, such as recreation,
\nhealth-care, education, jobs and job-training, sanitation, etc.; are all
\nrooted in an apparent bone-chilling fear that inner-city minorities are
\nuncontrollable.<\/p>\n
Lengthy government-sponsored studies were conducted in the wake of the riots
\nof the 1960s, particularly after the 1967 Detroit fiasco which cost 47 lives
\nand was quelled only after deployment of 82nd Airborne paratroopers flown in
\nfrom North Carolina which had been commissioned for duty on the emergency
\norder of then-President Lyndon Johnson. Among intelligence agencies pressed
\ninto service to study the problem was the Rand Corporation. In late
\nDecember, 1967 and early January, 1968, Rand was requested by the Ford
\nFoundation to conduct a three-week “workshop” concerning the “analysis of
\nthe urban problem.” It was “intended to define and initiate a long-term
\nresearch program on urban policy issues and to interest other organizations
\nin undertaking related work. Participants included scientists, scholars,
\nfederal and New York City officials, and Rand staff members.<\/p>\n
Johnson also ordered a particularly significant study of the riots to be
\ncommissioned which has led to the emergence of some of the most dangerous
\ntheories since the rise of Adolf Hitler. It was the National Advisory
\nCommission Report on Civil Disorders, more commonly called the Kerner
\nCommission Report. Strategists representing all specialities were contracted
\nby the government to participate in the study. Begun in 1967 immediately in
\nthe wake of the Detroit riot, it was not published until March of 1968. But
\nonly weeks after its emergence, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated and
\nthe most massive wave of riots that was ever recorded in American history
\nalmost forced a suspension of the Constitution.<\/p>\n
Samuel Yette reported in his 1971 book, The Choice, that the House
\nUn-American Affairs Committee, headed by right-wing elements, had put heavy
\npressure on Johnson to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law in
\nthe cities. Johnson resisted and instead ordered government strategists to
\nemploy the finest minds in the country to analyze the cause of the revolts
\nand develop strategies to prevent them in the future.<\/p>\n
The workshop participants were asked to prepare and submit papers
\nrecommending “program initiatives and experiments” in the areas of
\nwelfare\/public assistance, jobs and manpower training, housing and urban
\nplanning, police services and public order, race relations, and others. The
\npapers were grouped into four headings, including two called “urban
\npoverty,” and “urban violence and public order.”<\/p>\n
The Kerner Commission strategists came to the conclusion that America’s
\ninner-city poverty was so entrenched that the ghettoes could not be
\ntransformed into viable neighborhoods to the satisfaction of residents or
\nthe government. The problem of riots, therefore, could be expected to emerge
\nin the future, perhaps with more intensity and as a more serious threat to
\nthe Constitutional privileges which most Americans enjoy. They finally
\nconcluded that if the problem could not be eliminated because of the nature
\nof the American system of “free enterprise,” than American technology could
\ncontain it. This could only be done through a theory of “spatial
\ndeconcentration” of racially-impacted neighborhoods. In other words, poverty
\nhad been allowed to become so concentrated in the inner-cities that
\nhopelessness overwhelmed their residents and the government’s resolve to
\ndilute it.<\/p>\n
This hopelessness had the social effect of a fire near a powderkeg. But if
\nthe ghettoes were thinned out, the chances of a cataclysmic explosion that
\ncould destroy the American way of life could be equally diminished.
