For Some VISTAs, A Different Future
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(Continued from page 1) Alvarez's direction, some of the "Assassins" became leaders in a neighborhood redevelopment program; he got others into job training programs or night schools. And he never did go back to claims adjusting. After his year as a VISTA he became the professional director of a city job center for teenagers.
RICHARD GUSKE, who attended the University of Oregon and Antioch College, developed eight rural community organizations and 15 community information centers in the rural Appalachian area of Jackson County, Kentucky. He also organized a high school tutoring program, an arts and science project for youths, an adult literacy course and "the best Head Start program in the state." When Guske finished his year of VISTA service, Jackson County officials asked him to stay on as the paid director of their community action program.
—BRUCE McIVER, who attended Mankato State College in Minnesota, formerly a VISTA in New York City, is now working in New York as a Youth Corps crew chief with the United Neighborhood Houses. Referring to his VISTA service, McIver says: "Because I'm familiar with the tools and resources at my disposal, I know what I can and can't do."
In addition, government offices are using returned VISTAs in such areas as training, recruitment, field support and public information. Among these are the VISTA Headquarters in Washington and various state and regional OEO offices.
All told, about 40 percent of VISTA's alumni remain involved in some aspect of the War on Poverty after completing service or enter the "helping professions," such as teaching and social work. More than half of VISTA's alumni return to school, most to prepare for careers in the social sciences.
The Volunteer Information Service receives many offers of educational aid available to VISTAs from graduate schools, particularly schools of education and social work. Additionally, V.I.S. can advise Volunteers of the growing number of colleges and universities that now offer degree credits for VISTA service. Among these are the University of Colorado, the University of Oregon, Beloit College, Franconia College, The University of Wisconsin, Michigan State University, the University of North Carolina and Ohio State University. Many other schools will be added to the list in the months ahead.
VISTA to Visit 800 Campuses
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VISTA's books requests for more than 14,000 Volunteers—124 percent above the number of requests on hand a year ago.
The current recruitment drive is thus a twin effort. It aims at meeting both the tremendous demand that has come to VISTA from the poor—much of it generated by the visible accomplishments of Volunteers already at work. And it offers college students and graduates what many of them demand—a meaningful chance to serve their nation and its poor.
The opportunities are as broad as a Volunteer's ability, from neighborhood work in an urban ghetto to health education in Alaska.
VISTA's terms for those who are interested have not changed: $50 a month that is set aside and paid in a lump sum at the completion of service; room, board and a minimal living allowance.
The average VISTA Volunteer who enters service from a college campus is a recent graduate or an upper classman; minimum age is 18; there is no maximum.
There are no entrance examinations for VISTA service, but all VISTA applications are carefully evaluated. Men and women selected for VISTA are those whose applications best demonstrate abilities to live and work among the poor.
'The Price of Life Is High'
Before Claude Brown wrote "Manchild in the Promised Land," he lived it.
When 46 VISTAs graduated recently from the Harlem Training Program, Brown was there to tell them what his "promised land" had been—and is—like. "Many people who are deprived don't think they are deprived," he said. "All people should be accepted for what they are. You'll find that the price of life is high, but it's worth every penny, baby."
For Claude Brown, Harlem had been a promised land that became a broken promise. He began playing hookey on his second day in school and wound up in a reformatory. He got out and became one of the few: a product of the slums who made it.
But the price, indeed, is high. The slums of the nation account for 45 percent of the country's major crimes, 55 percent of its juvenile delinquency and 50 percent of its diseased.
For VISTA Volunteers serving there, the price is frustration. Is it worth it? Brown's answer to the VISTAs was: "The world will be better for what you have done."
John Wendt has his own answer.
Wendt told how one landlord got out a gun and laid it across his desk when tenants came to complain. Now the residents are learning their way through New York City's building code and the association has forced one slumlord out of business.
He's helped to form a food cooperative and a consumer education program. The block association he started is learning how to cope with slumlords.
"There are parts of Harlem the sun never shines on," said the 21-year-old VISTA Volunteer who's spent over a year in the nation's largest slum.
"The dirty snow, the alleys full of trash, the smells make it almost unbearable. But I've learned more in this year in Harlem than I could in four years of college."
