[The War on Poverty comes to life in this newly updated edition of
a book that explores how welfare mothers in Las Vegas built an
organizing juggernaut that transformed lives. ]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

WHEN THE WELFARE RIGHTS MOVEMENT WAS A POWERFUL FORCE FOR UPLIFTING
THE POOR  
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Eleanor J. Bader
July 10, 2023
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_ The War on Poverty comes to life in this newly updated edition of a
book that explores how welfare mothers in Las Vegas built an
organizing juggernaut that transformed lives. _

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Storming Caesar's Palace
How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty
Revised and Updated
Annelise Orleck
Beacon Press
ISBN 9780807007976

When Dartmouth history professor Annelise Orleck was still working on
her first book, _Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working
Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965_
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she learned about the work of an intrepid group of low-income,
southern-born women in Las Vegas, Nevada. Thirteen years of research
and interviews followed. The result, _Storming Caesars Palace: How
Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty_, tells the amazing
story of fed-up and reviled welfare recipients who organized on their
own behalf, winning a raft of financial, medical and educational
improvements for themselves, their children and their westside
community.

Although the book was initially released in 2006, an updated edition
was recently reissued to coincide with a PBS Independent Lens
documentary
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directed by Hazel Gurland-Poole. Both the book and the film are
inspiring and not only look back at the once-powerful welfare rights
movement of the 1960s and 70s, but offer stark and timeless lessons
about community organizing, movement building and risk taking.

The story centers around the Clark County, Nevada Welfare Right
Organization (CCWRO) head Ruby Duncan, a mother of seven who was
forced onto welfare when she became disabled. Like others in similar
straits, Duncan was initially ashamed of having to go on the dole. But
as she and her neighbors parsed this reaction, they quickly realized
that it was more shameful to let children go hungry than it was for
parents to demand food, shelter, healthcare and job training from the
state.   

Like the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), the CCWRO was
bold and unapologetic. In the early 1970s, for example, when budget
cuts were proposed by state lawmakers, the women brought a group of
kids into casino restaurants on the Las Vegas Strip and told them to
eat their fill. In addition, as the book title reports, they also
stormed Caesars Palace, then one of the largest and most lucrative
casinos in Sin City. 

Their efforts got a boost from powerful allies. Entertainers Sammy
Davis, Jr., Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland; feminists Flo Kennedy
and Gloria Steinem; and civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy marched
with them. The local chapter of the League of Women Voters was another
ardent and consistent supporter.

Their resistance paid off: By the mid-1970s, doors began to open and
grant money began to flow into CCWRO (which the women renamed
Operation Life, or OL) coffers. This enabled them to purchase and
renovate the abandoned five-story Cove Hotel, where they set up
recreation programs for youth and created a library, health center and
a Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)
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program. In concert with Legal Services lawyers, they also began to
lobby both Congress and the Nevada state house for policies to benefit
low-income people.

It was a heady time. For more than 20 years, CCWRO members — most of
whom had not finished high school — worked as Operation Life’s
grant writers, administrators, and program coordinators. As they told
everyone within earshot, their economic status qualified them to 
develop and run economic justice projects. “We can do it and do it
better,” they repeatedly declared. 

And they did — at least until Ronald Reagan entered the Oval Office.

As a presidential candidate, the actor-turned-politician used
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Chicago who had engaged in serial welfare fraud to depict welfare
recipients as lazy, Cadillac-driving, Welfare Queens. This rhetoric,
however absurd, ushered in a series of punitive “reforms.” The
upshot was the curtailment of programs that had empowered poor women
and their families. Pared down food stamp allocations and cash
assistance further eroded the idea of benefit entitlement.   

Not surprisingly, Operation Life and its members came under fire, and
by the mid-1980s funding cuts forced them to shutter virtually all of
their programs. The shift was not anticipated and illustrated a sad
truth about accepting government aid: What is allowed by one
administration can be abruptly taken by another.

Nearly a half century later, this lesson remains sobering, but_
Storming Caesars Palace_ makes clear that the women of the CCWRO were,
and remain, proud of what they accomplished. “We surprised a whole
lot of people,” Duncan says in the film. 

Among their proudest achievements, Orleck reports, was a health center
that offered medical screenings, diagnostic testing and treatment for
children on welfare, as well as for kids who were blind or in foster
care; parents under age 21 were also served. By all accounts, the
clinic was a remarkable place, and over the course of a few years, OL
doctors, dentists and nurses treated more than 10,000 patients.
“Eighty percent of them needed dental work,” Duncan told Orleck.
“Half had never seen a dentist in their lives. Four out of every 10
needed eye care. One in three had a physical ailment serious enough to
require a physician’s treatment.”

Losing the health center was, of course, an enormous blow to the
community and to the activists who ensured its success. But Duncan and
other surviving members of the CCWRO remain unbowed and undaunted by
the work that remains to be done. Their most fervent wish is for
Generation Z to pick up where they left off and permanently vanquish
hunger, homelessness, poverty and racism.

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* War on Poverty
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* Social Movements
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* women's movements
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* Welfare Rights
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