\nInner-city residents, then, would have to be dispersed throughout the
\nmetropolitan regions to guarantee the privileges of the middle-class. Where
\nthose inner-city minorities should be placed after their dispersal had been
\nthe subject of intense research by the government and the major financial
\ninterests of the U.S. since 1968. In the Kerner Commission Report, Chapter
\n17 addressed itself to this prospect. Suburbs were its answer: the furthest
\nplace from the inner-city.<\/p>\n
A high proportion of the commissioners for the Report and their contracting
\nstrategists were military or paramilitary men. Otto Kerner, himself,
\nchairman of the Commission, was the Governor of Illinois at the time of the
\nReport but before that had been a major general in the army. John Lindsey,
\nMayor of New York City, had been chairman of the political committee of the
\nNATO Parliamentarian’s Conference. Herbert Jenkins, before becoming a
\ncommissioner, had been chief of the Atlanta Police Department and President
\nof the International Association of Chiefs of Police, a reputed
\n“anti-terrorist” organization. Charles Thornton, the fourth of the seven
\ncommissioners, was chairman of the board of Litton Industries at the time he
\naccepted his commission, one of the country’s chief military suppliers and,
\nbefore that, had been general manager of the Hughes Aircraft Corporation —
\nanother major military supplier — and a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, a
\ntrustee of the National Security Industrial Association, and a member of the
\nAdvisory Council to the Defense Department.<\/p>\n
The Commission’s list of contractors and witnesses was no less glittering in
\nmilitary and paramilitary personnel. No less than thirty police departments
\nwere represented on or before the Commission by their chiefs or deputy
\nchiefs. Twelve generals representing various branches of the armed services
\nappeared before the Commission or served as contractors. The Agency for
\nInternational Development, the Rand Corporation, The Brookings Institute,
\nthe Federal Bureau of Investigation, the International Association of
\nChiefs of Police, the Institute of Defense Analysis, and the Ford Foundation
\nall played significant roles in shaping the Commission’s findings.<\/p>\n
A hardly-noticeable name listed among the intelligence and military giants
\nwas that of one Anthony Downs, a civilian. Unlike most of the other
\ncontractors, whose names were followed by lines of titles, Downs was simply
\nlisted as being from Chicago, Illinois. His name was to become very
\nprominent among inner-city grassroots leaders around the country by the end
\nof 1979. Philadelphia housing leaders had remembered Downs as having been
\nthe author of the so-called “triage” report of 1975 which led to a storm of
\ncontroversy at the time.<\/p>\n
In his HUD-sponsored study, Downs argued that the inner-cities were
\nhopelessly beyond repair and would be better off cleared of services and
\nresidents and landbanked. The middle-class should then be allowed to
\nre-populate these areas, giving them a breath of new life. The activists, in
\ntheir rush to uncover information about the Mobility Program, discovered, to
\ntheir surprise, that Downs had written Chapters 16 & 17 of the Kerner
\nCommission Report; the chapters devoted to demographic shifts in the
\ninner-cities and spatial deconcentration.<\/p>\n
Housing activists studying theories of “mobility” and “spatial
\ndeconcentration” stumbled upon yet another “strategist,” also, like Downs,
\nout of Chicago, named Bernard Weissbourd. Weissbourd wrote two papers in
\nChicago in 1968 concerning the crisis of exploding minority inner-city
\npopulations. In one paper, entitled An Urban Strategy, he proposed a
\nso-called “one-four-three-four” plan. Inner-city minority populations
\nrepresented such a growing political threat by their growing numbers, he
\nargued, that a strategy had to be quickly developed to thin out their
\nnumbers and prevent them from overwhelming the nation’s biggest cities. He
\nproposed that this be accomplished through a series of federal and private
\nprograms that would financially-induce minorities to migrate to the suburbs
\nuntil their absolute numbers inside the cities represented no more than
\none-fourth of the total population.<\/p>\n
It is not clear if An Urban Strategy was written before the Kerner
\nCommission Report was released or before the end of the Rand Corporations
\n“workshop.” Around the same time, however, he wrote another paper entitled,
\nProposal for a New Housing Program: Satellite Communities. Weissbourd argued
\nthat the bombed-out inner-city neighborhoods should be completely rebuilt as
\n“new towns in town” for the middle-class. As in his Urban Strategy paper, he
\ndiscussed the threat of explosive inner-city minority populations and their
\nthreatening political power. He suggested that this threat could be repulsed
\nwith the construction of new housing outside the cities for inner-city
\nminorities. He also suggested that jobs be found for these people in the
\nsuburbs and that “. . . some form of subsidy” be developed to induce them to
\nleave the inner-cities. It is not clear whether Downs knew Weissbourd or
\nborrowed his theories in time for his Kerner Commission Report, or if, in
\nfact, the Report was finished after Weissbourd published his works, although
\nit is likely, since both worked out of Chicago. It is clear that both
\nstrategists saw American middle-class life-styles as being challenged by the
\nsame explosive, racially-impacted inner-city neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
In the same year that Downs had completed his Kerner Commission Report
\nchapters and Weissbourd published his theories, President Johnson requested
\nthe formation of a research network that could focus on analyses of
\ninner-city evolution and area-wide metropolitan strategies. This “thinktank”
\nis called the Urban Institute. Since its founding in 1968, the likes of
\nCarla Hills, Robert McNamara, Cyrus Vance, William Ruckelshaus, Kingman
\nBrewster, Joseph Califano, Edward Levi, John D. Rockerfeller, Charles
\nSchultze and William Scranton, have served as members of its board of
\ntrustees.<\/p>\n
The five Blacks who have served, or are serving, are Whitney Young, Leon
\nSullivan, William Hastie, Vernon Jordan, and William Coleman; all prominent
\nmiddle-class “yes-men.” The board of the Institute has had an interlocking
\nrelationship with the boards of trustees of the Rand Corporation and the
\nBrookings Institute, both close CIA affiliates. Rand’s Washington office, in
\nfact, is located in the same building where the Institute has its
\nheadquarters.<\/p>\n
The Institute, to say the least, is a bizarre agency. It was supposedly
\nfounded in the spirit of harmony between the races, but has been dominated
\nby a substantial number of presidential cabinet members and major U.S.