Wendt, who attended St. John's College in Kansas, has learned that things can change.
Wendt is an example of what Senator Robert Kennedy meant when he welcomed a group of VISTAs to New York with the words: "Your job is to relieve poverty—do something about inadequate housing, absentee land-
lordship, low quality groceries and lack of playgrounds."
Parrish is a 23-year-old graduate of Augustana College in Illinois, whose first-year VISTA assignment placed him at Shaw Junior High School in Dozoa.
Almost half of the Volunteers in VISTA live and work in the nation's urban slums. Many of the five million families who live in America's urban ghettoes are residents of areas that have low national visibility.
Even well-known slums can be invisible. Tourists in Washington, D.C., may see the monuments but they may not see Cardoza, where Dick Parrish was living.
Parrish worked in the school's wood shop, which he called "the dumping ground for the rest of the school." Shaw, which was built to house 800 and now accommodates 1,200, has a shortage of everything but students.
"The boys," Parrish said, "have never been given a break by a white man. Why should they trust me?"
Perhaps because he's there because, as he said, "I'm not a social worker who steps in and out of their lives. I live on the same block."
Volunteer William Grunloh, who followed the migrants from Florida to New Jersey in Project Upstream, is shown with an exmigrant worker who now lives in Bridgeton, N. J.
Volunteers Work in The Migrant Stream
In a migrant farm labor camp called Green Acres on Route 40, a mile north of Centerville, New Jersey, VISTA Volunteer William Grunlin made a swing out of rope and an old tire.
As soon as it was up, The New York Times reported, "15 children in rags pushed and screamed to stay in line for a ride. Some of the children had distended stomachs and many were ridden by lice and ticks."
Grunloh, a 23-year-old Volunteer, who attended Macalester College in Minnesota, is spending a year of his life following the migrant stream from Florida up the eastern seaboard to New Jersey, New York and beyond. He is one of scores of VISTA Volunteers who are working with the Southern migrants to ease the misery of poverty.
Some of the growers in New Jersey do not look kindly on the VISTA Volunteers' efforts or upon the people they hire to harvest their crops. The Times quoted one farmer who shouted his description of the migrants to a group of Volunteers:
"See those people in the field. Well, they're nothing. I tell you, nothing. They never were nothing, they never will be nothing and you and me and God Almighty ain't going to change them. They gave me the bottom of the barrel, and I'd fire them all, clean them from the fields, if you'd get someone else."
The migrants work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Some of the better bean pickers make $6 or $7 a day. In the camps at night, the mosquitoes take over. The men buy wine from the crew leaders for $1 a bottle. The crew leaders get it for 52 cents. The migrants' children pay 15 cents for a soft drink that should cost a dime.
Nearly a fourth of the nation's seasonal agricultural work is done by migrant laborers such as the ones found on Green Acres in New Jersey. They earn, on the average, $657 a year.
There are no laws to protect their children against the dangers of child labor—in the third most hazardous industry in the nation. Forty states deny the migrant worker general welfare assistance unless—a contradiction in terms he can meet residence requirements that are as lengthy as six years.
Described as "the most educationally deprived" occupational group in the United States, the average school achievement is fourth grade. Most of the children who do attend school enter in November and leave in the early spring four to six weeks before school ends.
VISTA's approach to the plight of the 316,000 workers who harvest the nation's crops has been called "the key to any lasting solution of the problems facing migratory farm workers."
In making this statement, Senator Harrison A. Williams of New Jersey, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor, added: "By living and working with our migrant farm laborers, VISTA Volunteers are providing the badly needed link between the migrant farm family and the Federal government."
Result of the Volunteers' efforts can be found from California to Florida. More than 2,000 migrant children in Florida alone enrolled in educational programs initiated and operated by VISTA Volunteers.
One group of Volunteers developed a community health improvement campaign that involves inspecting and repairing substandard properties that house the migrants. Landlords are now complying with the Volunteers' recommendations and one added 80 bathrooms to his buildings at a total cost of $48,000.
The VISTA program for the nation's migratory farm workers has chalked up more victories than failures and, as Senator Williams said, it is "the key to any lasting solution."