Because the ideal of individual social and economic mobility has deep roots, even activists seem reluctant to call for national programs to eliminate poverty by the outright redistribution of income. The ultimate objective of this strategy-to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income-will be questioned by some. To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be constrained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas."
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They stated that full enrollment of those eligible for welfare "would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments" that would: ".deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. Strategy Ĭloward and Piven's article is focused on forcing the Democratic Party, which in 1966 controlled the presidency and both houses of the United States Congress, to take federal action to help the poor. These would include: easing the plight of the poor in the short-term (through their participation in the welfare system) shoring up support for the national Democratic Party-then splintered by pluralistic interests (through its cultivation of poor and minority constituencies by implementing a national "solution" to poverty) and relieving local governments of the financially and politically onerous burdens of public welfare (through a national "solution" to poverty).
There would also be side consequences of this strategy, according to Cloward and Piven. The two stated that many Americans who were eligible for welfare were not receiving benefits, and that a welfare enrollment drive would strain local budgets, precipitating a crisis at the state and local levels that would be a wake-up call for the federal government, particularly the Democratic Party. The strategy was outlined in a May 1966 article in the liberal magazine The Nation titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty". Cloward and Piven were both professors at the Columbia University School of Social Work.
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