Word: laredos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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There has been criticism by some local leaders that the poverty program is top-heavy with bureaucrats and functioning with wasteful inefficiency. Lately a new problem has arisen, exacerbating the crucial question of how independent the poverty war will be of Laredo's power structure...
Earlier this month, James Cox, regional director of VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), announced in Austin that two of Laredo's 20 VISTA volunteers have been dismissed for "immaturity and irresponsiblity." Neither Cox nor his field representative, William Hale, would give any further explanation. Neal Birnbaum and Douglass Ruhe, both from Chicago and both 22 years old, believe they were released because of their associations with a Mexican-American activist group called VIDA (Voices in Democratic Action...
According to Birnbaum and Ruhe, Hale had said they could help VIDA in its efforts to organize restaurant and cafeteria workers in the Laredo area, but warned that the work "would involve certain risks." In other words, they were given to understand that, as representatives of the poverty program, VISTA volunteers should avoid too intimate an association with a group such as VIDA, which has militant overtones and which, therefore, is basically unfriendly to the Laredo powers-that...
...series of events occurred this month which brought about a minor crisis in the shaky relationship between the Laredo poverty program, VIDA, and the local power structure, leaving Birnbaum and Ruhe stranded in the middle...
First, the poverty program's central neighborhood council, composed of representatives, of the poor from Laredo neighborhoods, voted to support VIDA in any of its efforts, as long as VIDA's work remained non-violent. Ted Delapass, Sr., president of the council, said that a group "so clearly intended to help Laredo's poor" should certainly have the poverty program's support...