There are poor people in America, wrote Harrington, millions and millions of them. But most of us never see the "unskilled workers, the migrant farm workers, the aged, the minorities, and all the others who live in the economic underworld of American life" (source).

Harrington's 1962 book about poverty, The Other America, opened a lot eyes, including those of President John F. Kennedy. Shortly before his death, JFK talked with his advisers about "doing something" to alleviate poverty in the U.S., and LBJ scooped up that mantle when he took office.

Harrington, a sociologist and a card-carrying Socialist, pointed out that the post-World War II economic boom had been very good for America, but plenty of Americans missed out. They lived, Harrington said, in a culture of poverty. Unable to change the circumstances around them, the poor were stuck in an endless cycle of dead-end jobs, inadequate education, and general despair.

In the rest of the country, the growing consumer culture emphasized style over substance. Millions of Americans fled the cities for the new suburbs, leaving decaying wrecks behind. Technological developments drew starker lines between the haves and have-nots.

(All this is starting to sound sickeningly familiar, unfortunately. Plus ça change…)

"There is no realistic hope for the abolition of poverty in the United States until there is a vast social movement, a new period of political creativity," Harrington wrote. (Source)

Fortunately, raising a ruckus was right up LBJ's alley.