\ncorporations and Universities, such as Yale and Chicago. Worse, the
\nInstitute has conducted a substantial portion of the research that has led
\nto the development of Mobility Program techniques. Its president, William
\nGorham, recently described the agency as a HUD “testing laboratory.” It is
\ntheoretically dominated by the likes of the quasi-military strategists that
\ndominated the Kerner Commission, especially one John Goodman, the
\nInstitute’s major “mobility” specialist.<\/p>\n
In terms of the types of experiments the Institute has conducted over its
\nshort history and the highly-sensitive nature of its research work, it ranks
\non a par with the CIA itself. Goodman, for instance, heading a team of
\nstrategists, developed, between 1975 and 1979, a series of experiments to
\ndetermine the best way to induce inner-city Blacks and other minorities to
\nleave the cities. A favorite ploy they developed was housing allowances and
\nthe so-called housing “subsidy” progress, whereby low-income families are
\nsupported in their rent payments, or paid cash grants, if they first agree
\nto move out. Heavy experimentation was also conducted by the Institute on
\ntactics that could be used to shape the Section 8 Program into a
\ncounterinsurgency tool against minorities.<\/p>\n
In 1970, Downs wrote a little known book called Urban Problems & Prospects,
\nin which he more graphically detailed the theory of spatial deconcentration.
\nHe developed a bizarre concept in the book entitled “the theory of
\nmiddle-class dominance.” According to him, the dispersal of the inner-city
\npopulations to the suburbs could not be successfully completed unless and
\nuntil a model of dispersal was developed whereby the artificially-induced
\noutflow of minorities from the inner-cities would be controlled and directed
\nto the point that they would not be permitted to naturally reconcentrate
\nthemselves in the suburbs.<\/p>\n
This was the heart of the government theory which was later to become the
\ntheory of “integration maintenance.” This type of control had to be
\nexercised, according to Downs, because white suburbanites would not remain
\nstable in their bungalows if they were led to suspect that the incoming
\nBlacks and other minorities were gaining power through their sheer numbers
\nin the suburbs. The consistent theme of Down’s Problems, Chapters 16 & 17 of
\nthe Kerner Commission Report, and Goodman’s works at the Institute, was that
\nof control.<\/p>\n
The line of thinking about control found reinforcement in another book Downs
\nwrote in 1973, entitled Opening Up the Suburbs: An Urban Strategy for
\nAmerica. Down’s theories from the Kerner Commission Report crystalized,
\ntaking as their cue his arguments laid down in Urban Problems. The theory of
\nwhite “dominance” was carefully discussed in Suburbs. Included here were
\nideas for “. . . a broader strategy,” where “. . .a workable mechanism
\nensuring that whites will remain in the majority . . .” were produced. But
\nChapter 12 of Suburbs carefully laid down a mechanism which could transform
\nthe theories of his former works into practical application.<\/p>\n
The chapter was called “Principles of a Strategy of Dispersing Economic
\nIntegration,” and laid down five basic concepts: 1 — establishing a
\n“favorable” political climate for the strategy; 2 — creating “economic
\nincentives” for the strategy; 3 — “preserving suburban middle-class
\ndominance; 4 — rebuilding inner-cities; 5 — developing a further
\n“comprehensive strategy.” In outline format, he analyzed each one. He noted
\nthat experiments should be conducted before the strategy was effectuated and
