ABSTRACT

The Local Head Start programmes exist because of federal dollars and the dense web of federal laws, regulations, and performance standards that dictate exactly how that money must be spent. The excerpts explore how common peoples can use law-ordained institutions like Head Start to enable hopeful life projects. After reading the Head Start law and regulations, a legal scholar could rightly conclude that this network of street-level institutions would not exist but for Big Brother's iron hand. Women recounted how the Head Start programme gave them a place of safety in stressful, indeed, endangered lives. In Los Angeles, Latina and African American women would come to their children's classrooms every day, to volunteer their time. The OEO's emphasis on poor people's participation in local institutions, in their own communities, evokes Gramscian, Africanist theories of hegemony and resistance in a neo-colonial world.