University of Virginia Library

Christian Concern

Happily, belatedly, and inspired
no doubt by the Christian concern
of Michael Harrington, the
Kennedy-Johnson Administrations
tried to remedy the matter with its
"wars" on poverty and hunger. And
the Nixon administration, to its
historic credit, is taking the largest
step of all to end poverty — its
guaranteed (if very minimum)
annual income.

It is these splendid efforts to
help those who need help most that
are so unlike Mr. Nixon's, Mr.
Phillips, and the suburbs' callous
disregard of people and problems
whose need is greater than theirs:
for I question not only awarding
water and sewer (or any other)
grants to suburbs without low
income housing but awarding such
grants at all. How dare the
Wellesleys and Scarsdales of
affluent America beg for $30,000
sewer grants when most of their
residents live in $30,000 homes —
when, also, residents in slums a few
miles away live in houses not one
tenth as comfortable?

I am reminded of another friend
(much less radical) who drove up
one day to show me his silly, shiny
new car and to announce that he
and the wife just couldn't stand to
live in Boston anymore and were
going to fly to the suburbs — to
escape, to run away from it all.

That of course is the suburban
mentality; and it is so wrong. If
there is still evil and sin in our
secular world, that surely must be a
cardinal one. And to care for those
whose faults are truly not their own
must rank as the greatest good
work.

This spirit was manifested so
well when the wealthy residents of
Boston's venerable Beacon Hill
joined with their impoverished
North side neighbors to declare the
entire area a poverty pocket so they
might qualify for Economic
Opportunity programs. The
residents acted as did their
ancestors in the best patrician and
Tory tradition: materialistically.

But Boston is a special and
splendid place. And at least for the
duration of the Nixon
administration, Beacon Hill and
places like it will be the exception,
not the rule.