\nthat “. . . more effective means of withdrawing economic support . . . ”
\nshould be developed for the inner-cities to clear the way for landbanking
\ninner-city neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
To the amazement of the inner-city housing leaders across the country,
\nDown’s theory of “dispersed economic integration” was exactly reproduced in
\nHUD’s Regional Housing Mobility Program Guidebook, issued six years after
\nSuburbs, in 1979.<\/p>\n
Also by 1977, a mysterious “fair housing” group in Chicago, the Leadership
\nCouncil for Open Metropolitan Communities, was contracted by HUD to begin
\nmobility programming experiments on Black high-rise public housing tenants
\nin the Southside and Westside. It was called “The Gautreaux Demonstration
\nProgram” and achieved in two years the removal to the far suburbs of 400
\nfamilies. Materials from HUD’s 1979 review of the Gatreaux experiment are
\nincluded in this anthology.<\/p>\n
By 1974, the Congress had enacted the Community Development Act. The
\nlegislation fused together the Urban Renewal programs of the Johnson era and
\nthe Revenue Sharing programs of the Nixon Administration. The title to the
\nAct laid-out its theory: 1 — reduce the geographic isolation of various
\neconomic groups; 2 — promote spatial deconcentration; 3 — revitalize
\ninner-city neighborhoods for middle and upper-income groups.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t until 1975 that point four of Down’s theory in Suburbs, rebuilding
\nthe inner-cities, was fully analyzed. It was done in the form of the
\n“triage” report, completed under HUD contract while he was still president
\nof the Real Estate Research Corporation in Chicago; a firm founded by his
\nfather, James, some twenty years before. In this report, Downs made it clear
\nthat he wasn’t projecting the inner-cities being rebuilt for its present
\nresidents — the minorities — but for the white middle-class; the so-called
\nurban gentry; a theory completely compatible with the Community Development
\nAct of the previous year, Weissbourd’s 1968 writings, and the Kerner
\nCommission findings. Under point four in Suburbs, Downs wrote that “. . .
\nnew means of comprehensively ‘managing’ entire inner-city neighborhoods
\nshould be developed to provide more effective means of withdrawing economic
\nsupport from housing units that ought to be demolished.”<\/p>\n
In his “triage” report, he wrote that Community Development funds should be
\nwithheld from inner-city neighborhoods so as to allow “. . . a long-run
\nstrategy of emptying out the most deteriorated areas. . .” A city’s basic
\nstrategy, he wrote, ” . . . would be to accelerate their abandonment . .. .”
\nThe land having been “banked,” it could be redeveloped for the gentry. He
\nargued that instead of being given increased services, minority
\nneighborhoods should be infused with major demolition projects.<\/p>\n
When Patricia Harris became Secretary of HUD two years after the enactment
\nof the Community Development Act and one year after the Section 8 Program
\nreplaced the Section 235 and 236 housing subsidy programs, the General
\nAccounting Office, under the direction of Henry Eschwege, issued a stinging
\nreview of the Department’s policies. Noting that the Section 8 Program was
\nthe “. . . principal federal program for housing lower-income persons . . .”
\nthe 1978 report suggested, in threatening language, that “HUD needs to
\ndevelop an implementation plan for deconcentration . . .” The report argued
\nthat “. . . freedom of choice . . .” was supposed to be the Department’s
\n“primary intent,” but that top HUD officials were confused about the policy.
