Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
The Battle for Welfare Rights chronicles an American war on poverty fought first and foremost by poor people themselves. It tells the fascinating story of the National Welfare Rights Organization, the largest membership organization of low-income people in U.S. history. Setting that story in the context of its turbulent times, the 1960s and early 1970s, historian Felicia Kornbluh shows how closely tied that story was to changes in mainstream politics, both nationally and locally in New York City.
The Battle for Welfare Rights offers new insight into women's activism, poverty policy, civil rights, urban politics, law, consumerism, social work, and the rise of modern conservatism. It tells, for the first time, the complete story of a movement that profoundly affected the meaning of citizenship and the social contract in the United States.
"A rich chronicle of welfare rights activity, the 'movement's' strategic thinking, and the political and policy context that shaped and interacted with the movement."
"The most sophisticated study of welfare rights organizing to date. It engages with grassroots and high politics, social history and social thought, and, in the process, illuminates how law and social work shaped the movement to secure the 'rightly needs' of poor solo mothers. . . . Kornbluh does it all with insight and verve."
Preface
Introduction
Inventing Welfare Rights
Citizens of the Affluent Society
Legal Civil Disobedience
On a Collision Course
Give Us Credit for Being American
Nixon, Moynihan, and Real Live Welfare Moms
End of an Era
Conclusion
List of Oral History Interviews
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments