ened, so I hope that, if anything, you will continue your leadership and make it more explicit. A lot rides on both your accuracy and the

courage.

Mr. HILL. Well, thank you. We certainly will try to.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you, Mr. Hill.

Mr. REID. Thank you, Mr. Hill.

Mr. BRADEMAS. The next witness it Mr. Ted Watkins, of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee.

The Chair would like to ask unanimous consent that there be read into the record, prior to Mr. Watkins' statement, the text of a letter dated April 29, 1970, to the Chair from Mr. Watkins, in which he makes clear that he is testifying not as project administrator of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee but as a private individual. Is that accurate, Mr. Watkins?

Mr. WATKINS. That is right, sir.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Pleased to see you here, sir, and go right ahead. (The letter referred to follows:)

Hon. JOHN BRADEMAS,

WATTS LABOR COMMUNITY ACTION COMMITTEE,

April 29, 1970.

Chairman, Select Subcommittee on Education, Committee on Education and Labor, Washington, D.C.

DEAR CONGRESSMAN BRADEMAS: I am sorry to advise you that I am unable to testify before your Committee at the present time. As Project Administrator of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, I do not want to jeopardize one of our critical funding resources-namely, private foundations.

The Tax Reform Act of 1969, page 29, section 49-45 D and E, makes it illegal for any organization receiving support from private foundations to, in any way, influence legislation or legislative bodies. I am sure that the Subcommittee members are very much aware of this legislation and can appreciate the need for my declining to participate in these hearings.

If, however, the committee has any questions to ask me as a private individual, I will of course be happy to cooperate.

Sincerely yours,

TED WATKINS, Project Administrator.

STATEMENT OF TED WATKINS

Mr. WATKINS. Well, I guess after most of the things that I have listened to back here in the room, I begin to wonder when they really start applying to a community like Watts.

On the educational part, to tell kids in a school in a community like Watts about saving environment and the needs for conservation and all these things and knowing the conditions of the schools that they will be taught these things in, it seems to me to be a frustrating and fruitless effort.

There are three schools that I know of in Watts starting from the elementary school which has a pile of junk behind it. That's similar to me like the thing that happened in England when the mountain came over on the school and destroyed the students. That school is an elementary school on which to begin.

The next school down there is a school down the street, a little further, which is a junior high school which is backed up by industry. And the high school, which is Jordan High School, is another

school up the street further, that is also, on the east side of it, completely backed up by junkyards and industry.

I don't know how a kid can think in terms of the kind of environment we are talking about when from the elementary school until he graduates from high school, he is placed with the junkyards and

the trash.

I can understand, looking out this window, what you are talking about when you say, "environment."

One of the things that we did in Watts was, back in 1966, we started what we call a conservation corps program, a community conservation corps.

Since that time, we have planted some 10,000 trees in Watts. We have built 11 vest pocket playgrounds in the community and we have taken land that was the right-of-way land for the power and water company and it was a blight in the community and changed it into strips of parks and growing flowers and vegetables under those power line mains.

We have an educational institution up in Saugus where we're taking kids out of Watts, as a matter of fact, 300 of them a week, and they go up there and learn vocational education 5 days and 4 nights a week and we felt that the only way we could make an impact on these kids is that we had to get them out of the environment of Watts.

So other things that we have done in the same area is that in 1967, we took 2,600 kids up to Camp Roberts, 300 miles away from Watts. and went through the summer of 1967 giving them that experience away from the community and out in the wilderness and also on the hottest desert, I guess, in the whole world, is that Camp Roberts place, but the kids enjoyed it. For the first time in their lives they've been out of Watts and out of those housing projects.

There are a couple of things that I have heard here also that I would like to make some comments on, because it begins to be a question of who is going to be sacrificed.

When I heard the name of Stephanie Mills mentioned here, the first thing I hear is the question of population explosion and who is going to begin to cut back on the population when in my instance, the-I have always been taught it's the majority rule in this country and if you're in a minority group, the only way you ever become equal to that majority is by continuing to explode, as far as the population is concerned. So in that case, I'd like to know what the rules are when we're going to begin to level this thing out that we can have a rule that says that for every household, there are so many kids, two to a family or something like that, when this kind of a majority rule still exists as far as democratic form of government is concerned.

One of the other things that I am very much concerned with and that is that this law, I think, in order to have its full effect, has to be oriented not only toward the institutions but also toward community action groups, because I guess the only reason we've done the things that we have done in Watts is because none of the institutitons would do them and neither would the

Mr. REID. Could you expand on that?

Mr. WATKINS. Well, in the first place, when we started out, for instance, in the summer of 1965, we found that kids were placed out

on the sidewalks and this is happening in all of the cities in the United States, with gates of schoolyards closed. Everybody seemed to go off someplace and leave these kids on the street. Federal agencies had geared programs not to problems in the community but basically to somebody's criterion for what they felt was needed. We started a program, in 1966, of how to involve yourself with the youth in the community who basically have the problem.

Headstart project was in effect but nobody touched kids 7 years. old to 15 because there were no Federal funds available for kids 7 to 15 years old, so we felt that the basic problem in being in Watts when August of 1965 came, that the basic problem out there was youth out there on streets, from 7 to 15, were the first kids to throw the bricks and as a result of that, a number of others began to get engaged.

We involved ourselves in the Community Conservation Corps program, starting out one program for 300 which ended up with 3,000 kids.

We removed bricks and put rakes, hoes, shovels, and spades in their hands and began to clean up that community.

We began to find out who owned vacant lots in the community and found out that the city and the county owned most of the vacant lots because they had been taken over for taxes and we changed those vacant lots into vest pocket playgrounds where young kids living on the streets didn't have to walk ten, fifteen blocks across a couple of railroad tracks in order to get to a playground.