\nHUD, the GAO insisted, was continuing to offer “revitalization” projects in
\nthe inner-cities, which was concentrating poverty in the cities. This
\npolicy, it stressed, was “incompatible” with spatial deconcentration.<\/p>\n
In 1979, on the heels of the GAO report came HUD’s Regional Housing Mobility
\nProgram. The introduction of the program was itself bizarre, let alone the
\nprogram. The emergence of the program was kept so quiet that virtually no
\ngrassroots community organizations in the country knew of its existence. The
\nactivists in Philadelphia had not even been aware of its existence until
\nAugust of that year. It still wasn’t until November that grassroots leaders
\nencountered an advisory council member to one of the planning agencies —
\nand that was in St. Louis — who openly admitted that the program’s success
\ndepended on its “invisibility.”<\/p>\n
On August 3, 1979, the planning commission directors of 22 pre-selected
\nregions in the country were asked by HUD to gather in Washington to be
\nschooled on the mechanics of the program. They were given Guidebooks and
\nasked to return to their respective jurisdictions and prepare $75,000 to
\n$150,000 applications for the program. The Guidebook made it clear that
\nthese regions had been specially selected because of their heavy
\nconcentration of inner-city minorities. They were instructed to contact
\nmajor civil rights organizations and gain their “input” into the program. It
\nwas not coincidental that the National Urban League was one of the very few
\nBlack organizations that knew of the program’s existence. After all, Vernon
\nJordan, its president, sits on the board of trustees of the Urban Institute.<\/p>\n
The Guidebook smacks of computer technology and is prepared with
\nmind-control phrases, such as establishing “beachheads” in “alien”
\ncommunities; initiating “. . . a long-term promotion of deconcentration;”
\nidentifying “. . . homeseeker traits which operate . . . on a process of
\nsuppression not selection;” and banking on the “. . . promotion of target
\nareas” that “. . . will require that natural inclinations be altered.” True
\nto the Down’s model established in Suburbs and Urban Problems, the Guidebook
\ncarefully analyzes the financial inducements to be used by the government to
\nforce minorities out of the cities and to force uncooperative suburban
\nlandlords to accept the program.<\/p>\n
The Guidebook makes it clear that the program is intended for major
\nexpansion by 1982, when its funding base will be switched from
\nHUD-Washington to an assortment of agencies, interestingly including the
\nCommunity Development Block Grant funds, CETA, an the Ford, Rockerfeller and
\nAlcoa Foundations. The CETA job component clearly traced its theoretical
\nroots not only to Downs, but also to Weissbourd. The Guidebook also
\ncarefully lays out the use of the Section 8 Program as a primary base for
\nmobility operations.<\/p>\n
Once it became clear to inner-city housing leaders that the Mobility Program
\nwas nothing more than the first in a set of mechanisms the government
\nintended to use to effectuate the ideas discussed in the Kerner Commission
\nReport, it was easy to organize concerned people around the issue. It was
\nactually a relief to some activists that proof had finally emerged of a real
\nmaster plan, and not merely another fictionalized account of some remote
\npossibility.<\/p>\n
Less than one month after the Philadelphia leaders had made their final
\ncontacts in Chicago and New York City, a five-city conference was organized
\nin Washington. Called the Grassroots Unity Conference, and held in January,
\n1980, it focussed on driving the message home to the government, through
\nHUD, that the masterplan had been exposed and efforts were being organized
\nin key regions of the country to stop it.<\/p>\n
An almost violent meeting was held between top HUD officials and activists
\nfrom Washington, Chicago, St. Louis, New York and Philadelphia during the
\ntwo-day conference. A busload of inner-city residents literally invaded the
\nUrban Institute offices and persuaded its staff to hand over dozens of
\ndocuments that further reinforced community leader’s arguments that a
\nmasterplan existed, and that the Mobility Program was merely the first step
\nin a new series of programs designed to systematically empty the
\ninner-cities of their minority residents.<\/p>\n
The friction slowly being generated between the government and the
\ninner-city communities over this programming and its exposure has the
\npotential of producing a major domestic crisis in the U.S. Housing and
\ncommunity activists have for years been confused about the nature of the
\ndeterioration of the inner-cities. The confusion often led to
\ndisillusionment and bitter dissension that sometimes created malevolent
\nsituations within the inner circles of community leaders and groups. Many
\ncommunity leaders knew that the government was not an innocent party to the
\nproblems of the cities, but few imagined the close association between it
\nand private market forces in systematically driving the poor and the Black
\nout of the cities.<\/p>\n
Fewer still realized that the government had helped organize the “control”
\nstrategy from its inception. Now that the masterplan is being slowly
\nuncovered by the persistent efforts of grassroots leaders and the confusion
\nwithin community groups is evaporating, it may not be possible to vent their
\nanger in non-destructive ways when the tale is finally told.<\/p>\n
Some elements of the Black community, for instance, have argued for years
\nthat the government had declared a “secret war” on Blacks in America. Now
\nevidence exists which makes the point difficult, if not impossible, to
\ndefeat. At least, an innocent observer must ask the question: “What kind of
\na government would allow these types of strategies to develop and thrive?”
