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In recent yean* Laredo has keen handed some pretty large pieces of federal pie — from $(630,000 for a shiny civic and convention center with swimming poo! to ^1,600,000 foe a handsome senior citizens'' home, But these have done the hard-core poverty-stricken little good. Some months, up to z 1,000 persons get surplus food. More than 400 families collect aid-to-dependent-children payments. Approximately a,500 able-bodied persons are normally unemployed.What creates these conditions? Isolated from other major cities by miles of sand and scrub, and low on natural resources, especially water, Laredo has attracted little new industry. But what has caused economic havoc is the commuter problem, Evety morning, 3,500 Mexicans from Nuevo Laredo walk across the International Bridge apanning the Rio Grande to work as clerks, maids, bellhops, typists, factory hands. U.S* zmmtgrarioe laws allow these Mexicans to take jobs desperately needed by Laredo men and women. It just doesn't make sense, say many poee and unemployed. Concerned citizens declare, If Washington would stop the commuter influx, we could save- millions of federal dollars.But something far more dramatic was available in Washington —- the Groat Society’s War on Poverty. Laredo got it* first real taste of this war in June 1965, when Mayor J. C. Pepe Martin, Jr., returned from the nation’s capital and announced the go-ahead for a long-awaited Neighborhood Youth Corps (NYC) project. Expectations were a mile high. Youngsters x6 to at from low-income families flocked to sign up for jobs paying $1 an hour for 30 hours * week. Ymi'll get experience and skills for todav’s world of work, promised an administrator. Skills? The children of Laredo's poor found themselves assigned to painting street curbstones, washing polk* cars, collecting garbage.There was a lor of talk about improving skills, *«y* one disgusted anti-poverty worker. And, sure, a few kids berwfited. But most became oeoru for various Political *ub
Newspaper Details
Emporia Gazette
Emporia, Kansas, US
Fri, Dec 23, 1966
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Texas A.
TX, USA 24 Nov 2023
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