This began to involve the community in the supervision and the upkeep of those playgrounds.

In 1967, like I said, when we took those kids to Camp Roberts, again, the playgrounds were closed. We were faced with a growing resentment on the parts of the kids of having Detroit getting a bigger record than they had, so we felt that the only thing left for us to do was to try the experiment of removing the kids completely from that hot asphalt and so forth and we took them to camp.

None of the institutions have involved themselves in any of that kind of thing except when they began to have summer crash monies to do it.

Environment. Like I say, when you're talking to us about it, in one instance, people who can appear before this board have had all of the benefits of the environment of a community like this.

And then, when the problem of them having to locate a junkyard, for instance, and many of the people who own those blights in our community live in communities like this. Then, the only thing for them to do is throw them in. One of the largest junk dealers in the community lives here in Westwood but his junkyard is over there behind this elementary school.

I think these are parts of the problem. Educational process is going to have to take place not only in the school level but I think there has to be some way that the budget has to be tied with some way of improving the environment of where you are teaching that education.

To teach these kids about the beautiful things to save and there is nothing in that community to save, it seems to me like you're further frustrating them.

Mr. BRADEMAS. I appreciate, as we all do, Mr. Watkins, your statement.

I believe I am correct in saying that you were quoted recently in Esquire magazine in a piece to the effect that it is pretty difficult for Blacks to get deeply interested in the problems of the environment because of the kinds of problems that you have been discussing with us

here today.

I would simply observe that one of our earlier witnesses, Dr. Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, said that it will be difficult-in effect, she echoed what you have suggested when she said that it will, in her judgment, be difficult to get people concerned about how our country is going to look 50 years from now if people in 1970 are not sensitized to the fact or aware of the fact that we have got a lot of poor people and hungry people and people who are in poverty and are discriminated against in our society, right now. And she spread the hope, as do I, that the new concern about ecology and the environment and the shape of our society half a century from now will lead us to be more deeply concerned about problems here and now that face us.

I hope I assume from what you said that we are not in disagreement on that.

Mr. WATKINS. No, I do not think we are.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Reid.

Mr. REID. I would just observe in relation to that colloquy and both Mr. Brademas and I have long urged the implementation of the Kerner report and the major change put forth in the Kerner studies is an abolition of racism in this country. I think unless we do something in this area at the same time that we do something in terms of environment, that it will have less meaning. So I share your concern; and in our interest in the environment, we must not forget the other areas that we have neglected for hundreds of years.

I would certainly like to compliment you on the program that you mentioned for Watts, the importance of reaching the 7-to-15 year olds. Did you have any specific suggestions on the bill other than the ones you mentioned?

Mr. WATKINS. No. The only thing that I am concerned with in the bill is that I did not see in there where there was any implementation money or any provision in there to implement on the community level, after you educate or while you are educating, to do some implementation of the thing that you are talking about.

Mr. REID. Then your point, as I understand it, is that absent some community projects and some action improving the environment, the teaching will be so remote that it will lack relevance to students in that kind of environment.

Mr. WATKINS. That is right.

Mr. REID. I think the point is well taken.
Thank you very much.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Hansen.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have no questions but I would just join my colleagues in conplimenting you for a very fine statement and also for the leadership that you furnished in this area. This is what we are actually talking about. We are talking about the quality of life and the quality of the world that we live in.

I am grateful to you.

Mr. WATKINS. Thank you.

Mr. BRADEMAS. I want to make just one other point, following what we have all been observing, that I noticed with great interest, an article, I believe it was in last week's issue of the New York Review of Books, by the American economist, Robert Heilbroner, quoted by one of our witnesses earlier, entitled, "Ecological Armageddon." The whole point of the article which may have particular significance for a community like Watts or at least one point of the article was that the new concern about the environment in the United States and the way our country will look some years from now, over the long run, may become the basis for a new political movement, what Heilbroner called a "new New Deal," which will result both in widerin a wider base of support for environmental protection measures and more in the long run, and, in the short run, attention to the whole spectrum of issues that Mr. Reid and I were just talking about.

That might be an idea, a suggestion, a perception that would have particular significance, I would have thought, in a State like California.

Mr. Watkins, thank you, again. We are aware of the fine leadership you are giving in Watts and we are very grateful to you for having

come.

Mr. WATKINS. Thank you.

Mr. REID. Thank you very much.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Our next witnesses, I wonder if they would just be kind enough to come up just in tandem, if there is no objection, Mr. and Mrs. Leslie Reid. Are they here with us, today? [No audible response.]

Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Marc McGinnes, is he here?

Mr. MCGINNES. Yes; I am here.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Are you ready to testify, Mr. McGinnes?

Mr. MCGINNES. Yes.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Come right ahead, sir.

Mr. MCGINNES. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF MARC MCGINNES, COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL, SANTA BARBARA

Mr. MCGINNES. My name is Marc McGinnes. I am from Santa Barbara. I, therefore, am one of the survivors of America's ecological Hiroshima, as Mr. Hill was saying, but don't worry too much about Santa Barbara. We're taking care of ourselves pretty well, there. I would urge my fellow citizens not to think too much about Santa Barbara any more but to look at their own community and see what the imperatives are in their own communities. The fact is that oil hit the beaches, hit people in the face and in the weeks and months that followed the oil disaster, we saw a response which is all too typical and that was to pick out convenient enemies and to say, "You are the polluters and we are the pollutees. We are suffering and you are the aggressors," without giving one whit of thought to how their life styles were maintaining this institution which can at its worst not only not serve them but can kill them.

Well, in the fall of last year, it became evident to organizations