\nEven more to the point, one must ask: “How stable can a government be with
\nsuch information emerging?” It now seems evident that the Constitution,
\nwhich the Kerner Commissioners and the Johnson Administration feared was in
\nneed of special protections, does not apply to all people in America, but
\nonly the white middle class. The only way the government can now disprove
\nthis argument is to abolish all types of mobility programming and the
\n“thinktanks” that shaped it.<\/p>\n
Researchers in all parts of the country who believe the government is
\ntraveling a lethal path are now uncovering major pieces of evidence to show
\nthe elaborate workings of the masterplan. Some of their arguments are
\nenclosed in Part III of this book, under the title, “The Minority Response.”
\nOther technical data are enclosed in Part IV and V. Of particular interest
\nin Part V are the listings offered by the Urban Institute under housing
\nallowance programs. Section 8 experimentation takes up a good portion of the
\navailable listings. A cursory examination of some of these papers — and in
\nsome instances a mere reading of the project titles — plainly shows the
\ndetermination of the government to manipulate the Section 8 Program as a key
\ninstrument to force inner-city residents to move into the suburbs through
\nthe Mobility Program.<\/p>\n
It aptly explains why these same researchers created the Section 8 Programs
\nin the first place. Included in Part IV are lists of Boards of Trustees of
\nthe Brookings and Urban Institutes in Washington D.C. Attempts were made, in
\npreparation for this edition to include a listing of the Rockerfeller and
\nFord Foundation’s Boards of Trustees. These corporations, however, refused
\nto release their Annual Reports.<\/p>\n
The exposure of the Mobility Program’s real intentions will hopefully change
\nthe direction of the government. If not, then the worse can be assumed for
\nthe future of the U.S. because no righteous people on the face of the earth
\nwould or should permit the existence of such policy, even if its
\ndismemberment means inevitable confrontation or conflagration.<\/p>\n
Several aspects of this mobility programming have deliberately been avoided
\nat this time. Cyrus Vance, for instance, was Deputy Secretary of Defense at
\nthe time of the Detroit riot of 1967 and the initiation of the Kerner
\nCommission Report. By 1980, Vance was Secretary of State, directly
\nresponsible for at least one organization named in the Report, the Agency
\nfor International Development (AID), widely reputed for its CIA ties. He was
\nalso a trustee of the Urban Institute along with Robert NcNamara, chairman
\nof the World Bank and former Secretary of Defense under Johnson.<\/p>\n
A reasonable question emerges at this point: Why is the military so closely
\nattached to this mobility programming? Or, worse: What does the military
\nintend to do in the event that this mobility-type programming fails, and the
\nBlacks and other minorities remain in large part in the cities into the turn
\nof the century, and riots create greater so-called threats to Constitutional
\nsafeguards? After all, Downs, himself, stated in Suburbs that he believed
\nthe mobility programming would fail. Is a repeat of the recent history of
\nGreece or Chile the logical answer to these questions? Did the military, in
\n1967, issue an ultimatum to the government to remove the Blacks and other
\ninner-city minorities to Black suburban “townships” in kid-glove fashion,
\nwith the option, in case of failure, being the iron fist? Furthermore, how
\ncould it have been possible for the surgical demolition operations in the
\nminority neighborhoods of the cities to be so identical in all major
\nAmerican cities? Could any organization other than the Pentagon have done
\nthis?<\/p>\n
These questions have been left unexplored because the weight of available
\ndocumentation and the speed with which it is being collected and digested
\nhas been burdensome on anti-mobility forces. Further, this discussion about
\nthe military must be carefully explored by itself because of its obvious
\nsensitivity. Also left for “Book II” is the discussion concerning the
\ncompanion programs of the Mobility Program. Their successful exploration and
\nrevelation may make Watergate look pale by comparison.<\/p>\n
