ustxtxb_obs_1968_07_12_50_00014-00000_000.pdf

ment instead of the poor themselves. Gonzalez said in Washington he was preparing a “Primer on Poverty” for Ploch and Pena, whom he called “P and P.” Pena responded that Gonzalez is the city’s “number one primer donna” whose credentials to speak for the poor were subject to question as long as he was connected with the likes of the GGL. According to the San Antonio Light, Gonzalez’ answer: on the West Side of the city, \(where the mexicanos are concenand “He thinks every other politician is a political prostitute like himself.” Gonzalez also alluded to Pena’s “systematic attempts to undermine me.” It looks like war. loor The testimony in the lawsuit con tending that the Texas Rangers and others conspired to thwart the striking Starr county farm workers’ rights would be mostly old-hat to readers of the Ob server’s coverage of that event. However, at least one new detail has emerged. Ranger Capt. A. Y. Allee, who refused to specify to the Observer the nature of the force he used to subdue Magdaleno Dimas in “the Dimas incident,” testified in court that lie hit Dimas on the head with a shotgun barrel. I/ Political publicists are moving about. Bill Hamilton, who left Sen. Yarborough’s staff to help Don Yarborough, has returned to the senator’s Washington office. Bill Carter, Gov. Connally’s publicist, has returned to the Department of Public Safety and has been replaced by UPI reporter Kyle Thompson. The Texas Republicans have hired George 0. Ives, Jr., most recently a convention manager for a Houston hotel, as their state PR man. 1,00 A chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has been formed in the Bryan-College Station area. . . . The resignation of the president of the Uni versity of Texas at El Paso, Dr. Joseph Ray, may not be unrelated to community unpopularity he attracted during his de fense of the academic freedom of Dr. Clark Knowlton, sociologist on the fac ulty friendly with the New Mexico land grant claimants. . . . Sen. Yarborough tasted sweet victory in Tyler, where he and Mrs. Yarborough went to high school, during the swearing in there of his nominee for US district judge, Wayne Justice, and of his nephew, Richard Hardee, as U.S. district attorney. . . . Allen Maley, once head of the Dallas AFL-CIO, having passed through his time as a poverty official, has become vice-president of Von Cronkhite and Maley, Inc., a public relations firm. . . . The AP says the membership of the University of Texas Students for Democratic Society chapter is 30 to 50; the U. of Houston chapter, 30 to 40; and SMU, eight. g/ The former right-wing congressman from Odessa, Ed Foreman, having lost and moved to New Mexico, has announced he will run again, this time from Las Cruces. wr The Dallas chamber of commerce “military affairs committee,” which conducts the annual fourth of July par ade in Dallas, excluded the John Birch Society for the second straight year, ex plaining that the parade is “an invita tional event.” 0 Rocky in Tower Country I San Antonio New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s appearance at the League of UnitSan Antonio came only a few hours before Senator John Tower, Texas’ most powerful Republican, announced his support of Richard Nixon for the GOP presidential nomination. Rockefeller spoke Saturday night, June 29. Sunday morning the state’s 56 GOP delegates received telegrams from Tower releasing them from their favorite son commitment to him. It is expected that most of the delegates’ votes will go to Nixon. The New York governor gave a short speech in San Antonio on the problem of hunger. Citing the 1960 Census Bureau figures which show that 47.2% of all white families and 82.2% of all non-white families in San Antonio were ‘living in poverty areas, Rockefeller advocated reforming the present federal system of food distribution. Because of a lack of time, he did not list his specific proposals before the convention, but they had been made available in press releases. Rockefeller’s first proposal involves “major expansion of the diet and nutritional services made available through local health, social service and extension service offices,” which he says are now “inadequately funded, administered on an uncoordinated and inefficient basis, and fail to provide any semblance of a balanced diet.” Secondly, the New York governor calls for “revision of the food stamp distribution procedure to enable the purchase of smaller quantities of food stamps,” because, he says, “food 14 The Texas Observer stamps are often sold in quantities too large for the poor to afford.” Rockefeller would also allow individual counties to participate in both the food stamp and the commodity distribution programs. Rockefeller favors the “revision and expansion of the free school lunch program to allow participation by schools now excluded due to their lack of lunchroom facilities.” He says that present regulations “prevent the poorest of schools from participation in the free school lunch program.” Finally, Rockefeller would ask for “adequate financial support for all school programs and a coordinated system of food services administration.” Commenting that current federal programs amount to “a sorry study in bureaucratic incompetence,” he took this to be “another grim example of the costliness of the Old Politics” and an illustration of a need for new leadership in the coun try. BEXAR COUNTY’S Commissioner Albert Pena, Jr., introduced Rockefeller. Pena was a leader in the Viva Kennedy movement in 1960 and favored Robert Kennedy for the nomination this year. Pena is of the opinion that Rockefeller might be able to supply needed leadership. The commissioner believes in a strong two-party system; he says that Mexican-Americans can participate in both parties, observe the reactions of both, and support the party which is more sensitive to their problems. He has not avowed support for Rockefeller. In his introduction, Pena said: “There are a lot of reasons why we should listen to the viewpoints of all presidential candidates. There are 100,000 reasons in San Antonio alone 100,000 hungry people, mostly of Mexican descent; the result of years of racism, neglect, poverty, injustice, unemployment and cheap wages. “There are more reasons why we y= , should listen to all candidates. For too long the Mexican-American has been considered in the hip-pocket of the Democratic party. This is no longer true. The Mexican-American will no longer be taken for granted by either party. We don’t want any more promises; we want solutions. “Here are some more reasons why we should listen. A Bexar county commissioner maybe you saw him on the hunger program he said that an eighth grade education was enough for anyone. He said that the reason poor people were hungry was that the man in the house refused to work. He said he would do nothing to improve the lot of the Mexican-American poor. I’m sorry to say, he like myself is a Democrat. “Then there is our state director of welfare, Burton Hackney, appointed by the governor. He said the reason that some poor Mexican-Americans were suffering from malnutrition was that the Mexican-American mother would feed her family beans and tortillas even ‘if she had a basket full of money.’ Both the director and the governor, sad to say, are Democrats. “Also, the federal governmentKelly Fieldis the largest employer of Mexican-Americans in the state. It also has a long record of calculated, systematic job and wage discrimination against MexicanAmericans. There has been no funding of bilingual education “New Yorkers are good traders. After